strange things i have seen

I have seen some weird things in Hungary, which although seem like things from tales of the unexpected, here they are regular occurrences. Here is a select few:

Men blowtorching a pig: One saturday I wandered down a quiet street only to see several men on a driveway standing round a black lump. The drive was covered in blood, which is never a good sign, anywhere. As I got closer I realised the black lump was the charred remains of a whole pig, and it was getting more charred as one of the men continued to blow torch the recently deceased beast. I don't know if the animal was killed minutes before by something other than a blow torch, and I am not entirely sure why they were cooking it in this way. I also don't know why three men had to watch one man hold the remains while the other cooked. To be fair, I watched for quite a while myself and the butchers didn't seem to mind. When you don't have TV or a cinema in your town, a pig-torching is quite the event.

Really old lady on a roof: She was just standing on the roof. No reason why this woman, clearly on the wrong side of 85, was 30 feet in the air standing on a flat roof. There were no ladders, there were no other people around and the woman was just standing. She was wearing typical Hungarian babushka-style headdress, five layers of clothes and a gurn of utter contempt. I couldn't stop looking at her and she couldn't stop looking at me. The next day she wasn't there, I don't know how she got down or whether she survived the cold night.

A car in a wheelbarrow: It was a very small car, the type Hu

ngarians have been driving since 1952. These cars, when in motion, sound like someone has a big metal box of old metal and is shaking it really hard. They are called the Trabant and are like a really poor man's Lada. 0-60 in about 3 weeks, downhill. The car was in a very big wheelbarrow, the type they like to carry potatoes in. They are usually attached to Trabants, or horses, or home made motorbikes. I don't know where it was going to be taken or how it got into so many pieces that a wheelbarrow was the best option for it, but here it is. A car in a wheelbarrow.

A student with a sword: My school were allowing students to film their own movies, and one class decided to make their own 'Scream' movie. The star was dressed in the famous mask and gown and asked me if I would do a short scene with him. I was to walk out the staff room, turn, and see him standing behind me. That's it, not exactly oscar-winning stuff, but what do you expect? So I agree, and he pulls out a massive sword from his bag. Not a plastic toy shop replica, but a 2-foot long machete usually wielded by those African rebels who are big on genocide. He told me he had permission to have the sword in his bag at school, all day. So I did the scene and he flung this sword round my head and shouted something in Hungarian. My least comfortable moment in Hungary so far. I saw him later showing it off to some younger students, once again flinging it round his head as one would if you were part of some sort of medieval rampaging hoarde.

As a footnote, I have also heard a dog being shot on my street. Well, I could see some men standing round looking down the end of a garden (they may have been the same ones who were part of the pig-torching gang. It seemed like their bag - standing, animal cruelty), but the garden was obscured from view. I then heard some shouting, some gun shots and then a yelp. One more shot ensued, then nothing....It might not have been a dog, come to think of it. Oh God, I hope it was a dog. Or a elderly sheep, or even a misbehaving goat. I hope.

the smell

Szerencs stinks. Some of the smells are good, but most are disgusting. And it's not a Hungarywide problem, oh no, I have been informed that Szerencs stands out as a smelly Hungarian town. Joy.

The first smell you would whiff, smell 1 if you will, when coming into the town is the only good smell. Szerencs train station is right next to the Nestle factory, which makes Nescafe powder and Nesquick powder. So stepping off the train you are met with smell 1, the wonderful aroma of coffee and chocolate. Its heavenly - the station is quaint, the smell is delicious - anyone would think they are in a Hungarian paradise.

Walk down the road you are hit with smell 2. Smell 2 comes from the factory next door to the Nestle factory (Szerencs has a lack of entertainment facilities, amenities and infrastructure but has an abundance of industrial plants) is the sugar factory. Hungarian sugar factories, this one loving managed by a load of Germans, make sugar from sugar beets. Sugar beets are roots that need to ferment and cook to make the sugar. Unfortunately for Szerencs, this process produces a smell somewhere between manure, wet paper and rotting fruit. It's the same smell as when you open up your long-dead Grandma's cupboard and find some nine-month old potatoes sitting in there. So every day this grim monster pumps out smoke that smells like dead Nan's cupboard.

So as you walk through the centre, smell 2 sticks with you for a half a mile or so, and that's fine because smell 2 is not the worst smell in Szerencs. That particular crown is reserved for smell 3. 

Smell 3 is the drains. Szerencs has a problem removing its sewage, instead of moving quickly to some sort of treatment plant, it kind of sits and ferments right under the houses. Smell 3 is the worst of all the smells because it is literally s*it. Wake up in the morning, step outside, take a breath and....it's s*it. Walk back inside, lift up the unused toilet and...it's s*it. Maybe take a shower which, thanks to the rising smell coming from the drains, smells like...s*it. The only time smell 3 isn't lingering is when the wind is blowing in the right direction smell 2 prevails, or for the few metres in front of the Nestle factory, smell 1. But 90% of the time it's all about smell 3.

Sometimes there is a bit of smell variety in my day. There is a smell 4, which is burning garbage, which comes around at least once a week. Smell number 5 or gypsy B.O., which I whiff now and again, can usually be overpowered by smell 6 a.k.a. old person. 

My school too has it's own magical smell, number 7, which is a heady mix of teenage boy stink and cheap deodorant. That one is particularly potent round the locker rooms. I tried to do a lesson on 'hygene - how to smell good in English' for my 9th grade class but they didn't listen the stinky little b*stards. Actually I have a whole raft of informative vocabulary lessons lined up to help my teenage boys. 'Buying a razor in England and shaving your fuzzy lip', 'ask for clothes that fit' and 'explaining greyish stains on the front of your trousers'.

That's about it. 7 smells that define my life right now, and only one of them is a nice.

strike!

I will be stuck in Szerencs next weekend. Like a bear caught in a trap, I am thinking I will gnaw off my own leg at the prospect of 36 hours in the middle of nowhere. I will be in this predicament because the train company will be strike. For the sixth time in six weeks.

MAV workers, of the Hungarian train company, are pissed off with something. I don't know what has got them riled up, and I don't care. Frankly I am pissed off with pissed off Hungarians. They all have bees in their bonnets all the time. There are so many bees in so many bonnets in this country I doubt you could find a bonnet anywhere that is bee-free. Or a bee that isn't residing in a bonnet.

Everything pisses them off - from 87 year old international treaties (see below) to Chinese people. The warm weather pisses them off, the cold weather pisses them off. Long-dead communists piss them off, as do long-dead Austrian kings and long-dead Turkish marauders. Even other Hungarians piss them off both alive and dead. People are vilified for having more money or less money or the same amount. I even piss them off. Well just the old ladies.

So they will be striking. From what information I can gather, they want more money and the Government doesn't want to give it to them. So they will keep shutting down the railways until their bees have been expelled from their bonnets. But I don't hold out much hope. They might get their money but inevitably they will find something else to be pissed off about. The colour of their uniforms, for instance, is hideous - they might want that sorting. Or they might want toilets on the trains that don't smell of gangrene.

They might find out the Romanians are earning more money than them, or that the Slovakians have nicer toilets and that will lead to more chest beating and indignant outrage. They might get wind of a wage rise for Mongolian railway workers, or a sniff of revolution on the part of the Taiwanese train drivers. The Ugandan Government might give their train companies an extra day off a year, or the Honduran train union might eek out a few more benefits for it's staff. Any of these things might upset the staff of MAV and might produce yet another strike.

So thanks to some huffing and puffing, I will not be whisked away to some nicer town. I still have a lot to see, but without the cheap and efficient MAV services I am stuck.

No TV and no bright lights means a weekend of sitting inside complaining about the complainers complaining about something else that they can complain about.....

.....ouch. My bee just bit me in my bonnet.