I've already failed at writing a daily post! Forgive me, nonexistent readers, for yesterday I was out of my house from 0745 until 0230. I went to work, then I went to the gym, then I went to trivia night at the local Scottish pup, then I grabbed some drinks because today is a national holiday here in Magyar-land and there is no work today! So, no post.
The original plan for this long weekend was to head out this morning around noon to Hajdu'szoboszlo' in eastern Hungary, where there is a famous medicinal spa and where a friend lives. We can crash with her, spend all day Saturday at the spa, and then come back Sunday morning refreshed and revived. That's still the plan for the long weekend, only now it is a little bit delayed.
Yesterday, it started to snow. The snow in the air was beautiful: large white fluffy flakes drifting lazily to the ground. When it hit the ground, though, things got slushy since the ground was still so warm from the amazing weather we've been having. So Hungary was covered with a thin layer of slush, and as the temperature continued to fall, that slush turned to ice. That ice has the highways closed and the trains running weirdly if at all. So, instead of leaving this morning, we will be leaving tomorrow morning. Not a big deal, and thank goodness we're not in western Hungary today, where cars are buried in snow and villages are totally closed down. Or stuck on one of the trains that left town last night, and just arrived to its destination this morning, a 3 hour trip transformed into a 16 hour one. Or stuck in a car on the highway. This storm, which out of my window seems to be nothing more than just a little bit of snow, is really devastating the country. Ice and wind will do that, I guess.
Today's snow also means that all the protests and demonstrations scheduled for today are cancelled. I'm not sure that I'm sad about that, since most of them are usually hateful.
The March 15th holiday commemorates Hungary's 1848 revolution against Austrian hegemony. This really started as a lovely revolution: totally bloodless, led by intellectuals, and originally successful. The revolutionaries even took a lunch break during their revolution, knowing that a mind craving rakott krumpli was not a mind that could be depended upon to be rational. This revolution eventually failed in 1849 when Austria retook control of the country, executing most of Hungary's military leadership and several of the revolutionaries after a brief war.
But, for a brief while, the revolution succeeded. Hungarian language flourished, and the now-national-poet, Petofi Sandor, wrote his most famous works. Modernization, tolerance, and liberalism flowed.
So, yeah, it sort of bothers me that this holiday is now so often celebrated by angry people wearing t-shirts of pre-Trianon Hungary. Which is a whole other can of worms that I will discuss some other time.
The original plan for this long weekend was to head out this morning around noon to Hajdu'szoboszlo' in eastern Hungary, where there is a famous medicinal spa and where a friend lives. We can crash with her, spend all day Saturday at the spa, and then come back Sunday morning refreshed and revived. That's still the plan for the long weekend, only now it is a little bit delayed.
Yesterday, it started to snow. The snow in the air was beautiful: large white fluffy flakes drifting lazily to the ground. When it hit the ground, though, things got slushy since the ground was still so warm from the amazing weather we've been having. So Hungary was covered with a thin layer of slush, and as the temperature continued to fall, that slush turned to ice. That ice has the highways closed and the trains running weirdly if at all. So, instead of leaving this morning, we will be leaving tomorrow morning. Not a big deal, and thank goodness we're not in western Hungary today, where cars are buried in snow and villages are totally closed down. Or stuck on one of the trains that left town last night, and just arrived to its destination this morning, a 3 hour trip transformed into a 16 hour one. Or stuck in a car on the highway. This storm, which out of my window seems to be nothing more than just a little bit of snow, is really devastating the country. Ice and wind will do that, I guess.
Today's snow also means that all the protests and demonstrations scheduled for today are cancelled. I'm not sure that I'm sad about that, since most of them are usually hateful.
The March 15th holiday commemorates Hungary's 1848 revolution against Austrian hegemony. This really started as a lovely revolution: totally bloodless, led by intellectuals, and originally successful. The revolutionaries even took a lunch break during their revolution, knowing that a mind craving rakott krumpli was not a mind that could be depended upon to be rational. This revolution eventually failed in 1849 when Austria retook control of the country, executing most of Hungary's military leadership and several of the revolutionaries after a brief war.
But, for a brief while, the revolution succeeded. Hungarian language flourished, and the now-national-poet, Petofi Sandor, wrote his most famous works. Modernization, tolerance, and liberalism flowed.
So, yeah, it sort of bothers me that this holiday is now so often celebrated by angry people wearing t-shirts of pre-Trianon Hungary. Which is a whole other can of worms that I will discuss some other time.
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