14-IX-2023.
Yesterday I took the van to inspection. It would be perfect if they'd have the slot on the same day - and I got lucky, they did, at 14. So I took it for a wash, went home, had lunch, had a smoke, then slowly went there. The inspection should take 40 minutes, but it seems the strictness is somewhat relaxed now. My phone was fully charged and I meant to make a row of calls, but after talking with V. Š. about that mathematicians' gathering, which ended at 14:18, the guy told me the van is done, good to go. Surprise.
They even gave me a bit of paper with the last year's kilometerage (ser. kilometraža), and it turns out I drove it just 500km in a year - once to Vršac, once to Belgrade, once to 'đava, once to kaštel, four times to Klincaid and once to Peskara.
During the day I worked out the code to insert photos here in Byo, and now I'm doing both languages in python... and finally can cross-link, i.e. almost every article now has a link to it's counterpart in the other language. Except the few cases, already explained in notes for Version 1.3.
Around dusk it crossed my mind to call Borče, to put him in charge of visiting Elmont in the morning. While we were working out the details, the phone buzzed in my hand - another call. Finished with him and looked who called. Dragana. What now? Called back, she said Bilja's mom died. Bilja already meant to come by the end of the month, but this changes it. And she said she made arrangements to come asap, which will be just a one day visit, on saturday, and she needs to get some paperwork done, signature notarized... Well, don't know what that could be, there's no inheritance to speak of, they already sold the house, the funeral is organized by the nursing home, and then she can't do a thing because the notaries explicitly refuse to work on weekends. Well, we'll see when that comes.
And while I was calling, it occurred to me that neither Borče nor I remembered to invite Mima last saturday, when we sat at the same table. Well, still not too late, so I called her right away, and told her about the funeral too. Well, good that I did, because it'll be big, the old comrade was a teacher, half the village were her students.
We got up this morning relatively early, had our coffees at ease, then got into Joda and headed to Segedin aka Szeged. Because we didn't, for quite a while, and there was some paperwork to settle. Ow wow, it's been that long since I last passed north Banat, I forgot most of it. I drove there only once in this century, and that was ten years ago [nope, took a bus then]. And that time in 2015, but then it was from Palić. Nice area, though the road, north of Kikinda, is mostly untouched since the seventies, just gets patched, there's not any larger stretch of new unpatched blacktop anywhere.
There were several crossings to choose from, even Đala now works regularly (daylight only), and there's one more, even newer, in that corner towards Romania, also daylight only, but I chose the classic, to pass the path I know, to easily spot what changed in the last eight years.
The roadsigns on their side are likewise confused - just as the sign for the Horgoš 2 crossing is visible only when returning, so is the sign for the old road practically invisible from the highway, as it's lost among the other five places where the roundabout on the side leads to (to Tompa, Röszke, town, a manor and few smaller villages). So I stayed on the highway and took the designated exit, thus entering the city from west, the longer way. I did go that way once or twice, but wasn't me driving then, and a hundred wannabe landmarks look the same as on the south entrance, but aren't same. But I did feel at home, had this sense of orientaton, been here dozens of times, even made just one tour around the block to find a parking spot, spitting distance from the center.
Then it was a problem how to pay the parking. If you don't, the fine is mother fucking stiff, and if you don't pay the fine on time it goes quadruple. Last time they had daily tickets you could buy at a kiosk, but now there aren't any kiosks, vanished to Mars I guess, now they have some nice blue slot machines on the curb, with a larger and smaller touchscreens... aha, you can pay it from the app. Except it'd be for either android or ios, not for linux, and besides, I don't have that much cash in my phone. There's also a few numbers where you can pay via SMS from a foreign phone, but still, not crazy to have so much cash in the phone. And, aha, it can accept your card. But it just didn't work... so we asked a passerby for help, and he did try but found out that on this particular machine the upper screen died. His wife came by and started speaking english, to which he said no need, they do speak hungarian (wow, so what I blurted out so far put me too in the speakers camp), and she said let's look for another machine, there must be one near enough to your car, where is it... there, on the corner by the barber's shop. And there, with her help (she, of course, reads the instructions much faster than I can), we paid until 15:15, and I even got an SMS from the NLJBKB, my bank (freshly renamed), saying I paid 2400 forint. Look, it works.
I notice that they changed the schema of car tags again, it's xx-xx-nn-nn now, in sheer imitation of the german ocrable font, and still not a notch away from the old scheme of 06-VI-1994., because the first two characters are always AA, and who knows when they'll reach AB. A centralized counter forever, don't allow anyone to guess the car's place by tags.
When we sat with the clerk to do the papers, I was back in the swing and chatted hungarian like old. I did have a few pearls - for one, when she asked for occupation, „foglalkozás“, I answered „nyúgdijas“ (retiree) without hesitation, and then two minutes later couldn't remember what was the hungarian word for occupation. Altogether it didn't hurt at all, they even turned the AC for the last ten minutes, there were no snags, no problems of any kind, excellent.
Went out to smoke one, and walked to the place where we ate eight years ago. But no, there's nobody there, it's out of business, farted in the vat. We continued walking to the riverbank, and were amazed that there's an absolute absence of any eateries, there's nothing, not even a chair, at that whole stretch. Found out that the serious building lining up the boardwalk are all hospitals of various sorts, this is the university area. And, amazingly, I knew each kind of hospital by description, still knew the terms from 29 years ago. Turned back towards center the first chance we got, and found the center has turned into the same kind of shit as just anywhere - it's all just boutiques, pizza joints*, cafes. After a length of a walk we found „A vendéglő a régi hídhoz“ - the „inn by the old bridge“ (not even close, sister, two blocks away from the river and the other bridge is even closer). The waiter addressed us in english, we barely managed to dispell his misconception. Foreigners we are, but we speak the tongue. Smoking, alas, out by the entrance, unless it's one of them electronice vaporware thingies. Well what... never mind, we ordered the grub and it turned out excellent, the čorba was of beef bone, dark brown with two huge liver noodles (goose or chicken liver, who knows), just about perfect. And something pohovano with cheeses inside, quite interesting and, of course, that much cheese means as much less meat. But still quite good, and the amount was huge, we barely ate half and the rest he packed. Asked him how did he make us for foreigners, well, he heard us speak foreign before we came in. What's the bill? Around 16000Ft. Well, don't have that much cash, card it is. Left him 1500Ft tip, but he said these aren't valid anymore, new bills were issued few years ago (again) and these aren't taken as payment anymore, can exchange them at a bank or post office. Ehh...
We had coffee somewhere else, in the „Vitrin“ by Dóm. Because they had ashtrays**. We prefer to have a coffee while still sitting after lunch, but not in a place where we can't smoke, out of a question. This was what they called long coffee, which was actually a double espresso, aka dupla presszó, and IMO quite short, no pleasure at all, but lifts from the dead. But from what I remember from Hungary, any other coffee would be worse.
Went to get some groceries, while we're at it. By the Dóm there were some ethno stands, and she found mangalia čvarci and, eh, the guy doesn't take cards, our forints are worthless, so he sold her a kilo for 20€, which seemed like a bit of a swindle to me, but what the hell. She loves them, and such, just worse, would cost even more at home.
We visited the same supermarket where we go each time, still standing as it were, and I took a quarter disk of some cheese, and half a stick of pašteta-in-a-gut (not as good as it once was, but still better than the PoS that's sold here) and... a liter of orange juice to chug along the way. And they had a self service cash register, just like the ones they 20 years ago introduced in Kroger and Walmart and then elsewhere too. So, less wait.
And some groceries we got - it all fit in her tote, on top of what we had already, didn't even need a bag. Smuggling fell low. The cheese turned out a hit in the center, too bad I can't find that to buy whenever I want. It's the same gouda (i.e. hrhowda, as I heard the aborigines pronounce it), same name as here except it's completely different - can be sliced with ordinary knife to arbitrary thickness, it doesn't stick to the knife at all, it doesn't snag and generally lacks that extra amount of most expensive water, while still not being too hard. This is simply cheese as it should be, to differ from the crap they sell around here (and I won't even waste words on the american so-called cheese).
Altogether, the impression is that the Hungarians stick to their guns and keep up the level, so it's all like eight year ago, only stronger. I didn't check whether their Együttem is still called University of Szeged or is it in hungarian again - which would bring the number of english words I saw to almost ten. A veritable miracle, they're nowhere, just a couple of shops with one or two in its name. All the roadsigns, ads, various notices and public informatio, it's all in hungarian, even the oodles of instruction on the parking machine.
The chicks look a bit better on the average but not individually, there wasn't one to turn heads, except there were a couple of them who were very forward for their age, but then they were backward and sideward as well. Actually our clerk was also on the chubby side, though not overwhelmingly so.
On the lunch bill all the diacriticals were proudly printed in decent length, even on that PoS printer on thermal paper, while I'm failing to find a font, even on linux, where the diacriticals wouldn't be compressed to 1,5px and barely readable. Them diacriticals were introduced because they were necessary for comprehension of the written.
The customs guy on our side demanded a look in the trunk, which lasted half a second. We sat at the cafe behind the first gas station after the border, had a real coffee, and then hit the road. I turned to Horgoš in an orderly manner, and then remembere there was a T-crossing which led to the border on the right and Senta on the left, so now on the way back I just went straight for Senta, not wanting to drive home the same way, what with them long villages and many curves. But I was wrong, should have done so on the next T, not this one - got past Hajdukovo, and emerged back on the highway just before Palić. I stepped on it, Joda was actually quite quiet even when I'd reach 145 kmh (130 is the limit)... made it home below two and a half hours, because there was a slow column after Žabalj. Could have shaved 15 minutes off otherwise.
Then sat making pear rakija the next couple of days.
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* the expression I used in serbian is 'picvarnica', coined by my grandmother, from 'pica' - pizza and 'prčvarnica' - crummy dirty junk shop.
* in serbian, it'd be „pepeljara“ - from pepeo, ashes. But I used the word Pepeljuga, which is a Cinderella.
Mentions: 06-VI-1994., Biljana Lajković (Bilja), Byo (Byo), čorba, čvarci, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), Elmont, Joda, kaštel, Klincaid, Mališa Borkovski (Borče), Merima Tabarski (Mima), pašteta, pohovano, rakija, Version 1.3, in serbian
17-V-2024 - 25-III-2026