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.