Fall Back

I hate it when the clocks go back. Not the act of putting them back so much, or the day itself (though I also reject this weird conceptual argument that it "gives you an extra hour in bed" - how? It's a Sunday. Unless you attend a 8 am mass, you really don't get an extra hour in bed, since you have no reason to get up early anyway).

It's the fact that subsequent to this chronometric retrogression, the evenings, which previously were gently "drawing in", in one fell swoop vanish entirely from the daylit schedule. It sucks. I understand that this year the US hasn't gone back at the same time as Europe (or even Canada), because Congress has voted in something called the "Halloween Act" so that kids can trick or treat in more daylight. Seriously, I'm not making that up.

It also, of course, heralds winter, and round these parts winter is a long tiring slog. According to the news yesterday, winter is coming. I couldn't work out when it was coming, but presumably it is soon, since the news that winter is coming sometime is not really news at all.

Anyway, it's half term and we are off to the in-laws for a week, and I will therefore be offline. Enjoy halloween, the day of the dead and whatever other events come up this week.

4 tier Europe?

I remember a few years ago there was talk of having a two tier EU. There would be the countries that believed in it and wanted to work together for some undefined glorious European tomorrow in one tier, and the countries that didn't believe in it but were too scared to be left on the outside in the other tier. The UK of course was one of the latter.

Since 2004, we've effectively had this two tier Europe, but it's slightly different from what was first thought up. This is down to Europe admitting a series of buffer states to protect it from the perceived terrible ravages of immigration. These buffer states (look it up on a map if you don't believe me) form a thick barrier of cabbage, sour cream, and beer from the Baltic coast of Poland in the north, through the former Czechoslovakia, Hungary and down to the Adriatic in Slovenia. This cabbage curtain effectively allows the Western end of the continent to limit immigration from further east (though they clearly need to set up some kind of floating buffer states between north Africa and various Spanish and Italian islands, to really make sure they've blocked off all the avenues.)

In admitting them, existing European states made choices as to whether to allow citizens of those nations (now to be EU citizens) should actually be allowed to live and work anywhere they liked in the Union - what the EU was supposed to be all about in short. To its credit, the UK opened its doors, unlike many of the nations which were supposed to be all about EU integration and the like. This was often talked up in comparing the relative economic performance of placeslike the UK and Ireland which opened up and France and Germany which didn't.

So for a while we had a three speed Europe - countries who were actually making use of the idea of the union to gain ground economically; countries who were not doing that, but were "old Europe" and hence more powerful in the grand scheme of things; and the countries being stripped of their human resources to fuel the UK's economic growth.

Now, however, cowed by tabloid scare headlines and racism towards gypsies, the UK and Ireland have decided to close the door to Romanians and Bulgarians, thus creating an underclass of Europe within the Union itself. It's fucking disgraceful. Is my country run by the Daily Mail? It certainly feels that way.

Now Romania could respond to this with reciprocity, making life hard for Brits who want to live and work in Romania, and in fact that would be a good idea (despite the fact that it would be a pain in the arse for yours truly). But the fact is that there aren't that many of us who want to be here, and most who do come work for large multinationals who can afford to jump through bureaucratic hoops. Instead, what the Romanian government should do is to make it hard for Brits to buy property here. The UK press is full of articles about the advantages and benefits of buying property in Romania and Bulgaria, and a policy denying Brits the right to own property in this country would upset a lot of people over there (and the kind of people who are likely to be having dinner parties with politicians and journalists). So, Calim and Traian, what do you say? Give New Labour something to think about, the xenophobic scumlords that they are.

Here are the most recent comments of the BBCs Europe editor on the subject of Romania and emigration 28th September (the comments section at the bottom is worth a read, if only to get all steamed up about people such as the cretinous "Steve H, of Littlehampton"), and October 26th (ie today - hence not many irate comments yet from Little Englanders (Littlehamptoners?))

Five of the best

The most intriguingly named products & businesses in Romania:

Discounting such classics as Heavy Tools Clothing Division, The Transilvanian Trousers Company and meaningless advertising slogans such as "Cosmote: In Touch With Life" (Really. WTF?)

5: Crimbo Gas. Not that funny, I'll grant you, but it always amuses me to see this company's ads around the place, being as how "Crimbo" is kind of a cloyingly cutesy way of referring to "Christmas" in the UK

4: Bords Eye. No that's not a spelling mistake. Just as there is a company called Birds Eye in the UK which sells frozen food, in Romania (at least) there is a brand of margarine called Bords Eye. It's a Northern Irish version I suspect. Wonder if they make sajt too? "It's Bords Eye sajt, so it is"

3: Gyno Drinks. I see the van with this company's name on the side driving around Csikszereda sometimes and it always (without fail) reminds me of "Vegina" (the vegetable drink in an edible can) featured on the Alan Partridge radio show.

2: Stalinskaya Vodka. Who came up with this brand name? Really. Are we going to see a German style lager introduced onto the market called Hitlersch?

1: Antrax Import and Export. Classic. It really needs no more elaboration does it? I'll really start worrying if Antrax start exporting Bords Eye.

October 23rd

Bit of a busy week, round these parts as I am in sole charge of the little ones, but we'll see if I can get through a quick post about Monday evening before the littlest one wakes up.

So, as mentioned earlier Monday was the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian uprising in which a large number of very brave people rose up against their oppressive regime, and were eventually crushed with the assistance of the Soviet army. This obviously didn't happen here, since we are not in Hungary, but there was a fairly large commemmoration event here. At 6.30 we went out to join the candelit march that was starting from "Freedom Square" outside our apartment. We couldn't get a candle/torch, as they were reserved for bigwigs apparently, but undaunted we managed to get over the disappointment. The parade/march/walk/amble was conducted in almost complete silence (though I'm not sure if that was deliberate or just because people weren't feeling very chatty), and led us up Timisoara Boulevard and then up past the theatre to the Hungarian Consulate. By the time we got there it was a fairly big gathering, of at least a couple of thousand, which for this town is a major turnout.

Speeches were spoken by various dignitaries - somebody from the Hungarian foreign ministry, the consul, some religious leader, a local politician one who has his own blog even (in Hungarian), and various others. It was getting a bit parky by this time, and Paula was getting tired so I led her home, while Erika and Bogi braved the nighttime chill of the Carpathians for a while longer, but not quite long enough to witness the unveiling of a new statue representing "The Angel of News" (I think). I saw it yesterday though, and it's not the most attractive piece of public art I've ever seen, but probably I'll get used to it.

I wanted to include some photos to give you a taste of the evening's events, but sadly my camera chose that night to seemingly expire. I'm hoping I can resurrect it somehow.

I asked around to find out what would have been the channel for this news to reach Csikszereda back in 1956, and was given a number of possible answers (nobody I asked was actually alive, so it was a bit of guesswork) - that they heard on Romanian media (which seems like it may have happened after the fact - it's hard to imagine that 1956 Romanian government would have been happy about spreading news of a popular uprising); that they heard on Radio Free Europe; and that people near the border could get Hungarian TV and they would obviously have heard, and it would have got passed around Transylvania, slowly spreading eastwards. That last one appeals to me (aesthetically, not because I like the idea of people being denied information) - it conjures up bards and wandering minstrels and the like.

Anyway, the events, such as they were, were quite moving and passed by without incident, which is obviously more than can be said for the similar commemorations in Budapest.

Hungarian readers may be interested to learn that the 1956 events more or less destroyed the far left in the UK (obviously no major deal compared to what upheaval it caused in Hungary). After the seond world war, the communist party was quite strong in Britain, but 1956 split it completely asunder between those who supported the uprising and those who advocated mother Russia sending the tanks in. To this day, the derogatory slang term for Stalinists in the UK (yes there are some) is "tankies".

Half a Century

No time to write much today, but thought I'd pass on this link which is full of photos and audio and video files relating to the Hungarian uprising of October 23rd, 1956.

Music videos and Csik from above

An aerial view of Csikszereda (taken in winter obviously)

I wanted to share a couple of videos from YouTube with you, so I went along and attempted to blog them (this is a new verb meaning to stick them up here) but apparently I can't becase I recently moved this blog over to "beta.blogger" which means that it's more fully integrated into Google (or some such bullshit). This is, of course, in the week in which Google actually bought YouTube. It baffles me, frankly. (Plus my gmail account seems to be not functioning well at the moment). All in all I am significantly less well-disposed towards google than I was about a week ago.

Anyway, I can't embed the videos here, but I can give you some links:

Here is Iubire by 3 Sud Est, which you may recall me dissing last week. Now you can see for yourself the boys and their hard-as-nails image contrasted with their not-quite-so-hard falsettos.

Here is Erika's current favourite. Ghiţa by Cleopatra Stratan. Now I'm usually of the opinion that any record made by a child (or children in the plural) ought to be avoided like the plague. But somehow this one is kind of infectious and nowhere near as obnoxious as it should be.

And finally, Mahala Rai Banda, a gypsy band who are really excellent. This song is impossible to not start tapping your feet to. Mind you, they'll never make it on to MTV Romania, where I have seen the other two. It's a shame.

Star Wars

On Sunday night Real Madrid arrived at Otopeni airport. This event was trumpeted like they were ...well, I was going to say royalty, but if it had been Juan Carlos showing up, for example, there would have been much less fanfare. Like gods maybe. The TV stations all had someone stationed in the presidential lounge of the airport where the team would appear (why in the presidential lounge I have no idea, why they couldn't come through passport control and customs and baggage reclaim like the rest of us is beyond me, but you know these are overpaid and overhyped celebrities we're talking about), and the sports sections of all the Sunday evening news shows were all taken up with exciting trivia such as whether Posh Spice would be on the plane and what exact route the bus was likely to take from Otopeni to the Marriot Hotel. Two stations even elected to cover the arrival and subsequent bus journey live in all its detail. Really, I swear I'm not making any of this up.

The excitement continued to build on Monday with press conferences being covered in full, training ground action and various sundry bits of information. Then yesterday came the reason that this exalted bunch had deigned to touch down on Romanian soil and bless us all with their presence. The match against Steaua. ["Star Wars" as one channel oh so cleverly billed it - you see Madrid are all stars and Steaua means star. Oh ho.] Sadly, for Romanian football fans, many of whom had travelled across the country to watch this game, and who had played vast amounts for a ticket, Steaua had seemingly been watching too much awestruck breathless TV coverage themselves, and they too seemed to feel unworthy of being on the same pitch as the wealthy has-beens from the Bernabeu, capitulating miserably and losing 4-1.

Still, the upside of that result is that we won't have to endure weeks of Gigi Becali crowing on TV with the compliant Romanian media hanging on his every word. Even more pleasingly the killer third goal was scored by black Brazilian forward Robinho, thus being one in the eye for the bigot Becali and the racists who seem to make up a reasonable proportion of Steaua's fan base.

I have to say that the fawning arselicking of the Real team and their presence in Romania did the nation as a whole no favours. They're not messiahs, they're just overrated footballers. Steaua deserved to be in the Champions League group stages (much as it pains me to say it), and Romania is just as much part of Europe as anywhere else. This media-led prostration at their feet is pathetic. It's at times like these when I feel an understanding of those who can't stand football.

Viral Blogging

Is it just me or is the word "meme" really, really overused? And more than just overused, but used really badly? And does it represent the fastest that a word has been perverted and come to be almost meaningless? It was only invented in the mid 70s after all, and as I understand it it means something like a cultural item that gets passed down through generations (basically a cultural version of a gene). Thus the passing of a set of questions from one blog to another is in no way related to a "meme", and I wish here and now to state my objection to that term being used to describe this practice.

Far better to use the other commonly known word for this that I have seen - "blog tag" (or though when I was a lad it was called tig rather than tag, so for the purposes of this entry I will use blog tig).

I have been aware of this blog tig game for some while through the reading of other blogs, and have pretended to look upon with mock disdain for this little game, while all the time feeling desperately sad that no one ever tigged me. That is, until now, and I have been saved from a life of ignominious tig free blogging, by Romerican. Finally I have arrived, finally I can say my blogging experience is complete.

So, without further ado, since I am now "it", here are my answers to the questions posed:

Three things I love about Csíkszereda

The market - gorgeous fruit, delicious vegetables, intercultural interactions, friendly people, open air browsing, the place where Romania converges on the town, with stall holders from all over the country. I have heard from four different people that the rumour is it will all be closed down now that Romania will be in the EU, but I suspect (hope to hell) that they are wrong and this is just one of these ridiculous rumours that go on with EU accession (I remember when the rumour in the UK was that bananas would have to be not too curved under EU rules. And obviously that was bollocks too)

Bilingualism - not mine, obviously, since I'm a bit crap, but everybody else's. I think it's cool that so many people here speak two languages fluently. I spoke to a Romanian couple who live here recently who put the (Hungarian) Minimax cartoon channel on for their young daughter because they want her to learn the language, even though they themselves don't speak a word of it. It's all cool.

Small town/Big fish - I like the fact that it's a small town, so you know everything you need to know, and everyone you need to know (that last one is important in Romania, where it's who you know rather than what you know). But I also like the fact that the town has more importance than a town of similar size would have, thanks it to being the county town of Harghita and thus the de facto centre of the autonomy for Székelyföld movement. Plus it's the market/hub for a large region, so the population that use the town is much greater than the actual number of people who live here. And finally the annual pilgrimage makes it very lively - at least for a weekend.

Three things I hate about Csíkszereda

The cold - I can handle the cold for the most part, even when it drops down below -30, but it's just the sheer relentlessnees of it. Month after month after bloody month.

Nationalists - Hungarians who bang on about how terrible Romanians are and teach their kids to hate the language (and in so doing effectively hold back their own children - idiots), and Romanians who are so aggressively pissed off about living in a town in their own country in which they are not the majority that they take it out on everyone they meet, and also whine and complain to the national media (and the PRM) about how terrible it is to live here like some kind of oppressed minority. Give me a break, scummers.

Lack of things to do - what can I say, it's the flip side of small town advantages. We also have small town disadvantages.

Three places in Csíkszereda I like to go with friends

Friends? What are they? Going out? What's that all about? I have children.

Lobogo Panzio - not actually in the town, but a great restaurant in the mountains half way to Udvarhely. Great food, great location.

Outside on Petőfi Utca - any of the terrace cafes on a sunny day. Enjoying the weather, watching the world go by, on the street that makes Csíkszereda a good place to be.

Gambrinus Csarda - outdoor beer garden type place with large barbecue thing going on. Good place to sit and enjoy a nice large glass of cold draught Ciuc of an evening (and at 20,000 ROL for a large one, you can't really go wrong can you?)

Three things an outsider would not understand about Csíkszereda

Language - The fact that the first language of the city is Hungarian and not Romanian - even though we're miles and miles from Hungary.

Football - Is there any other European city in which football is so unimportant? It still baffles me, to be honest. It's all about ice hockey, and the local football team aren't even in Romania's third tier (which means that they're really really bad - there are 3 divisions in the second tier and 9 in the third.)

The main square - a vast windswept plaza stuck in the middle of the town for no reason (or at least no reason known to anybody but Ceausescu, as it was one of his architectural masterstrokes). Not attractive, not a nice place to hang out, just not, basically.


Fanciest neighborhood in Csíkszereda: Csiksomlyo. Not really a meighbourhood, technically, but rather a village which has become an effective suburb of the town. Where all the rich people now live.

Ugliest neighborhood in Csíkszereda: Probably the Mosquito district, which was built on a swamp (hence the name). But this town is saved from real ugliness by the mountains around - however ugly the buildings are, you can always look up and be reminded of the world beyond the communist era apartment buildings.

OK that's done. Now to pass on this blogging virus (more apt than a meme I feel) - to Paul and to David (the latter one in a probably vain attempt to get him back to his blog).

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)

Links

In the absence of any content from me today, I'd like to point everyone in the direction of Dumneazu's post about the peasant market at Negreni this last weekend. Sounds fantastic. Having read it, I asked a couple of people here if they knew something about this peasant market "Oh, yes, Fekete Tó" they all said, like it was common knowledge and I should of course have known about it. I'm definitely going next year.

And for one more link of the day, the website of Hans Ven der Meer, Dutch photographer, who has managed to put together a fantastic series of pictures of football being played in various different settings. Doesn't sound too promising, I know, especially if you're not into football - but believe me, it's worth a look. There are two pictures from Romania, in case you need local interest, and for Hungarian readers at the end of the strip are some fascinating shots (unfootball related) from mid-80s Budapest.