May 8th

No photo blog. Didnt go to the zoo today. I must have lost my touch of Scottishness: The all day rain bothered me, didn’t like the ida of spending too much time outside. So we were at home, the highlight of the day was probably a pillow fight then a fry up for lunch and an afternoon snooze. Liliom was bored beyond measures. She seems to have forgotten how to think.

In the evening I had a go at her which turned into talking about leaving. She is sad to leave for leaving her friends here behind. There were tears, in numbers. Jens asked her if she was scared of something going back to Finland to which Lili answered in the most matter of fact take no nonsense voice ‘what should I be afraid of?’ kind of are you mad tone in her voice.

We do have to make sure we are better at keeping touch this time around with friends here, at least her friends. Unlike with the ones in Oulu, although we knew we were coming back there. We know at most we will come to Szeged for visits. Altough I must have reminded her that while I spent the first 20 years of my life living in the same flat going to a total of 2 diferent schools and a daycare for 12 years hanging out with the same 2 sets of people through these institutions and another set through my parents’ friends, with not one I keep in touch today and call my friend. So potentially there is a possibility that moving about leaving people behind is not that big of a deal.

However, we did realise this morning that while w ehave planned to regularly skype back to Oulu, we never really did and it was really stupid. Oh well
Another small matter , the car. I mentioned when buyin a car here 3 things one needs to do;

a, get a mechanical check to make sure it is the car that is says on the papers
b, get an insurance for the car under the name of the new owner
c, go to the local gov. administration office to change the owner’s name on the car’s papers.

Logic says that one should do a, c, b,
At a, in person and at c, on the website plus various help you get trhought this websites say to do a, b, c,
The car insurance people tell you to do a, c, b,

Suggestions?

It’s interesting that in real life pillow fights rarely ever happens that the pillows burst and there is feather everywhere.

January 24ht

Distant dealings – time and special disparity – with my dermatologist have reaffirmed my previous standings about the local medical societies. I perhaps haven’t mentioned (while typing this i am on a computer off line and I cannot check on prev stuff as /shame/ I don’t have a record only on the net)... so bracketing doesn’t work for me, too long round sentences. Once I had a friend who did this all the time but he was rather amazing as he could close a sentence, well, a thought after several inserted – perhaps – lectures and long descriptions in multiple layers. I am talking of him in past tense as we have lost contact eventually although in the age of facebook this is clearly an overstatement or to be precise, hiding some truths. As i said it is possible i haven’t mentioned about our visit to the doctor with Ernest last week, the visit that was utterly pointless and only succeeded in letting us know that a bust dermatologist doesn’t have time for her patient whom she happens to see for the first time in her life. (typing in one go loosing where i started without halting for a significant time thinking what I actually started to write in the beginning is more impressive doing than reading). Well. It is a process.

Bytheway process, I seem to have, in cooperation with studies into A/r/tography (or sg like this-will never learn it) I managed to inspire Jen into blogging, within days her blog seems more popular than mine. I hope this is not the beginning of the end. Of course i should pick up an ideology and say that competition is good for society so there we go. We will have a happier relationship. Although I am not convinced.

In that visit last week we were also recommended something for washing with and finally I got around to the pharmacist today to ask about it, we went there originally for teething gel. I bagged the stuff, me trusting idiot and at home I realised they were water purification tablets. She could have said to boil the cattle, let it cool and use that to wash our faces with! There goes my new found idealism about free market completion.

So getting to the point, recovering from flu, which is heavy stuff for me as I don’t usually do flu or its associates. Feeling a bit better today and there has been some positive developments. Rather surprising ones indeed. I think I may have started writing this blog bitching about this state and now we had the nices surprise. Even though we were already told that our papers now belong to the state and we will not receive them back ever, ever again, today we received them. Nice touch. Said that I needed the consul in Helsinki to put in an extra few words for me. Another, even more surprising part of the day was leaving school in the afternoon when we found Jen’s shawl that Ernest and I lost months ago. An old lady was veering it. I mentioned to her that she is wearing our scarf/shawl and she admitted that she has found it. I was willing to buy it back from her but she wouldn’t accept money. It just felt somehow wrong to let her take it off. Only did so because I am not planning to go to Mozambique any time soon again.

08 December

I have scared myself away from posting any blog entries after something that could be considered as a breakdown... it was no fun. Wanting out.
When Starting to gather one's self, comes the family, parents being offended for putting demands on them such as 'stop putting demands on us!'

Maybe I should go for a different approach. Write days, simple straight forward. Seemingly at least.

The gas repair guy was running late so by the time he fixed the heater in the kids' room Ernest was up for a nap. We didn't get out before noon after that so most of our plans were scrapped. I enjoyed doing nothing, mostly nothing while he slept. Of course I could have dressed him amid a tuntrum and put him in the buggy to sleep there but since the old one got stolen he sleeps less on the go than he used to. Although we took the flattened people with us to the market LINK, we were so brief and quick that I actually forgot to take their pictures. At least there was some shopping done.

Practically ran to get Lili from school only to realise they were having late lunch. We waited. Ernest played with the stools until realising there were trays of sand for writing in. Waiting become miserable then.

We went home where I cooked a vegan carrot and ginger soup and later at dinner we realised it was good. Jen made us some coffee before we took off again on the bikes, bit early for Ballet but we wanted to go back to a shop we were at yesterday or the day before. An item we bought was faulty. The shopkeeper was friendly and helpful on our return. We didnt queue up for sweet bread freshly baked. Had to go.

Liliom was thrilled as we were there first. This has never happened before and about two minutes later when other children and parents started filing in she proudly announced them 'we have been here for ages'. While she nearly passed out of heat exhaustion for doors or windows are not allowed to be open I went on a shoe hunt without much success. the shopping centre was fun, captain Ernest standing at the front of the boat, sorry, trolley shouting...hm whatever he might have been shouting. Directions, insults perhaps?

The day before's leftovers and the ginger and carrot soup for a change Lili liked. After dinner Ernest insisted on a bath while I insisted the others tidy up while I help him to it. There was tears almost, fortunately Jen handled the request well, it was Lili who was a bit taken aback.

We watched glee and after the kids were in bed I spent, we spent some 250€ online. so it didnt feel so good but wasnt bad. It was a challenge to work
the german amazon site especially after i realised i put in the wrong address and had to track order and... it took me a while. In the mean time, and most of the day Jen has been trying, is trying and becoming desperate to find a task or topic for her assignment in bilingualism course. The original's requirement she doesnt suit. At times At some point I offered I will do it for her as I am a bilingual person and therefore can carry out the task but fortunately she declined which is cool because I dont fulfill other criterias such as being a student on the course or having indebt knowledge of the topic

‘So how does it feel to be home?’

We have been in Hungary for over three months now and countless times the question, in some form or other has came to me. Yes, really, how does it feel to be home? Well, I have a social network, friends among whom I feel comfortable to be myself. I am in no need to reorganise my life according to a new and unfamiliar environment. My kitchen feels mine and comfortable. I have established patterns of shopping and a regular and comfortable routine. I feel comfortable and I don’t feel a need or pressure to comply with norms that I long have forgotten or never even been familiar with. In a nutshell: I’m homesick… when I think about it. I say ‘It doesn’t feel like home here, not anymore’ thinking honesty is the best way forward but it offends others, or so I was told on one occasion. It is offending that I ‘don’t feel’ Hungarian anymore. Which I never said to anyone but apparently when Hungary does not feel like home really means that one is not Hungarian.
Polite, friendly, welcoming and inquiring conversations potentially turn disappointing when I am honest and virtual bloodbaths when I say another word. The nationalist attitude, discourse is overwhelmingly present in people’s thinking. I am Hungarian therefore I am at home now. Lili is my daughter therefore she is Hungarian and her lack of experience in using the local language is a defect to be concerned of. I know without much context these statements seem an overreaction but it would be impossible to sum up the last three months in a few words.
An old friend whom I met again during the summer has made a curious statement which at the time passed without much notice but recently it came into a different understanding when I read a brief article about an old man’s struggle with the authorities regarding his passport application. My friend told me our life was like one ‘you can read in the papers’ and there was this similar story in the papers.
Our story that could have been in the papers is the story about Lili’s passport.
Before coming here we though it might be a good idea for the kids to get their Hungarian passports, to make life easier. Now we know the can only immigrate as Hungarian citizens but at the times we were oblivious to this. We started the process in February, through the embassy in Helsinki. We moved late June and things were not looking good yet although Ernest was lucky to get his passport sometimes late July. Lili’s case is far more complicated because she is over 5 years old and her parents were not married for over 2 years when she was born. Why these two points make the process far more difficult I cannot know because the law states if one of a person’s parent is a Hungarian citizen he or she is automatically a citizen. All that is needed is a proof I thought of my citizenship, which a passport should be sufficient enough to do and a proof that Lili is my daughter.
Trying to settle down and register it is impossible for Lili to go through the administrative process for Hungarians because she doesn’t have papers proving she is Hungarian. I cannot issue a statement to help her obtain such papers because the office cannot understand a birth certificate issued in English therefore I have no proof of our family ties. Never mind the fact that the Republic of Hungary issued a birth certificate for Ernest written in three languages, one of them English. So Lili cannot be recognised as a Hungarian citizen.
At the immigration office where next we tried to register her living here as a British citizen we were told that as it is written on her – remember English language – birth certificate that her father is a Hungarian citizen she cannot immigrate here as she is a Hungarian citizen. Consequently they can do nothing for her.
Now we are awaiting a translation of her birth certificate, it seem to have disappeared somewhere in the machinery of bureaucracy. And consider ourselves lucky that she has social security and health care cover from Finland. Bless Kela! (Hah, this is something I never imagined saying.)
The above story illustrates the attitudes that live in people’s concepts of Hungariannes. It’s kind of an idea where there seem to be so many, many Hungarians. They are everywhere, across the borders, brothers and sisters and all this crap. Than comes the actual count. Quickly turns out that a Hungarian from over the borders is barely better than a none Hungarian if, better at all. Perhaps for language’ sake when employing them paying unfairly low wages.

I have intended to begin writing about Szeged long before we have even set foot here. I wasn’t sure about my intention, I played with some ideas of turning it into half-way fiction and I also thought of just keeping it simple, everyday. So far none of this has happened. Overcoming some long and lately developed fear of the keyboard now eventually started ranting. I am still unsure on the next step, maybe it will remain so for some time to come. Perhaps I shouldn’t intend to write what has led to this moment when the blog entry is written and I should just provide a snapshot.