Sportopolis

I wonder if there is any town that is has produced as many successful sportspeople per head of population as Csikszereda.

Novak Edouard

I have gone on before about the ice hockey team and how they are the best in Romania  - well, they've been champions for the last seven years, and while this streak may well be ended this year by Brasov, the vast majority of Romania's national team hail from Harghita County and more specifically this town.  And while Romania's hockey team is not close to being the best in the world, they do reasonably well, and in the past have done extremely well.  Someone I consider a friend was on the team at the Lake Placid Olympics in 1980, (the famous one in which the USA beat the USSR in what the US media referred to as "The Miracel on Ice"), at which they finished 7th.  Which is not to be sniffed at.

Tofalvi Eva

But, you may be thinking, ice hockey is a fairly niche sport in Romania and it's really only popular here, so that's not necessarily a big deal.  Obviously I'll have to come up with more sportspersons to convince you.  Well, how about Novak Edouard, Romania's only ever paralympic medalist and current World and Olympic champion in cycling?  (Who, in fact was a very fine young speed skater before the accident which cost him a leg and meant he ended up as a paralympian)

And then cast your eyes over to Sochi and the current Olympics going on there.  Featuring no fewer than 4 separate Szeredans.  Some of whom have done extraordinarily well, especially given the lack of funding and support that Romania offers to its athletes.  A quick listing of the results so far shows a genuinely superb set of performances:

Eva Tofalvi, biathlete
7.5km sprint - finished 22nd
10km pursuit - 26th
15km individual - 21st
12.5km mass start - 21st

Edit Miklos, alpine skier

Miklos Edit

super combined - 16th
downhill - 7th
super-g - 15th
giant slalom - 34th

Emoke Szocs, biathlete
7.5km sprint - 70th
15km individual - 70th

Zoltan Kelemen - figure skater
short programme - 24th
free programme - 23rd

Given the circumstances, these are truly brilliant results, and these people should be extremely proud of themselves.

[Note: Because the new Hungarian constitution allows anyone of Hungarian ethnicity to become a Hungarian citizen, two of the above athletes (Miklos and Szocs) have competed under the Hungarian flag rather than the Romanian. As I understand it they say it's because they felt they were offered more support by the Hungarian Olympic Committee, but (a) that wouldn't be difficult; and (b) personally I think that's a shame, and if people have to participate in the Olympics under a national banner I'd rather they would have done so under the Romanian one, but ultimately I'm counting them as "from Csikszereda" before anything else anyway.  And, if people actually paid any attention to the Olympic Charter this wouldn't be an issue anyway since it says

Article 6: The Olympic Games are competitions between athletes in individual or team events and not between countries.

But sadly everyone ignores that and makes it all about nationalism anyway.  I mean why - given the above - do we have a medals table?]

So, anyway, before we end up down the usual cul-de-sac of my standard rants about national identity, can anyone give me a town with a greater number of top athletes per head of population?

Notes from the new front line

The flag debate drags on and on and ...

Political capital is made by both sides in perpetuating it. Easy to whip Romanians into a fury over this treacherous irredentist piece of cloth, and easy to whip Hungarians up into a fury over attempts to ban it.  It is, obviously, a complete non issue, especially at a time when people have far bigger problems to worry about.  But, hey, it's an easy distraction for politicians and media to indulge in.  In both countries.

Yesterday I saw a job advert from the US Embassy in Vienna asking for a Hungarian/Romanian media analyst.  A full time position to monitor the media in both countries and report. If the CIA* are now taking an interest in this, it must mean they are at least slightly worried.

(*It wasn't technically a CIA job, but this hardly seems like a consular need)

This is how it starts though.  Times of great economic stress lead people to seek an easy outlet for their worries/fears/concerns/anger.  In some countries it's immigrants.  Here it's Hungarians (and in Hungary it's dragging up Trianon again).  It will probably blow over, but it's as depressing as fuck though.  Depressing that the electorate in both countries can't just say to their political leaders "No, for fuck's sake, they're not the problem.  You are."

See? Incontrovertible proof

On Tuesday there was a Szekely flag raising ceremony in the main square here.  We've never had one there before, but there are more Szekely flags flying now than there ever were before, and whoever is making them, is doing a tidy business.  Oddly they scheduled the ceremony for exactly the same time as the start of the biggest and most important ice hockey match of the season. And as you will from this scientifically accurate venn diagram I've just made up there's a pretty big crossover between people who would like to attend a ceremony raising the flag and local ice hockey fans. Anyway, the mayor (who I may have mentioned before is something of a  dick) made some speech saying that Hungarian ought to be mandatory in this town.  Which I guess means I need to leave.  This blog will probably have to be closed.  Nonsensical bluster of course, but he managed to get the Romanian press up in arms, so I guess he feels it was worth it.

Anyway, HSC Csikszereda (the ice hockey team) won, you'll be glad to know, and are now in the playoffs and about to face Nove Zamky of Slovakia, with either DAB or Miskolc (both from Hungary) awaiting the winner. It's been an excellent and highly competitive season for the MOL league, and I've thoroughly enjoyed it.  The final of the Romanian championship will follow, and given all this flag and attendant other nonsense, I fear that is likely to be less fun as it will imbued with lots of heavy meaningfulness and the whole sporting contest element will be somewhat lost.

Finally, here is a video aimed at helping Romanians speak Szekely.

Before the fall

It feels like summer didn't happen this year. May and June were appalling weather-wise, and I spent July and August out of the country working. And now it's September and all of the signs are that winter is on its way

1. The storks have gone*
2. People have started harvesting potatoes
3. We picked a barrel full of plums off the ground in the garden this weekend (we measure plums in barrels because that's where they make their transition from small fruits to delicious winter warming palinka)
4. It's already pretty cold (though thankfully not yet as cold as it was in England 10 days ago when I was freezing my arse off)
5. Trees have started changing colour
6. The kids go back to school next week
7. The ice hockey season starts this evening with Sport Club playing Steaua. On September 7th! Ice Hockey! Bloody hell. (Apropos of which, I've just discovered a new English language Sport Club blog)

See what a rural nature-based life I lead? Apart from the ice hockey and school bits obviously.

Thankfully here we don't have the arrival of Christmas decorations in the shops until much much later in the year (unlike the UK where apparently this year they started in August), but it does feel like we're on the slow slide towards winter. I like autumn, really, and it's especially beautiful here in Transylvania, but it just feels too early. I'm not ready for this yet, I need to have a summer first. Please.

(*Storks seem to be the primary measure of weather and seasons here. In addition to their arrival and departure dates being of interest, this year, I'm told, the early summer was so rubbish that their eggs didn't hatch, and so they laid a second batch. These did hatch, but the resultant young are not big enough to fly south for the winter, so they will stay here and die. This tragic tale would be more convincing were I to have seen any of these poor doomed orphan storks anywhere, but I haven't, so I'm not sure whether it's of any validity)

Best place in Romania and Hungary combined

I have decided to declare a unilateral ceasefire in my current angry rants on the state of the World's media and their signing up to the "Israel is just a poor victim" lobby. It doesn't mean that steam is not still coming out of my ears.

Instead, in a much much lighter note, I need to point out that Csikszereda is quite clearly and by a large margin, the most important and powerful town/city in both Romania and Hungary combined*.

I mean take a look at this table:

1. HC Csikszereda
   
2. SC Miercurea Ciuc
   
3. Ujpesti TE (Budapest)
   
4. Budapest NZ Stars
   
5. Dab Docler (Dunaujvaros)
   
6. Steaua Bucuresti
   
7. Ferencvarosi TC (Budapest)
   
8. Progym Gheorgheni
   
9. Miskolci JJSE
   
10. Alba Volan SC II (Szekesfehervar)

This is the final standings in the MOL Liga - the ice hockey league that covers both Hungary and Romania. The sharper eyed amongst you will have noticed that both the first and second clubs in this table are from the same town. This one. So, it is clear that we are obviously and without a shadow of a doubt the biggest, most important, incredibly top city in the two countries*. So inyourface Budapest and Bucharest (and Szeged and Cluj and Iasi and Debrecen and Constanta and Brasov and Miskolc and wherever else). We rule!*

(*In ice hockey)

Grandstand

Time for a short Transylvanian sporting update.

Starting, obviously, with Ice Hockey, since that's what Csikszereda lives, breathes, and gets vaguely enthused by. After two seasons in which Sport Club Miercurea Ciuc have taken part in both the Romanian and Hungarian leagues, and one season in which the other team, HC Csikszereda, did the same, it became clear to everyone that Romanian teams participating in the Hungarian league got much better from the increased competition, and so to be competitive you therefore had to be taking part in Hungary too. An invitation had been on the table for the other big club in Romania, Steaua Bucharest, to join up too, but they'd always refused. This year however, having failed to qualify for the league final for the first time since ice was invented (by Gunther Eis, an Austrian physicist, in 1902), Steaua realised that they needed to be in it. However, somehow they managed to convince everyone else to turn the league into a combined Hungarian Romanian league.

With me so far? Good, because now it gets really confusing.

So there is a league (the MOL League) comprising ten teams - 6 from Hungary and 4 from Romania - as well as the three mentioned above, Romania's fourth representative are Progym Hargita Gyöngye, from Gyergyószentmiklós (Gheorgheni) (another town in Harghita County). There is still some kind of rump Hungarian league in which the 6 Hungarian teams will participate in after this league has finished, and which will be based in some way on the league positions obtained here. I'm not really sure. As for the Romanian league, I have no idea. I can't find information about any plans whatsoever, so perhaps this league will be it. There doesn't seem to have been a cup this year either, and normally the season opens with the Romanian Cup. Just to complicate matters still further, one of the Hungarian teams in the league is the reserve team of Alba Volan who actually now play in the Austrian league.

Flushed with excitement at all these incomprehensible rule changes, the Romanian clubs have gone out and brought in players of a calibre not previously seen in this part of the world. There are Swedes playing for both of the teams here, and they are supposed to be good. I haven't actually seen any obviously Swedish people walking around with broken noses - the sign of a hockey player - but I presume they are here somewhere. I'd guess they were living it up in some gated community of millionaires and celebrities, but this is Csikszereda and we don't have one. Steaua have gone one better and brought in a Canadian who once played in the NHL (the first former NHL player to have ever been signed by a Romanian team). I'm not quite sure how much this bloke played in the NHL, and possibly it was just once for five minutes at the end of the game his team was winning 7-0 at the time, but still. It's all very high powered (I'm told). The season has already begun (another sign of encroaching winter) and the Romanian teams are already all at the top of the league (albeit after only two games).

Meanwhile in football, this evening sees the debut of CFR Cluj in the Champion's League, which since I'm nominally a CFR fan, I ought to be excited about, but I'm not really. they're going to get seriously bulldozed by all three teams in the group and it's just going to be fuel for the likes of Becali and the compliant Romanian media to rail against anything that doesn't come from Bucharest. Broadly speaking football in the country (at least in terms of the media) is Steaua (with some attention given to Rapid and Dinamo, and everybody else merely obstacles between those three and each other). it's really dull, and CFR Cluj's rubbish start to the season (they've already sacked the manager who got them the league and cup double last year) means that this will be a disaster. (I ought to point out that Gigi Becali, the main reason I despise Steaua with such passion, is not in any way associated with the ice hockey team of the same name, so they are in no way as abhorrent as Steaua the football team)

Meanwhile, the League is currently being led by a bunch of upstarts from a scruffy little town (Urziceni) which is on the road towards the beach. They are managed by Dan Petrescu who used to play for Sheffield Wednesday, and so, in the absence of the "Dirty Hungarians" of Cluj ((C) the repugnant Becali family), having them at the top is the next best thing. Anyone but Steaua really.

Sporting update

A couple of pieces of sporting news to report today.

Most relevant to Csikszereda is the news that Steaua Bucharest ice hockey team (not to be confused with the football team of the same name - they are not linked as far as I can tell) has decided to next year play in the Hungarian league. The invitation to participate in that league has been open ever since Sport Cloub from here decided to join it two years ago, but Steaua previously decided not to go down that route. Having watched the Romanian league title be contested by the two Csikszereda teams (Sport Club and Hochei Club) this year, squeezing Steaua out of the championship game for the first time since the 50s, they have obviously realised that the only way to stay competitive is to be in Hungary as well. I think it's good in many ways that they have decided to do this - partly because if it were just the "Hungarian" teams from Romania that took part it would all look a bit nationalistic, partly because I think the more competitive the league the better, and partly because I just don't think it can do any harm to have what will essentially become a Hungary-Romania league in a sport (there will be 4 Romanian teams and 7 Hungarian teams in this league next year)

More intriguing from an external perspective is the ongoing saga of the football league. This is going down to the wire with the last games being played on Wednesday this week. The last time I wrote about football here, CFR Cluj were well ahead but I feared a comeback by Steaua, which duly came to pass, thanks partly to some wobbling by CFR and some very suspiciously dodgy decisions and moments in Steaua's games (including one game against Rapid in which they were 1-0 down, but the ref called off the match gifting Steaua a 3-0 win). A good summary is here from Jonathan Wilson in the Guardian.

Anyway, last night, Dinamo beat Steaua 2-1 to leave CFR one point clear at the top. They only need to win their last game to take the title. It's just that this last game is against city rivals U Cluj. And U Cluj's fans hate CFR passionately. And while U are already relegated, I assume the players will do their utmost to knock CFR off so that they can give something back to the fans who've watched them through a very bad season. And who knows what pressures the ref will have come under.

If Becali, the most vile man in Romania, gets his way and Steaua win the league, I'm giving up on football in this country. It's corrupt beyond belief. So come on CFR. Please.

Ice, Sun, and Shopping

We won! When I say "we" of course, I mean Sport Club Miercurea Ciuc, who finally triumphed in the Romanian ice hockey championship last Friday, winning the final best-of-seven-game playoffs against perennial rivals Steaua Bucharest 4-1. The town is buzzing with excitement, or to be more accurate, there is a faint barely detectable low grade hum, which those attuned to the usual lack of excitement in Csikszereda can just about pick up. It's been a very good season for the team - they also won the Romanian cup, and finished third in their first season in the Hungarian league (I don't know if that makes them the third best team in Hungary - since they're obviously not in Hungary - but that's by-the-by)

Apologies for my lack of posts of late - I have been extremely busy seemingly juggling about 5 balls, and it doesn't promise to get any less busy any time soon. Last week, I was supposed to be in Tashkent, for example, but it got called off at the last minute for unspecified political reasons (quite possibly related to the very recent publication of this book in paperback), and instead I was whisked off to London. A city which I imagine looks much like Tashkent. It was a sunny week and I (as I do when it's sunny in London) was thinking how much I like the city. Of course, it's normally grey and miserable and that's the problem with the place. Still, maybe global warming will solve all that and it will become the Rome de nos jours. Except it would be a Rome in which every other building housed a sandwich shop.

One thing I did find myself moved to comment upon while there was shopping. Now it has come to my attention that shopping has become a leisure pursuit of sorts, a hobby, if you will. Why? What possible pleasure is there to be had in wandering through crowded shops desperately trying to find the one or two things you know you want, with thousands of other harried people, getting in each others way, surrounded by unhelpful shop assistants, people who stop at the moment they get off the escalator, bright neon lighting, and general rampant materialism? It's baffling to me. I mean truly baffling. There are few things I really can't get a handle on, and the enjoyment of shopping is one of them. And I was doing it in the cathedral of English shopping, Oxford Street. Browsing in a small out of the way second hand book shop or record shop, I can understand. Looking for specific items in the heart of London, I cannot.

The Mikulás

The Mikulás is coming. I think he's due on Wednesday. The Mikulás, in case you're not up to date with these things, is known in English as St Nicholas, and he actually comes on St Nicholas's day (Dec 6th) rather than on Christmas Eve. Anyway, the Mikulás comes and leaves sweets and fruit in your shoes. So, you can end up eating somewhat smelly apples after his visit.

Anyway, yesterday I was watching the news and they were doing some piece about Mos Nicolae (the Romanian name for the Mikulás), and were showing people shopping in Bucharest (Romanian media never bothers to leave Bucharest unless someone gets murdered) for toys and stuff. I asked Erika whether Mos Nicolae, unlike the Mikulás, leaves toys, and she explained that no, he leaves sweets and fruit like his Hungarian equivalent, but that these days both of these Nicholases have started leaving toys, spurred on by the advertising industry and a compliant media (she didn't actually say all that, I just inferred it). Ours, however, still sticks to finomsagok (sweets) and gyümölcs (fruit). In fact he even sent an advanced party this weekend, in the shape of my father-in-law who left behind various exotic fruits previously unseen in our household - a pomegranate, a pineapple, a coconut and a mango. It was all very tropical and un-Decemberish.

(He - the Mikulás, not my father-in-law - also popped up in town to deliver a pair of victories for Sport Club Miercurea Ciuc over Steaua Bucharest in the ice hockey. I went on Saturday and saw an excellently exciting match - 3-0 up, we were pulled back to 3-3 before a last minute winner sent the rink, and the town, into paroxysms of ecstacy)

So, anyway, I have been tagged by Ada to provide a list of things that I hope that the Mikulás will bring us. Obviously the whole world peace, freedom for the Palestinians, health and happiness for everyone I know, ending of dictatorship everywhere it rears its head, stuff etc etc goes without saying, and anyway, I suspect they won't fit in my (or anyone else's) shoes. I will probably be hearing news of a very interesting job possibility on or around Dec 6th, which I hope goes my way, and that can be one thing. Aside from that, I kind of feel I have everything I want. A shortish winter maybe. I'm really a tad stumped. Seems a little bit churlish to wish for material things. So you know, health and happiness in 2007 will have to do.

I'm still here

Apologies for the huge lack of activity here of late. Been pretty busy writing stuff, driving back and forth to Cluj (for some reason the November has been marked by various unrelated meetings in Cluj), looking for work, and generally non-blog-friendly activities.

I’m hoping to make a triumphant comeback on Friday since it’s December 1st and I seemingly make all my most controversial posts on that date, and I feel that it’s a tradition that needs to be maintained. As an appetite whetter, I have just learned that the Sport Club Miercurea Ciuc vs Steaua Bucharest ice hockey match scheduled for Friday may be postponed until the weekend so as not to have it potentially stirring up trouble (It – the fixture mentioned – is basically the only semi-major sporting forum for inter-ethnic rivalry within Romanian sport. Obviously it’s not exactly Dinamo Zagreb vs Red Star Belgrade, but you know there’s no point giving people an excuse to start something)

Our new apartment overlooks the main square in the town and so this year, should I so desire, I can watch the exciting military parade from the balcony. But, on the other hand, I could do something infinitely more interesting and pressing like reading an article on performance management or watching some beans soak. I’ve heard that people in Alba Iulia who have apartments overlooking the square actually rent out their balconies for people to watch from. I’d like to try the same here, but cannot possibly imagine anyone being interested. Especially now tomato season is over.

Local news

There's an awful lot of construction going on at the moment here. I mean it's not Dubai, but things do seem to be moving (not sure in what direction exactly, but moving nevertheless). In particular there are three very big construction projects that ever since I moved here had been completely frozen it seemed. A big apartment building on our street, a large unspecified piece of concrete opposite the apartment and looking directly onto "Taps Ter" (thanks Ada), and a huge indoor sports complex. All of these buildings were half finished (at best) and looked like they would remain that way for ever. But now there is action. The apartment building is nearly finished. The sports hall thingy likewise. Even the grey piece of concrete nothingness across the way has suddenly sprung into life, and is being operated on by a large team of workers (it is going to become a high school, I'm told). Already the complaints have started though - there'll not be enough parking places for the high school, and why would we have a high school right in the middle of the town? The sports hall is already rumoured to be inaccessible for the mere plebs of the town and the facilities will only be available for a select few.

Various other town clean up operations are underway too - new signposts, a new one way system, with wide seeming pavements, and even cycle paths everywhere. The cycle paths are a little bit problematic as no-one has seen fit to advise the general population as to what they are, so you see people having conversations on them, using them for pushchair pushing, just wandering around aimlessly on them, while cyclists attempt to weave in and out of them as best they can. Still, it will all look very good when it's done. (Though with winter right round the corner, everything may soon be put on hold for 6 months) I'll take some pictures later and regale you with the new Csikszereda.

In other exciting local news, Sport Club Miercurea Ciuc, the ice hockey team, have won the Romanian Cup, beating Steaua Bucharest 4-3 in the final. This occasioned much rejoicing and celebrations, with people staying up and out on the streets as late as 11pm, the wild party animals that they are. The team are also currently joint top of the Hungarian ice hockey league and top of the Romanian one (though the Romanian league season is always merely a precursor to another final against Steaua)

The World in Csikszereda

It's not often that your town gets to host a World Championships in something. Well, it probably happens daily if your town is New York or London or somewhere, but if your town has 40,000 residents and is buried in the back end of the Carpathians, it seems like it would be particularly rare, to the point of being never. But this year alone (and may I remind you it's only mid March), we have hosted not one but TWO World Championship events. In January, Csikszereda was the venue for the World Junior Short Track Speed Skating Chamionships, while starting today is the World U18 Ice Hockey Championships (adds, in barely audible whisper, Division III). [You may notice a common theme to those two events, and I'm not just referring to the age group.]

Anyway, in January, the town, the rink and its next door hotel, the Fenyő, was witness to a susprising number of foreign visitors (i.e. more than one), with Japanese and Koreans wandering round the Profi supermarket (for some reason the world of Short Track Speed Skating is a very East Asian dominated sport). This week we don't have any East Asians, but we do have New Zealanders, South Africans, Israelis, Turks, and Bulgarians (as well as the Romanian squad, but I'm assuming many of them are from round here anyway). Now, you may be thinking that these nations don't have a particularly strong tradition of ice hockey, but that's just splitting hairs because you're jealous of how the world's attention is focussed on the Vakar Lajos ice rink, Miercurea Ciuc, this week.

The publicity for this event has been virtually non-existent, though, which is a pity. This may be because the tournament was supposed to take place in Israel, until the ice-hockey powers that be decided to shift it because of security concerns (perhaps they also discovered that Israel happens to be built in a desert). Then it was moved to Bucharest a month ago, and sometime in the last couple of weeks was shifted again to Csikszereda. I've seen precisely two posters advertising it, and both of those were affixed to the door of the rink itself. But hopefully the word will spread (it usually does since there's so little that goes on here normally), and the crowds will flock to the ice rink and watch the cream of the world's U18 talent (Division III).

I, as Csikszereda's official English language representative on the Internet, have been inundated with emails from proud or anxious parents trying to find out more news from this strangely obscure venue. Well, when I say inundated, I mean one bloke from New Zealand has written.

Anyway, it is my avowed intention to go down and watch a game or two, and revel in this feast of Ice Hockey

Move along now, nothing to see here.

Back from a quick visit across the Carpathians to Bucharest, but since I didn't get home till about 3am, I'm a bit spaced out today, and not really able to craft the post I want to about one of my experiences there, so instead I'll regale you with some mere trifles

I came a creditable, but distant, second in the AFOE "Best SE Europe weblog" to Dragos's @rgumente which has been around longer and is a lot more "bloggish" and deserving of the award. Felicitarii to Dragos, and gratulalok from Ţara Secuiesc. If you'd like some reading from the region, I'll recommend taking a look as well as at Catherine's Illyrian Gazette which was also nominated. I haven't had the chance to look at the other two, but will do soon. I came nowhere in the best expat weblog one (I have questions about what "expat" actually means, but maybe I'll come back to that later)

The Ice Hockey final is going very badly. Steaua Suki (as they now seem to be called) are 3-1 up in the best of 7 series, and are likely to wrap the thing up in the next game in Bucharest. They don't deserve it (a) because they get only half the number of fans to their games as we do - and that's from a huge city whereas we're in a small town; (b) the decisions have tended to favour them (two disallowed goals in the last two games may have turned both of them in their favour; and last but not least (c) Steaua are owned by the foulest most repulsive man in Romania, that corrupt, racist, bigoted egomaniacal cretin with a Jesus complex, Gigi Becali. The only man in the country who can make Vadim Tudor look like a well-rounded and balanced individual.

In a couple of weeks I'm heading off to Germany to buy a car. I'm not the buyer, I'm just accompanying a friend who is, on some kind of spring road trip. I anticipate lots of crazy hollywood style episodes and adventures, possibly culminating with us driving off a cliff into the Grand Canyon (or Turda Gorge, at least). It's because second hand cars in Germany are reasonably priced, whereas in Romania they are insane - in Bucharest I saw a 20 year old Oltcit driving around with a sign in the window offering it for sale at 1500 Euros. You've probably never seen an Oltcit, unless you've lived in Romania, but trust me, a new one would be barely worth that. There's a 1992 Opel Astra on our street for 4000 Euros. I mean really. It's utterly insane. Even with flying out to Munich, accommodation for a night or two, all the petrol and road taxes involved in driving home, and the tax you have to pay to the Romanian government to import it, you still end up about 1000 Euros up on the deal compared to Romanian second hand prices.

Titbits

Half way through a long and difficult to write post about the big health scare of last week. Maybe I'll get it done tomorrow sometime.

So, to tide you over here are a few titbits of news (did you know, by the way, that the US word is tidbits which reflected a nineteenth century US desire to purge the language of what can only be described as rude syllables? You may have thought that the Victorian era of prudery was a British phenomenon, but it apparently was worse over the Atlantic. This is also the reason why a cockroach is a roach, a cock is a rooster, and nobody titters in the USA)

The final of the Romanian Ice Hockey Championship starts tomorrow. As I reported last year, the final is always between Sport Club Miercurea Ciuc and Steaua Bucharest. This year we have home ice advantage (meaning that if the match goes to the full 7 games 4 of those games will take place here). I'll keep you updated on the outcome of an event which grips Csikszereda and leaves the rest of the country completely unmoved. Though these days they do show it on Pro Sport TV)

Last week JK Rowling visited Romania, presumably to help launch the Romanian translation of her latest book. There was a charity dinner to which parents could bring their children to meet the authoress - for 1000 Euros a ticket. I have no idea how any Romanian can come up with 1000 Euros for a dinner. (Aside from those members of the PSD who have suspicious relatives leaving them large sums of money in their wills). Just think if I'd known way back when when I knew JK (or Joanne as she was then) what having dinner with her would one day be worth. I even babysat her daughter once - that kind of insider stuff would fetch a small fortune these days.

It was -32 again this morning. When will this bloody winter ever end?

Weekend cancelled

The weekend got cancelled. Well, not literally obviously, since I'm typing this at the weekend. But in the sense of our romantic trip to Sighisoara. This is because Bogi got sick. She woke up on Friday morning complaining of a headache/earache, and after school Emoke Neni (the "neni" - lady- who looks after her while we're at work) took her to the doctors and she was diagnosed with a middle ear infection. No, middle ear, not Middle Earth. Not having read Lord of the Rings nor seen the film, I am not sure what a middle earth infection would look like, but I suspect it would involve orcs.

Anyway, when we got home yesterday afternoon, the infection was in full effect. She was obviously in a lot of pain and was crying more or less constantly. When Bogi is ill, I get this wave of something that washes over me. I am not sure if there is a word for it exactly. It's a mixture of emotions - powerlessness, desire to protect and fix things, love, and some kind of realisation of her vulnerability. The best word for it might be compassion, but I'm not 100% sure if that does it justice. Most of the time, Bogi is a human being who I share much of my life with and with whom I laugh, play, joke, argue, watch TV, love, and tease. Then when she's sick, I realise how small and weak and vulnerable and, well, childlike she is. I know she's a six-year-old girl the rest of the time too, but only when she's sick do I feel it, I suppose. Kids, eh? (He adds, desperately attempting to distract attention from his unenglish, unmale, revelation of some kind of emotions, however ill-formed, patronising, and ill-expressed)

We will have the chance to have a weekend away next weekend instead, when we are off to Cluj for a conference. Cluj (Kolozsvar in Hungarian) is the only major, interesting sounding city that I have yet to visit in Romania, and I'm looking forward to it. And eventually we will do our Sighisoara weekend, but it might now have to wait until after the little one is born (she has now graduated from some kind of aerobic kick boxing routine, to doing some kind of extended stretching to investigate exactly how far she can push Erika's belly).

Since we had the day here, and since it was a gorgeous autumn day, and since Bogi, feeling much better today, was helping Emoke Neni make cakes for her son's birthday, Erika and I went for a walk along a path I'd never been on before, across the fields the back way to Zsögöd, which is a village that in effect is these days a suburb of Csikszereda. It's a really nice place, with a great Szekely church. (If I've done this correctly, and you click here, you can see some pics I took. Let me know if it doesn;t work).

We even went in the Nagy Imre gallery. This is an art gallery devoted to Nagy Imre, an artist who was born and lived much of his life in the house attached to the gallery. I knew it was there but had never actually gone before. I liked it - and much of his work, which is very local in many ways (lots of very recognisable landscapes and street scenes). There's an article about him and a couple of his paintings here, in case you're interested. (He's not to be confused with the politician of the exact same name who was prime minister of Communist Hungary in the 1950s and was leader during Hungary's short-lived anti-soviet revolution in 1956).

And finally, you'll all be happy to hear that the Ice Hockey season has started. The level of competitiveness doesn't seem to have changed much though - in Sport Club's first two matches they have won 17-1 and 15-3 "away" to HC Csikszereda (the other team from the town), while traditional rivals Steaua Bucharest have won 10-1 and 15-5 at home to Galaţi (the new team in the premier division). Possibly Progym (from Gheorgheni, about 60km north of here) will be the challengers to these two, as they have won their first two games impressively 5-1 and 13-3 at Sportul Studentesc of Bucharest. I bet you're excited aren't you? I know how much updates on the Romanian ice hockey league mean to my readers.

Greece is the Word

Not really a proper blog post, as I'm in a cafe, and don't have the time, wherewithal, or desire to spend a long time writing. However, I am writing a longer post on my own computer and will hopefully be able to post it before long.

So, I'm in Athens (the one in Greece, not the one where REM come from), and it's brill. It's shot into my top five cities of the world list. It's also carnival in Greece at the moment (being Orthodox, Greece has a different easter from the Catholic/Protestant world, and carnival is moved accordingly), so lots of late night japery is ongoing. Last night we walked back to out hotel from a restaurant at 2.30 and the streets were packed. This may have just been a normal Saturday night thing though. I'll send a full report next week sometime.

Last weekend, the one I didn't know where I was going, was spent in Becs (there's an acute accent on that e but I can't work it out on this keyboard). If you know where Becs is you know where I was, if you don't you'll just have to wait until I send my report (or google it if you're desperate). It was great.

Oh, and you'll need to know that the scum of Steaua beat the mighty heros of Ciskszereda 4-3 in the final game, and hence won the series by the same score. It's an old old story - rich capital city based playthings of alleged dangerous mobster with a compliant media, helpful officiating, and plastic fans beat passionate and deserving team from the provinces.

Random Bollocks

Ice Hockey Update

A breathtaking weekend in Csikszereda saw the home town heroes crush the Bucharest scum 3-1 on Friday night. This brought the match score to 3-2 and left us one game away from winning the whole thing. Saturday night we could have wrapped it up on home ice (as they say). But sadly, a first half display of epic rubbishness allowed Steaua to open up a 5-0 lead. Heroically, we came back to 5-4 before time ran out and Steaua levelled the match. The final and deciding game is this weekend in Bucharest. We live in hope. [I've gone full-on for bias to counterract the match report at the site I linked to before http://hem.bredband.net/hochei/, which is seriously pro-Steaua. I don't know who Micola Hertza is, but he's not from here, that's for sure]

Footy

Talk of Steaua brings me neatly on to football, and the national swelling of pride that accompanied Steaua's UEFA cup victory over holders Valencia. Now coming from England it's hard to imagine a victory by a team like Steaua being celebrated nationwide, but here it was. One of the TV channels had a banner on all night reading "Bravo Steaua". If ITV had a Bravo Arsenal banner on the screen, much of the country would stop watching it out of protest. Or at least I bloody hope they would. I once remember being in Bursa, Turkey when Trabzonspor beat Lyon (I think) in one of the early rounds of the UEFA or CW Cup. The whole town went nuts. Trabzon must be at least 1000 kms from Bursa. It just wouldn't happen in England. We hate each other and no amount of success for our compatriots makes us happy.

Steaua are managed by Walter Zenga, who seems like a nice bloke, and pleasingly speaks Romanian with a pronounced Italian accent. Pronounced enough that even I can hear it. However the club's president (who I assume is also the president of the Ice Hockey arm of the franchise) is not so nice. Well, he might be nice I suppose, but he doesn't look nice. He looks like the archetype of the Balkan gangster. The kind of bloke who, if he were Serb, would be living in a comfortable mansion in the Republika Srpska, having committed loads of war crimes and having been indicted by the Hague. His name's Gigi Becali, and if you hear of me being kneecapped in the next few weeks you know why.

Party

Spent Saturday night getting wasted on palinka (fruit brandy) and wine in Marosvasarhely, Erika's home town. It was her dad's 65th birthday party, and my first largish family gathering. It was a sizeable test of my Hungarian, and one I didn't exactly pass, but did have fun all the same. Erika's dad always speaks to me in German, which is odd because I don't know any - aside from the German I learned reading Battle and Action comic in the dentist's waiting room as a kid (such eternally useful expressions as Hande Hoche, Achtung Minen, Gott in Himmel, Englischer Shweinhund, and AAAIIIEEEEE!!! - that last one is the sound Germans make when they die).

Other stuff of no real import

I become 39 tomorrow. I really don't know what else to add on that front. Erika is taking me away for a birthday weekend to some surprise destination. All I know is that I have to bring my passport. Could be fun. Subsequently, next week I am going to Athens with Erika, her colleague Zsofi and Zsofi's boyfriend Attila. It's a project meeting to which I am tagging along. Should be a laugh, and will, I believe bring the number of countries I have visited (by which I mean spent at least one night in) up to 47-ish.

You may have noticed one or two changes to the look of this blog. I'm almost ready to give some exciting blog related news, but you may have to wait for one or two more days. So, bear with me.

The curious incident of the dog in the minivan

I realize that I haven’t spent a lot of time talking about the weather. A serious omission for someone of my background I realize. And as I don’t have much to say at the moment, when better to drag out the tried and tested method of filling awkward silences in conversation. Or in this case, monologue.

So, the week after I got back from Bishkek, it was cold. Ridiculously cold. Blisteringly cold. Colder than a welldigger’s arse, and a witch’s tit. Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey. Colder than Jeremy Irons’s dick. There isn’t really an expression in general use that matches that last one, but just looking at him you get the sense the he’d have one of the world’s coldest dicks. Plus I saw him on TV yesterday supporting the odious fox hunting community so I’m particularly ill disposed toward him today. It was so cold, that upon leaving the apartment I was unable to prevent myself from uttering “Holy fucking Christ”. Now I realize that there are some who’d find such language offensive, but I‘ll wager those people have never walked out into a temperature of -35 degrees Centigrade.

This week things have perked up and it has hovered around the zero mark. A vast improvement and almost balmy after the week before. It felt springlike. Lambs frolicked in the glades, buds burst forth, and the whole animal kingdom engaged in a mad and frantic orgy of sexual congress. OK, so none of that actually happened outside of my fevered and frankly perverted imagination, but it did seem nice, although, it has to be said, decidedly slushy.

To celebrate the snowy but warm (well warmish) winter wonderland, we headed out this weekend to enjoy the snow. Specifically we went with Elvira, a friend, to assist her in her new hobby – sled dog racing. You know the kind of thing – team of huskies pulling human being through the tundra for no reason other than they are dogs, and will do any old shit that humans ask them to. In fact, I can say that this weekend has confirmed both of my concerns about dogs.

1. That they are (as mentioned) insanely willing to humiliate and exhaust themselves for the sake of their humans.
2. That they stink. Fortunately our two trips in Elvira’s minivan to different locations from which to begin these mini-iditarods were both short. Being cooped up in a confined space with dogs who are not well acquainted with the concept of personal hygiene can be a trying experience. Even the 15 kms we had to travel at times became an olfactory endurance test. On Saturday’s trip the dogs stopped to partake in the gastronomic delights of a pile of horse shit (Hungarian: Lo Szar – see how my language skills are coming along). Subsequently (and unsurprisingly) on our way home one of them proceeded to vomit this delicious feast back up. Let me tell you if you’ve never spent time in a confined space with horse shit that has been chucked up by a husky, then you’ve never lived. To give an indication of how bad it was, I can honestly say that parmesan cheese smells better.

If anyone ever read this site, then chances are that one of those non-existent readers would be a dog lover and would write in to complain that I am being grossly unfair. Dogs do not, in fact, stink, but merely exist in a different plane of understanding of smell from us. Spend time with dogs, they would go on, and you will soon love to appreciate their delightfully playful aromas. It is true, I have to say, that the only people who don’t seem to recognize how horribly smelly dogs are, are their owners themselves. So possibly I have hit on something here. Some kind of nasal acculturation takes place. I’m just not sure if I want to spend that long becoming acclimatized.

Anyway, we had a good time, chucking snowballs at one another, sledding, building snowmen and walking through the snowy hills (occasionally cheering as Elvira whooshed by in the midst of a caninic cloud of snow powder). I even had a short go on the dog sled myself, but had to do most of the work myself as the lazy bastards couldn’t be arsed to really pull. It was a fairly steep uphill climb though, and I could use losing a kilo or ten, so it may have been understandable (here the dog lovers are thinking “oh that’s why he’s so down on dogs, they couldn’t pull his huge blubbery fat arse up a mountain”). They have nice eyes, huskies. That’s about as far as I’m prepared to go in a conciliatory direction.

Ice hockey update

I know how desperate you all probably are to hear how the ice hockey playoffs are going, after I so successfully piqued your dormant interest last week. Well, I’ll tell you. On Friday night game 3 went in a predictable way and ended up in a 5-2 win for Steaua. Frankly the game was similar to the one I saw up here, and I really couldn’t imagine anything other than a 4-1 series win. Then yesterday, and by some miracle, we (ie Sport Club) won 4-0. Yes, 4-0. After conceding at least 4 goals in every previous game, we managed to keep a clean sheet. I have no idea what happened, but the series is coming back here for games 5 and 6. I still can’t see SC winning, but it looks more evenly matched than I thought it was. The stadium was distinctly half empty though which only goes to show me that we deserve it more. There are 2.2 million people in Bucharest and they can’t fill an ice rink. Puffs. We have 40,000 and packed the place two or three to a seat. Half of the fans there seemed to be from here anyway. They really don’t deserve it. Plastic fans, plastic team. Csiki-csiki-csiki-csiki-csiki-csiki-CSIKSZEREDA!

Photos

I have fiunally put some of my photos online, and they can be found by all you lucky people at http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/adhoc.rm/my_photos One day I'll caption them so you can actually know what they hell they are.

Of Ice and Men

The Romanian ice hockey “Superliga” consists of 6 teams. (I’ll leave it up to you to guess whether that’s because it genuinely is a superleague of the 6 top teams in the country, or whether it’s because there are basically 6 teams in Romania). Of these six teams, 3 are from Bucharest and the other three are from Hargita County. Hargita County is where I live and essentially it is the one part of the country (along with neighbouring Covasna County) that is majority Hungarian. (and the majority is of the 90% variety). Hence the league is basically a sporting venue for dealing with ethnic tension. The fans of the Bucharest teams probably see the Hargitans as merely hicks rather than as a representative of some kind of pro-Hungarian independence movement, but the fans of the three Transylvanian teams certainly see themselves as representative of something more fundamental. It’s Barcelona vs. Real Madrid with fewer people. All it needs is a banner at the games reading (in English) “Transylvania is not Romania”.

So, back to the hockey. Despite only having 6 teams there are in reality only two that are any good. Steaua Bucharest and Sport Club Miercurea Ciuc. So each year there is a league and a cup. The final of the cup is contested by Steaua and Sport Club, and the end of the league play off between the top two teams in the table is between Steaua and Sport Club. It’s like the Scottish Premier League only more so. It’s kind of a waste of time even having a regular season and they should probably just skip ahead to the playoffs. Anyway a few weeks ago the cup final took place in Bucharest and while I wasn’t here and don’t really know what happened, there were some let’s-just-say dodgy refereeing decisions that led to the game being won by Steaua. Sport Club refused their second place medals and gave them instead to the referee, and the fans in Csikszereda awarded the team the “Cup of Truth” when they got back from the capital. As a result of that game, it was decided that the referees for the upcoming play-off series must be foreign (i.e. not Romanian – also presumably not Hungarian).

So last weekend was the first game in the best of seven play-off final. It was in Bucharest and sounds like a real cracker. After two periods (of three) Steaua were leading 4-1 and it seemed like the game was lost, but somehow, Csikszereda came back to level the match and then win it 5-4 in overtime. The second game was yesterday back here in the sticks, and as a result of that epic comeback, the town was buzzing.

We arrived at the stadium at about 4.45 for a 6.30pm kickoff (kickoff? Must be face-off or something?). Even that early we heard rumours flying around that the rink was already full. The fact that we had tickets seemed to mean very little – and as they weren’t attached to a seat but were just general admission, it was clear that it could be a problem. As crowds flooded in we had to wait for the fourth member of our party, Gyözö, to arrive. The “stadium” (more like a glorified sports hall) was full, but there were still loads of people entering. Hundreds must have gone in in just the 15 minutes we waited outside anxiously for Gyözö to show up. Finally he turned up and we could go in. It was packed, but not beyond the bounds of reason. However it was fairly clear that the number of tickets and the number of seats were not exactly the same thing. As we all crowded into the seating area above the team benches, there were obviously no remaining seats. In fact there were probably already 2 people to each seat, and the crowds showed no sign of abating. We stood on the walkway for a while until the police appeared and told us to move up somewhere. It wasn’t clear how we were to do that or where we ought to head for. The staircases between seats were all occupied too. Eventually we found somewhere to stand between seats, and relaxed for a while. Until it became obvious that in fact everyone would end up standing on the seats to see, and therefore being between seats wouldn’t help. One old man next to Erika complained that he had arrived three hours early in order to get a good seat – which he would now have to stand on. He’d even brought a cushion for himself, which was now proving to be not a lot of use. One bank of seats was curiously empty though. “Reserved” by some unwritten reservation system. These were for the hard core fans, who presumably follow the team through the whole season, attending every 10-0 thrashing of Gyergyo or Dinamo Bucharest, and probably going to away games too. It does seem reasonable that when the season gets interesting and the rest of us Laszlo-come-latelys showed up, that these more serious fans ought to have some kind of special treatment.

At about 5.45 the Steaua fans showed up. There were probably about 50 or so of them and they occupied one corner of the arena, surrounded by an equal number of policemen. There was lots of booing from our side. Then they unfurled a Romanian flag and the volume of the booing went up dramatically. They were told, quite vehemently, to go home. This was done in Romanian, which was a nice gesture, as most epithets were hurled, defiantly, in Hungarian. The next chant was to repeat the word “gypsies” over and over in a crescendo of meta-racism. I have to say that the idea of abusing an ethnic group who you dislike by referring to them as another ethnic group you dislike even more is taking the shitty casual crowd racism concept to a whole new level. While European football is gripped in the midst of discussions about terrace bigotry, and a “Kick Racism Out Of Football” campaign, Romanian ice hockey it seems is not yet ready for such direct movements and will need to start, one step at a time, with a “Let’s Kick Racism Out Of Racism” campaign.

The hardcore fans arrived, daubed in blue and white paint and hats and shirts [the local high school’s geography teacher was one and as he looked at the massed ranks of not-so-loyal fans around him, started chanting “Szervusztok, szervusztok, szervusztok” (hello everyone)], and as if on cue the teams came out to warm up. Booing for the Steaua players seemed to override cheering the local team. The most instantly noticeable thing about the Steaua team is that principle sponsor is something called “PUFF”. I have no idea what PUFF is or what they do (probably something prosaic like manufacturing distributor caps or underwriting mortgages), but it was quite weird to see a whole team of skew-nosed, toothless, rough-as-fuck ice-hockey players to be skating around bearing the motto “PUFF” proudly on their chests. If I could put pictures on here, I’d post one and caption it “Steaua – a bunch of puffs?”, but since I can’t you’ll just have to imagine that kind of rapier sharp Wildean wit, and trust me on how hysterically funny it would have been.

Anyway, the game. I’ve seen ice hockey on TV before, but never watched a game in the flesh. It’s much better when you’re there. Not only because of the fans and all that atmosphere thang, but also because you can actually see the puck. Also when I’ve watched it on TV I’ve just ended up marveling at the skill of the players – they can skate AND whip this puck back and forth between them – and not imagined that they were fallible in any way. When you’re there (and when you’re supporting Sport Club) you can see just as many errors and groan just as agonizingly as if you were watching, say, Sheffield Wednesday.

Most of the action was one way, and there were a number of penalties called on those dirty southern capital dwellers (y’see the similarities between English football and Romanian ice hockey are not invisible). In particular whoever was playing number 23 for Steaua seemed to spend more time in the penalty box than he did on the ice. I had him down as a Romanian Steve Bould. Sport Club poured forward shooting whenever they got a chance but seemingly unable to get very close to the goal before doing so. Ten minutes in they did get close and the shot rebounded off the keeper and was rammed home by a player following up. The place went nuts. We were 1-0 up and looking good. Steaua hadn’t even had an attack. Then less than a minute later, they did. And they scored. And a few minutes later they had another one, and scored again. And before the first period was over it had happened again. Three attacks, three goals. In fact, on three occasions in the first period Sport Club had a player in the penalty box, and on all three of those occasions Steaua scored. Whenever Sport Club had the man advantage it seemed to actually interfere with their rhythm and they were less dangerous than when it was five against five.

The second period started off similar to the first. All Csikszereda for most of the period, and the first goal went to us. 3-2 and we still had a chance. But then another Steaua powerplay (that’s what it’s called when your opponent has a man in the sin bin, see how much attention I paid?), and another goal. (To be fair we did survive two other powerplays that period unscathed). This fourth goal, to add insult to injury, was scored by a native of Csikszereda who’d recently been transferred to Steaua.

With about 4 or 5 minutes left in the period and the score 4-2, things started warming up on the ice. Violence wise, I mean. And since this is what most people seem to watch ice hockey for, I was glad we were getting the other part of the show. A number of fights broke out and at one point both teams had two blokes in the penalty box. At one point a Steaua player ended up face down on the ice, semi-comatose, and unable to get up. The ice began to turn red around his face and the medics were called to help him up. The Csikszereda fans started booing him and chanting (in Romanian) “This is Steaua”, as if to say that this kind of pathetic unmanly behaviour – not playing on while lying face down, bleeding and semi-conscious – was not the kind of thing that a true Szekely man would do, and was in fact more befitting of someone who had the word “PUFF” emblazoned across his midriff.

Sadly the fight club nature of proceedings seemed to end with the second period, and the third and final period, while conducted at a frenetic pace, was much more gentlemanly. Perhaps the Russian ref had gone in to each team at the break and told them to cut it out. Whatever had happened, it was very much like the other two periods in terms of action. First ten minutes, all Csikszereda, loads of shots. Last ten minutes, no particular direction, lots of penalties and nothing that resembled a chance for the home team. Supporting a team in blue and white, with a passionate home crowd, full of sound and fury but being beaten by a more skilful team brought on some flashbacks I can tell you. I’d like to be able to say that Csikszereda were laid low by a combination of bent refereeing, dirty Wallachian bastardy, and just plain bad luck, as I think it would finish this off nicely. But I can’t. Steaua were clearly better, and deserved to win, despite having less possession, and despite me not really knowing what I’m talking about. But when a team has to rely on dribbling to go forward, since they are unable to string two passes together, you kind of realize they’re a tad rubbish, even if you’re supporting them.

At the end after both teams had shaken hands with each other, and we’d applauded our boys off the ice, the Steaua players came and applauded us for our fandom and we applauded them back for their ice hockey skills. Frankly, when all is said and done and despite the initial somewhat obnoxious nationalism from both sets of fans, the crowd were pretty similar to an English (or otherwise) football crowd. Regionalism, certainly, and dislike of the opposition purely for being the opposition, but very little “Hungarian” vs. Romanian. It would be kind of weird if there were to be honest, since a fair few of the Sport Club team had Romanian names, as well as a smattering of other nationalities (Russian, mostly), and there was at least one Hungarian sounding player on the Steaua team.

The series now goes back to Bucharest, where there will be two games next weekend, and then back here the weekend after that. Hopefully, Sport Club will win at least one of the games in the capital so that when they come back here they could actually win the series in Csikszereda. But I’m not holding out much hope. I saw one good team on Saturday night and it wasn’t the one I was supporting. Still, who knows? What’s that quote about it being the hope that kills you and not the despair? I suspect I need to look it up.

God this was a long one. I have the distinct feeling that I’m a frustrated sports writer. And destined to remain so re-reading all that. Anyway if you really want to keep up with Romanian ice hockey action told from a more fact-based perspective, this is the best place to go: http://hem.bredband.net/hochei/