And I’ve lost a wheel.

Was out late last night at an apartment warming party that Kacsa threw. ‘Twas good times, though some weirdo kept asking me to play (I was the Def Selector) Michael Jackson tunes. One is ok, but three in a row? That weird one with Naomi Campbell? Not happening.

Anyway E and I left “early” at about 2:30am and went to Corvinteto, which has all the charm and style of a red light-swathed opium den (and I’ll let you decide whether that sounds cool or not), where we proceeded to get our boogie ON. Long story short, my 7:45am alarm came WAY too soon.

So I got sad.

Part of it is that we’re leaving. Sometime. More on that soon, when I force myself to sit down and write again. But then I read the news about the NYPD goons getting acquitted, and I just felt terrible for Sean Bell and his family and friends. I have no clue why, except that they are so obviously the victims of a racist and unjust system - but what else is new? Bang off twenty shots. Stop. Reload. Bang off another twenty shots. It was him or us, judge. Who was Amadou Diallo again?

Then we heard that a bicyclist had been killed yesterday. Riding on a bike path, hit by a truck that took a right without looking. Maybe he wasn’t either. And I wanted to cry for his family and send them cards and hug his kids or siblings if he has them. Maybe he doesn’t. I mean, didn’t.

We decided to join a group of 150 or so bikers that had gathered at Heroes’ Square to paint a ghost bike and chain it to the spot where he was killed. It was pretty powerful, all these people who didn’t even know the guy coming together to ride. Along the way we stopped at another ghost bike, one for the victim of a similar incident that happened a few months ago. This madness must cease.

And you would think it would - soon - judging by the turnout of last Sunday’s Critical Mass ride. It was only the biggest in the world, EVER, at an estimated 80,000 participants. The only things bigger are the anti-government rallies and the Sziget Festival, but I don’t even know if that counts because most of those people are foreigners.

But the truth is, Hungary is changing impossibly slowly. It is a wildly squawking Turul with its wings drowning in a thick paprikas. Did I tell you yet why we’re leaving?

And this is the most poetic thing I’ve read in months. It makes me sad to know these truths.

But don’t worry, I’ve been drinking water all day.

I’ve noticed something recently about Hungary: when things work the way they’re supposed to, we’re disappointed and even offended. It’s part of the legendary Hungarian self-aggrandizing/self-loathing, where proverbs such as “Hungarians are happiest when they’re in tears” describe a sort of pride in things not working quite ideally, or at least, not the way they do in Denmark.

The first example is the entrance to our building. There are two doors, which each take the same key. For over a year, the second door has stuck just enough so that it doesn’t lock, and can be just pushed open. While obviously a security issue, the crime in the neighborhood is so l0w (aside from my bike being stolen from right outside this very door) that most residents probably believed that the one outer door was enough. Recently, however, the inner door closes and locks as it should. But instead of being relieved that we are one glass door safer from burglary than we were before, our reactions have mostly been negative, along the lines of “whose stupid idea was it to fix the door? Now I have to unlock BOTH of them. That’s double the work! What a travesty!”

Another example has been the effort on the part of the mass transportation authority to field more ticket inspectors at all metro station entrances and many trams and buses, including the night “drunk” bus, and thus preventing the estimated 60% of riders who do not buy tickets to actually do so. Again, instead of people recognizing that more people actually paying for the rides will help improve the quality of service and (hopefully) eventually lower the ticket price, it seems like an affront: “what do you mean I HAVE to buy a ticket now? This has always been optional; I can’t believe they’re making us actually PAY to ride the subway!”

Tonight (Tuesday) I will once again be the guest on Radio Café’s “Legal Alien” radio show, one of the only English-language talk shows in the country. If you want to listen via the web, go to the following link and click on “Gyertek hallgassátok online!” and then look for the English explanation.

Link (scroll down a bit for English instructions)

The show starts at 8 p.m. here in Hungary, so that would be 2 p.m. east coast time, 11 a.m. west coast time, and 4 a.m. Japan time. Gomen nasai!

The liveblog experiment begins for the first time on What-What dot com, and it starts with a doozy: a double-whammy of Christmas, in two countries, with two families, massive meals, double the presents and hopefully, more than double the love. Awww.

Your host, the Def Selector.

We begin around 1:30pm, Hungary time, for the first meal with the family. Click the “more” tab and keep refreshing as I will try to update every 30 minutes or so. With pictures! Entries are from newest to oldest, so start at the bottom and work your way up.

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Did I ever tell you the story of how my bike got stolen? I don’t think so. Well, here’s my bike, chilling out at the bottom of the stairwell in our apartment building. It’s awesome. Well, maybe not that awesome . . .

It’s a Puch, and once it was yellow, with electric blue mud guards. That was before it was stolen. I bought it from a bike messenger at the old, and now demolished, West Balkan for about $90 (diesel lock included), which is still on the expensive side for a used bike in these parts. It had a bent back fork from when he got hit by a car and was pretty banged up in terms of paint and handlebar tape, but it was light and still worked fine and had some “history”, so I took it. While the brand name is Puch, the previous owner had added an “i” to the end, making it “Puchi”. My bike has a name, and that name is the same as Garfield’s teddy bear (different spelling).

I began to think it was a bad luck bike when I got hit by a car too - sideswiped by an idiot making an illegal turn and not even having the gall to signal. I was ok, and Puchi made it through fine, though I was more than shaken up. This was all in the summer of 2006.

While usually we would bring our bikes into the stairwell of our apartment and lock them there, which is out of sight from the street and relatively safe, we occasionally got lazy and left them locked to the lamp post outside. I was confident that my 2cm-thick cable lock would be enough of a deterrent.

I was wrong. I walked out one morning, a bit late and needing to jump on the yellow streak that Puchi was in order to get to work fast, and was shocked and appalled that it had disappeared without a trace. I was crushed. We tried reporting it to the police, with little confidence that they’d do much of anything about it, and listed it on a stolen bike forum. This is the description I wrote:

The bike is an old, bananna yellow Puch, 10-speed, with electric blue mud guards, narrow street tires, an old and cracked black seat, with half handlebars (I don’t know how to explain these) and a Shimano gearshifter. The bike looks old and beat-up, with many scratches and marks all over the frame. The Puch logo has been modified to say “Puchi”, and the same thing is engraved on the vertical seat support strut. There is also a bit of hose or tire attached to the top horizontal support, held in place with plastic ties. The right rear wheel strut is bent inwards slightly from a car accident by the previous owner, who is a bike messenger named Tonja. He also did all the other modifications.

About a week later I was getting pretty sure it was gone for good. We had called several shops to see if it had turned up anywhere, and even gone to an awesome flea market to look for parts. I kind of felt like that part in one of the Star Wars flicks when they find C3-PO all blasted apart, except I didn’t find Puchi.

Then my co-worker Anna’s bike got stolen. She had left it locked up in the courtyard at the office over the weekend (exactly where E’s bike would get stolen, many months later, in broad daylight, which is another story), which is easily accessible and less-savory types are known to come and go as they please. We commiserated.

A few days later, Anna went to the bike shop just a few doors down from the office to look for a new bike. I had been there a couple times to get miscellaneous repairs done on Puchi, and Anna had accompanied me there to ask about where to look for stolen bikes the day after mine disappeared. This time when she arrived, it was there being repaired, and the repair guy recognized it, despite the fact that the mud guards were gone and it had been hastily spray-painted black. The thieves must have screwed up the brakes while tearing off the guards. She called me, I went down, and sure enough it was Puchi, looked abused. A few minutes later the chump who brought it in returned, saying that he had paid 3,000 forints (about $14) for it, which I was hesitant to reimburse but I felt was a small price to pay for such amazing luck.

I was mad as hell that I got my bike stolen and desecrated, only to be sold for a mere 3,000 forints, but I was amazed and happy that things had taken such a fantastic turn. My coworker’s bad luck was my own fortune - if she had not gone to the bike shop during those few minutes in which it was there being repaired, it would have ridden off under the chump’s ass never to be seen again.

I still ride to work every day, but this time it’s on Puchi II.

Halloween RULES.

Photo gallery HERE. Post coming soon.

I recently attended the above mentioned event, hosted here in Budapest for the first time in 25 years, and was happily dumbfounded by the impressive array of skills on display. The strongest contending teams were from the U.S., Japan, and of course Hungary, but more than a dozen countries were represented, some by only one competitor.

The winner of the 3×3x3 “classic” cube was Yu Nakajima of Japan, with an average (of five attempts) in the final of 12.46 seconds. American Andrew Kang finished second (13.05) and fellow nihonjin Mitsuki Gunji finished third (13.05). World records: Hungarian Mátyás Kuti 5×5 1:45.07 (average), 3×3 multiple blindfolded 15 cubes in 46:17, 4×4 blindfolded 6:12.32 (not to mention placing in the top three in almost every other category), Ryan Patricio 3×3 one-handed 21.13 (average), Lukasz Cialon 2×2 3.91 (average), Erik Akkersdijk Megaminx 1:17.46 (single) 1:19.16 (average).

Perhaps the most mind-boggling feat (though not witnessed by me) was the solving of a 5×5x5 cube blindfolded(!!) by an 11-year-old kid from India named Bernett Orlando, who was the only competitor to finish, at a time of 55:39. Just imagine trying to solve something exponentially more complex than the original cube, entirely without looking at it, puzzling in the dark for nearly an hour. Hats off Bernett! Also incredible was Kuti’s solving of 15 consecutive cubes blindfolded, setting a new world record.

The seclusive Ernő Rubik was in attendance for the anniversary event, and presented several awards. He looks a little like Mr. Spock.

Although I’m sure the tension was pretty high among the (mostly boys) there to compete, the actual competition is a bit anti-climactic, as most categories have several rounds and are based on an average of times. In the audience sat supporters and teammates, often fiddling with their own weird puzzles, or timing themselves with a friend. The coolest thing I saw was at the after party (they hit the Coca Cola pretty hard, those boys), where members of different teams were pairing off and competing informally among themselves, with one person solving the cube with their eyes closed (without looking at it first, which is how it works in the official competition) and the other telling them how to solve it. With spider-like fingers dancing, you can see the gears turning very quickly in their young minds.

Here’s a video (unfortunately in Hungarian) with a good picture of what went down. Peep the “Cubinator” robot at the end - you give it a messed up cube to solve and it even talks trash while solving it! Its “face” looks a bit like my favorite rapper, MF DOOM.

Only about a month late on this, but HERE is the photo gallery from my one day at Sziget Festival 2007. It was hot, dusty, filled with drunken hippies and corporate sponsorship, plagued by sound problems and we were ‘on the job’. I think I’m too old for this.

In a recent article, we had to write about the city of Miskolc. From their official unofficial website, here are some reasons to go (since deleted!):

• …Miskolc is the settlement in Europe which has been inhabited for the longest time – more than 70,000 years
• … Miskolc is located is exquisite surroundings int he vally of the Szinva Stream at the foot of the Bükk Mountains
• …the very first Hungarian theatre to be housed in a stone building was the Miskolc National Theatre in 1823, which has since been turned into one of Central Europe’s state-of-the-art theatrical centres
• … is the only place where the entertainment district, the famous winehouses and cellars can be found on a hill (the Avas) int he heart of the city
• … the Biennial Graphic Arts Festival hosted by the Miskolc Gallery has been the most significant festival of its kind is Hungary or decades
• … the Miskolc Pisture Gallery has the richest collection of Hungarian paintings outside Budapest
• …Miskolc’s Hungarian Museum of the Orthodox Church displays unequalled treasures of Eastern Christianity
• …”Bartók+…” is the most successful opera-festival int he region, and at the same time it is also a showcase for Central and Eastern European opera companies
• …the most complete collection of hungaian mineals, containing 17.000 items, can be viewed int he Herman Otto Museum
• … University of Miskolc has the largest campus in Hungary
• … tha Cavebath in Miskolctapolca is the world’s only spa located with him a natural cave system
• … the Miskolc District of Diósgyőr has the only queen’s castle in Hungary
• … Miskolc has the largest historical waxworks in Central Europe
• … the longest forest railway runs is the Bükk Montains
• … it is the Wildlife Park of Miskolc where the wold’s first statue of Gerald Burrell has been erested
• … the Hotel Palota (’Palace Hotel’) wich lies on he bank of Lake Hamor, is the Hotel with the most beautiful location in the country
• … the Waterfall on the Szinva Stream is at 20 m, the highest in the country
• …the original iron furnace at Újmassa is the oldest monument of industrial history int he country, that is still operational
• … the trout farm next to Garadna in the vicinity of Miskolc is the only place, where the autochthonous swift truot is propagated and where you can why trout fresh from the ponds
• … the only man-made ice- climbing wall in Hungary lies in the Bükk Mountains
• … athe skiing- wonderland at Bánkút has the longest ski-runs in the country, and has snow for the longest lenght of time
• … Miskolc is the city of rock music. The first rock-festival in Hungary was had here in 1973.
• … only here has a monument to rescue teams been raised. The statue is of Miskolc’s word-famous search-and –rescue dog ’Mancs’ (Paw)
• … the local culinary specialiti, ’Kocsonya’ (Meat-jelly) wobbles best here, and Miskolc is the only place int he world, where a „Kocsonya” Festival and ’Kocsonya’ Ball is held
• … Miskolc has the most beautiful girls

Just in time for the next edition of the Budapest Bardroom, here is the soon-to-be-infamous theory of local art-historian and long-term expat Dzseff: that the cookie monster is really a . . . . just, kidding, you’ll have to watch the video to find out!

Here’s a link to a text version of the presentation, with footnotes, sources, and more information. Stay tuned for part two, being revealed tomorrow at the Bardroom, and hopefully online soon for the world to see and be shocked!

Our return to Budapest was a somber one. Lucifer, our seldom-seen but nevertheless adorable hermit crab was waiting for us, outside of his terrarium, sans shell, and dried quite dead. He was sitting in the middle of our kitchen floor, facing the door. It was terrible.

Curiosity killed the crab, as well.

He must have climbed the stick we recently installed in his crabitat, somehow wedged himself between the covering plate glass and tumbled out. Without access to food or water for who knows how long, he was a goner. We buried him out in the backyard, with some of the sand and pebbles from his home-within-our-home, and some extra shells for the crabby afterlife. We never found his original shell, even after turning the apartment upside down. I like to think that it is a good omen, a sign that he wanted to pass on his home to the next occupants of this place. Seen another way, it could be the residence of his ghost, forever to haunt this hallowed ground.

Needless to say, he was loved more than his crabby heart could ever know. May he (she) rest in peace.

We recently took a bicycle trip around Hungary’s Lake Balaton, the so-called “Hungarian Sea”, which I feel ashamed to even propagate here, as it is so far from being a “sea” that it’s not even funny. Nevertheless there is a great deal of lore and legend about the temperament of the lake, which, at an average depth of about 2.5 meters, is pretty much a puddle for the Jolly Green Giant.The pictures from the trip are HERE.

So, we started by taking a Thursday evening train from Budapest’s Déli train station to Siófok, on the south-eastern end of the lake and stayed at the Camping Ifjúság, rated at two stars (who even knew campsites got starred ratings?) but really deserving of none, as it was a) not really close to the water, but really close to some amusement park rides, b) infested by noisy brats and obnoxious German-speaking tourists, and c) located exactly between a railroad line (on which endless freights clacked and clanged all night long) and a busy roadway (on which endless motorized vehicles, apparently ignorant of a concept called “common decency” rode up and down all night long). We had packed:

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If you’ve come to Hungary as a traveler or as an expatriate, you could probably chalk up some of your impetus to “wanting to see the world.” Meeting the local peoples, sampling local cuisine – these are the things that we revel in. The jet-set hops from place to place by plane, students take the slow route by train, poets hop freights or hitchhike, and those on a mission might ride in a plastic car.

Keiichi Iwasaki, however, is doing something else entirely. He’s going around the world – by bicycle. Currently 6 years and more than 30,000km into an estimated 10-year trek, this air conditioning repairman left his native Gunma-ken, Japanin 2001 with 160 yen (USD 1.25 / HUF 235) in his pocket and a vague notion to yes, see the world. Since then he’s traveled through more than 25 countries and reached unimaginable highs and lows.

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From left: Def Selector, Uncle ?uesto, E-Star

Hu-ha, we had fun at the VOLT Festival! E had the crazy fresh hook-up and we got to meet THE ROOTS! Well, actually just ?uestlove, the drummer and usual spokesperson, about their first show in Hungary. We were actually on double duty, as in addition to the interview, we were supposed to get some pictures and sound bites about “festival fashion”. Here are some pics from the event.

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