16Dec

I think I have been cursed or I thought so at first but then I realized that it probably isn’t so. Just priorities. Have been having better things to do than writing what we have been doing.
Like burning my fingers with our auxiliary milk warmer. We fell asleep with Ernest and I have been keen on awakening to eat and warm up some coffee before having to go in to school to do reception duty.
Last night the handle of the milk warming pot broke off so till replacement we are using a steel cup. I forgot that for a brief moment and grabbed it off the hub... I wish I chose more frequent journal entries instead!

The mornings gone by the last three days, someone always makes a pot of porridge and someone always takes Lili to school and Ernest will always fall asleep at some point in the morning.
Usually nowadays this happens when we are outside, gone for a walk. Oddly I find winter Szeged, covered in some snow homely and pleasant. And while it is wonderful to have some winter finally in town it is somehow also comforting to know that they are expecting crocuses and daffodils by mid February. By they I mean them, locals locals.

So we do walks outside, it is pleasant. When he is asleep I would stop for a coffee or a mulled wine on szechenyi square downtown. Usually we would be going for coffee at ‘that one on the corner’ cafe (which I am sure has a real name I just don’t bother myself with it). After the festive markets finish so will our morning mulled wine excursions – we talking time around half ten and drinks that taste mostly of sugar and juice, it’s the feeling like a real bad Oulu glögi.

On Wednesday I turned toward the river, read in the paper that the Tisza is high again and wanted to check it out. I was extremely disappointed, there were no swimming sheets of ice heading down towards Belgrade. Some rubbish and driftwood only. Not that kind of winter yet, if ever at all. On the way our walk took us towards the main post office which is also happened to be where from delivery personnel spreads out to town every day. Before I noticed her our regular delivering person was already waving from ahead, it turned out she had registered mail for us, for Lili actually and as we weren’t going to be home she gave it to us on this chance encounter. That was nice of her, saving us a trip later. There are the kind of things that will start making you feel home. It is also a marked difference from other places. We have a local post person here.

Lili got her passport… after ten months our dealings with the Hungarian authorities to recognise the otherwise obvious is done. Now there is only the small matter to give back our documents that they needed to look at for this. So far they claim that they need them in order to be able to continuously recognise what they already have recognised, without always having these papers the state bureaucracy may forgets or seizes to know why it made such decision... But I stop here, may become politically expressive. Jen already laughed how some entries in this blog have the longest paragraphs dedicated to politics while this is supposedly the depoliticized Szeged life.

In the evenings things happen such as we sit down to watch an eddie izzard stand up expecting to laugh our heads off when the reality is that Jen falls asleep half way through and I endure only hoping there will be a punch line at the end but extremely disappointed for there isn’t. Another evening I go out to a movie in an arty cinema club to find people not so conversative before and especially not after the movie. It was a kosturica, the title in English is Times of the Gypsies. I really didn’t know what to make of it, where was the movie serious and where was it trying to be caricaturing. It wasn’t clear to me at the end that the overall message of the movie had a critical overtone or it was merely propagandistic to ensure a status quo? As far I know Kosturica is rather popular around here but never having seen anything by him or really reading into his work I can hardly judge. It was a very heavy movie with a simple but powerful story line while seemingly not bothering itself with the intricacy of reality.

Jen is practically top of the class in her Hungarian course. Very impressed and it is a good sign towards fulfilling her do these things before you 30, i mean she is 30. One of her point is the ability to have a conversation with her mother in law. Of course, her mother in law has had a longer time for learning English, I think I was 19, years before I met Jen when I told my mum to start learning. She is still planning on doing so, one day.

Tonight tiding was executed listening to a carmina burana karaoke. We didn’t really do the sing along though. The other day it was Wagner. Not so much fun, we changed to some cello solo. Much more pleasarable.