Fitting in

A couple of weeks ago, during the "Megye napok" (county days), Csikszereda was visited by some vaguely famous musical acts. (For more or less the first time in my memory of the place) One of these was Morandi, who are (at least by Romanian standards) just about as big as they come. Another was a band I'd never heard of called Sarmalele Reci, who, at least on the the basis of a couple of youtube videos I watched, look pretty good. (Good name too - it means "Cold Stuffed Cabbage" but sounds much better in Romanian than in English). We were going to go, but an inability to find a baby sitter put the kybosh on that plan. However, I think almost nobody went and the concert got called off, in the end - at least someone I know showed up 45 minutes after it was supposed to start and nothing was happening.

We did manage it to make it to one concert in the week, though, seeing aged Hungarian Shakin' Stevens impersonator, Fenyő Miklós. (For Romanian readers who have never heard of him, just imagine a 65 year old Stefan Banica Jr - a horrific thought, no?) Also it is a bit unfair of me to call him a Shakin' Stevens impersonater since he must hav been cranking out the rock n roll when Shaky was still in blue suede nappies. A better British comparison would probably be Cliff, but without the later career move into schmaltzy ballads and vomit inducing "smooth god" or whatever he calls his particular genre. Anyway, Fenyő was not as bad as I had feared, and was actually very enjoyable (apart from the venue- the sports hall, which was a rubbish place for a concert). You can't really go wrong with straight up rock n roll though, at least for dancing and the like. The crowd was interesting - mostly people of between 35 and 55 with a few kids (like ours, for example - still no babysitter). This reflects I think the fact that (a) he brings up a lot of fond memories for the Transylvanian Hungarians of a certain age, because as with all Hungarian musicians of the time the act of listening to him was somehow illicit; and (b) that among the young he is tragically unhip (indeed I asked some teenage students about him and they'd never even heard of him).

So there you go. I get more Hungarian with every day. Next week I'll be wearing a big felt hat riding a horse and having a bizarrely extravagant moustache.

In other fitting in news, we now own two chickens. They don't actually live with us, since we don't really have the space to allow them to enjoy their natural wander aimlessly and peck existence, and anyway, it would get tiring to constantly be stepping on eggshells, but they are ours all the same. They live in a friend's garden with 15 others who all look exactly the same, so we don't actually know which ones are ours, but these are just details.