My Blueberry Sunrise

Before reading the following post, please put this song on. 

Elizabeth: So what's wrong with the Blueberry Pie?
Jeremy: There's nothing wrong with the Blueberry Pie, just people make other choices. You can't blame the Blueberry Pie, it's just... no one wants it.
Elizabeth: Wait! I want a piece.

And so did I. Ever since I saw that charming movie, My Bluberry Nights I always wanted to try a piece of blueberry pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. (This is the movie in which Norah Jones had her first and only role on the big screen. Boy, had I been looking forward to it because of Norah! And the always sexy Jude Law. And the always beautiful Rachel Weisz. ) That was about three or four years ago, and, even though I found a neat recipe on the internet, blueberries were nowhere to be found in my neck of the woods, not even frozen ones. Although I really really wanted to trick my grandma into baking me a bluberry pie, the main ingredient was missing, hence my plan fell through. However, eventually, every once in a while I would come across some (dubiously) fresh blueberries at tesco's, but these were sold in such small portions (125g a box, I think), and so expensive (about 2200-2500 HUF/kg), that I always talked myself out of buying them. Especially since I needed about half a kilo of blueberries to make one pie.

But then, about two months ago, all of a sudden I bumped into frozen blueberries at tesco's which were/are sold relatively cheap, at the price of 400 HUF/300g. Now that really turned me on! I bought a pack, and the day before we went to see the sunrise I baked my first blueberry pie with Zsö. It turned out marvellously! Although the blueberries were not fresh, the pie ended up being really delicious, and, not at all complicated to make. Most certainly worth to try it out once or twice. However, next time I will substitute the blueberries with sour cherries, I am pretty sure it will be just as yummy, and only a tiny bit sourer. (I love sour fruits, so that won't scare me away.)

Here is the recipe we used: 

Ingredients for pie crust: (source)

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup butter, chilled and diced
• 1/4 cup ice (= really cold) water

Ingredients for filling: (source)

• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 3 tablespoons cornstarch plain flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 4 cups fresh blueberries  (I only had one pack = 300g ~ 2 cups of blueberries. It was enough, but the pie will most certainly be richer if you add at least 500g or 2 packs of blueberries.)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C). 
2. In a large bowl, combine flour and salt. (The original recipe does not include sugar, however, it could have used one or two spoonfuls, to make the crust a bit sweeter.) Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in water, a tablespoon at a time, until mixture forms a ball. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 4 hours or overnight. (I never had the time and the patience to refrigerate the dough. We rolled it into the cake pan right after making it. Still, it worked out fine.)
3. Divide the dough into two, to 2:1 ratio. (So one ball is twice as big as the other.)
4. Roll the bigger dough out to fit a 9 inch pie plate. Place crust in pie plate. Press the dough evenly into the bottom and sides of the pie plate.  
5. To make the filling, mix sugar, flour, salt, and cinnamon, and sprinkle over blueberries. 
6. Pour berry mixture into the crust, and dot with butter. Cut remaining pastry into 1/2 - 3/4 inch wide strips, and make lattice top. Crimp and flute edges. 
7. Bake pie on lower shelf of oven for about 50 minutes, or until crust is golden brown. ( I don't think we baked it for more than 30 minutes. It is sufficient enough. And 220° is too high, about 175° is high enough, otherwise the crust will burn in a few minutes and the filling won't be baked.)

Have fun baking & then enjoy the pie!

“What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.” Sylvia Plath

mistakes i know i am making

WARNING: the following text is the combination of endless whining, ranting, babbling, scribbling, and stream of consciousness thinking without one clear point in mind. this is not a beneficial text. neither is it an entertaining one. in fact, you may want to skip it completely, and move to the next post (in case there is one). however, you are best off by simply shutting down your computer and reading a book instead. any book. twilight and fejős éva books excluded, i mean. (i would not call those books, anyway. so you shouldn't either.)

if you are still reading this post, you should note that by reading it all the way through - in case you manage to hold out that long - you may realize:

a, what a pathetic person i am

b, how much i like to feel sorry for myself and drown in my own sorrow

c, how broke i am

d, how pointless being an english/ american studies major is

d, how it is not worth to go to university and earn a degree at all. and spend all that money on it.

so here comes the endless whining:

i am so bloody fallen apart. i feel two rather heavy, hard rocks the size of my fist in/on my body. one is in my stomach. the other is on my chest. oh, and there's a lump too. now that one is in my throat. all very comfortable. and they are getting more and more comfortable by every hour. i dont think they are planning to go away in the next three or four months. or at least until i more or less manage to sort myself out. or until i find a more or less steady job that pays at least the minimum wage. 

i am not sure that's how my great, marvellous liberty is supposed to feel.

i think that's how unbearable liberty is supposed to feel.

about a week ago i learnt that i cannot stay in the student hostel from september. even though i have been living here for four years, i know everybody around here and everybody knows me around here (meaning that i have connections in this neck of the woods), i should pull some serious strings and lick quite a few bottoms just to attempt to sort out my staying here. i don't think that will happen. and not just because i am not ready to lick asses. i am not broken in enough. even if i did lick them, i dont think i could sort things out. i dont even know whether i want to sort them out. i dont know whether i want to stay here.

anyway, yesterday my two-week vacation breakation ended. and i came back to budapest with the intention of working at the language school for another two or three weeks, then leave my job, and move home on the 1st of september. then start looking for a job, and, hopefully, find something that i dont loath completely, and start working. or, worst case scenario, find anything that hires and pays me.

then yesterday, on my way back to budapest i got a phone call and i learnt that 4/5 of lessons are cancelled for the next two weeks. meaning that, instead of about 20 lessons per week, i will only give about four or five lessons in the next fortnight. great, isn't it? now that really pissed me off. that's hell of a lot of money i had planned to earn and had counted on, yet, i won't be able do so. had i known things would turn out this way, i would have moved home 1st august. i could have saved myself from some serious expenses. it is just not worth it for me to hang around in budapest in august. financially, i mean. and it's all because of some idiot and lazy teenager who decided to ditch her language exam and postpone her lessons with me. it is just really pissing me off. she wants to have her remaining lesson in november. well, guess what? i won't be hanging around here those days. (unfortunately.)

and i still do not know what to do.

now i most certainly cannot afford to stay here, not with all that money lost. (now, at this point you may ask: how can it be lost when it wasn't even earned? well, it was counted on.)

and i am freaking out, i am scared to death that i will not be able to find any job at home. (now, that's what i call some serious quarter life panic.) 

i mean, common, it's borsod, that's where the unemployment rate is the highest in the country.

and it's also where the level of culture the lowest, probably. 

i do not want to move back home, my heart is keep whispering me to stay here, stick around budapest. i am happy here. i love the place. there are opportunities here. i could probably find a job here much easier than in miskolc.

but then my mind answers my heart. as a matter of fact, he can't stop telling her off (yep, in my thinking my mind is male, whereas my heart is a female. typical stereotypes of the sexes, huh?): yeah, stupid, but you just cannot afford sticking around. you are broke as hell. you were never the kind of grasshopper who thought about winter at all. you are the kind of grasshopper who is a true free spirit, who always seizes the day, lives for the moment, and never cares for tomorrow. hence, you burn yourself every once in a while. and suffer all right, and get pulled deep down under water by those heavy rocks in your stomach and on your chest. and that enormous lump miriculously transfers into tears all of a sudden, and they come, bubbling out of the corner of your eyes when you least expect them. now that's the kind of grasshopper you are. the kind for whom life is not a journey up on a hill, but a rollercoaster with constant rotation of heaven and hell. naaa, you are not the cold-headed kind, who always plans ahead, and who executes those plans perfectly. you are the what-the-hell kind.

and now here i am burning, and being pulled under water by those big rocks. falling deeper and deeper. i wonder when i will hit bottom rock.

and i still don't know what to do.

well, actually, i do.

since i don't have a choice, i just move home in a couple of weeks, and start looking for some shitty job.

by the way, who was that idiot that said that your twenties are the best years of your life? he must have been high during that decade.

i should have stayed a child forever.

or i should have found a better way to ignore reality completely.

i guess i will be watching the graduate and post-grad quite a few times in the next couple of months.

now these are those trully marvellous anxiety-ridden days of quarter life panic i will hopefully look back on in a few years and note to myself that i have managed to get through them too. this shall too pass, right?

these are also the days i should take good notes of cause i might turn them into a book one day.

i wonder whether anybody would read it.

(ps: i wonder why i always feel better after writing. i guess i should stick with the darn thing. the rocks got a teeny bit smaller.)

Na milyen ez az érzés, hogy boldog a vérkép?

I've been off-work for over a week now, away on a two-week holiday. Even though I cannot afford a proper vacation this year either, I'm trying to fill my off-days with as much fun and entertainment as possible, despite of the autumnish weather and all the things I can't stop worrying about. 

On the first day of my breakation I ended up going to a Szabó Balázs Band concert with Zsö and K. They are pretty much my favorite Hungarian band, especially since I hardly listen to any Hungarian music at all, and SZBB is kind of the only band I like. This was the second concert of theirs that I ever attended. The first was back in May (or April?), during Bölcsész-days at the university when they played in Könyvtár Klub. The place was completely packed, the acoustics were kind of crapy (even though I don't know much about acoustics, you could simply hear it), you could literally not drop a needle, and neither could you see through all that cigarette smoke. Clearly, Könyvtár Klub was not the best venue, especially for a band that is so popular among humanities students. 

This time both the place and the audience was quite different: the concert was held at Millenáris, on a chilly Saturday evening at the end of July. We were not wedged in between the four walls of a tiny, stale-aired pub, neither were the cigarette smoke visible, if there was any in the air. There weren't more than a couple of hundred people assembled in the beginning of the concert. (Were there even two hundred? It was actually closer to one hundred, I reckon.) Yet, the atmosphere was fantastic and absolutely cheerful from the very first chords. Szabó Balázs was in an utterly entertaining mood, the whole performance much resembled a concert/stand up-comedy evening combo, rather than just a simple music concert. SZB is most certainly not only an extremely talented (or should I say brilliant?) musician, but a hilarious entertainer with a great sense of humour and, as a bonus, ridiculous trapeze pants of his own. 

Despite the previously mentioned pants - or thanks to them? - it was one hell of a fun concert that I wished could have, would have lasted longer than an hour and a half. I bet I wasn't the only one doing such wishing, as there were at least three (or maybe even four?) "very last songs". Seriously, this guy is so talented, with such a sweet, soothing, yet outstanding voice, that I could listen to him recite a washing machine manual, I still would not mind, would not get bored of it; in fact, I would enjoy it to the very last syllable. 

That's most certainly not the muled wine talking in me, because we drank it all - accompanied by pretzels - on that not-so-chilly fun Saturday night, at the very end of July.

sunrise, sunrise, looks like morning in your eyes

it just occurred to me that i never wrote about the day we went to see the sunrise.

well, it was in one fine morning a number of weeks ago.

no, actually, it wasn't. 

it wasn't a fine morning at all. in fact, we were having chilly, wet days, the kind that makes you wonder whether it's autumn already and whether you slept through the whole of  the summer. it was the kind we are having nowadays. so that's why we had to sleep with both our fingers and toes crossed, hoping for some kind of a miracle, that it would not be raining and the sky would not be as cloudy as it had been in the previous days. so we could see at least a tiny bit of the sun rising above the city.

and then i woke up in the darkest hour of the day, at 3.30 am, after less than three hours of lying in my bed, twisting and turning that i would not even call sleeping. i quickly got dressed, washed my face, and even staightened my hair. now one thing is for sure, and it is that i had never straightened my hair at just after 3.30 in the morning. but you know, i was about to go and see the sunrise, one of the most pure & magical things in the entire world. and what deserves proper straight hair if a pure summer sunrise doesn't? i mean, hello, random half-waves in my hair totally crash those silent, solemn moments of the sunrise.

at 4.07 sharp we set off, and walked to örs vezér square, since the trollies were not running yet. now that time of the day is the crack of the dawn in the middle of the summer. and i don't mean just figuratively, like how people always say that they did this or that at the crack of the dawn. we really did see the dawn cracking. we did not hear it cracking though, since at this time of the day there's still a vast silence hanging over the city. it's not quite the kind of silence that takes over the world when virgin snow covers all grounds and surfaces and the night is orangy and homely and all, but the roaring kind of silence that rules the world before thunders start thundering and storms start storming all around.

and then we got to örs vezér square. we had wanted to be there before the very first metro of the day left the station, we had wanted to see the bkv guys unlocking the locks and pulling up the gates that look like enormous blinds at the entrance. but since we are the lazy kind and the girly kind who can't always set off at the planned time, we reached only the second metro. still, we found out quite a few things about the not-yet-5-am underground. did you know that there was a very unique morning crowd on the underground? before 5 am the underground does not quite resemble its usual self, as it's not completely stuffed yet, there's still fresh air lingering around the metro cars. there are people actually smiling at each other, greeting each other, saying proper good mornings to each other, nodding their same old how-do-you-dos nods that they have been doing for god only knows how many years. they even save a seat for each other. before 5 am the underground does not feel like big city underground at all, but like some sort of a small-but-comfy bus that commutes the grandmas to and from the market place from one tiny village at the end of the world to  another one. 

we got off at astoria, then changed to tram 47-49 and rode it as far as gellért fürdő. that's where we got off, and that's where we started climbing up the hill. and that is also where the whole morning started to resemble that scene from moszkva tér when it's the eve of may 1st, right before the open air swimming pools are being opened for the summer and when the pools are being filled with water. and the guys in the movie sneak into gellért fürdő, grease the security guide/the guy who's filling up the pools and have a fun night in the pool which is completely empty except for the four of them. then they get some old chairs from god only knows where, take them to the middle of szabadság bridge, sit on them, put their legs up to the railings of the bridge, and watch the sunrise while eating kifli and drinking zacskós tej. now that's what i call pure freedom, even though it was set in 1989, and they were right before taking their finale exams in secondary school.

well, at this point, i might as well tell you that, actually, that's where the original idea came from, i mean our going to see the sunrise. moszkva tér is my favorite hungarian movie, and i have watched it quite a few times this spring/summer, and somehow it popped into our head to reenact that sitting-on-szabadság-bridge-watching-the-sunrise-eating-kifli scene. so the real reason of our waking up at 3.30 am was moszkva tér. but then zsö told me that if we really wanted to see the sunrise we had to get to some place really high. and the highest reachable place at 5 in the morning was the top of gellért-hegy. so we climbed up, but not to the top top top, but to that hidden look-out spot that i found some time ago when i climbed the hill on my own on one truly fine day instead of going to some dull seminar, and where i read eat pray love by elizabeth gilbert. now this spot is a really hidden one, hardly anybody knows of it, or at least i like to belive that hardly anybody knows of it. 

anyway, it was about 5 o'clock by the time we got there,  and the crack of the dawn was long over. it was light all around, but the sun hadn't quite risen yet. the entire city, or at least most of it, was still asleep yet. so we sat down, got comfortable and all, and waited for the magic to happen. 

but, i'm afraid, it never really happened. eventually the sun did rise, the sky did clear out to a certain extent, the clouds moved, giving space to the sun to shine. but there was no real magical sunrise showering the sky in a thousand pretty shades of pink. 

still, it was pure, and even magical in that bittersweet hungarian way that we all know so well, as we were sitting there, on the top of budapest, watching the city wake up, while munching on a couple of slices of an ever so yummy blueberry pie that we had baked with our own two four hands the day before. we sat there for about two hours, then, when we could not take all that beauty and the crispyness of a perfect summer morning any more, we gathered ourselves, and walked down the hill.

we crossed szabadság bridge on foot, wandered around downtown, then ended up in károlyi-kert. although it was only 8 am yet, it felt it was the middle of the afternoon already. well, after all, by that time we had been up and running for almost 5 whole hours. it was high time for some good old napping. so we got the big yellow blanket out, layed it down on that oh-so-well-kept grass of károlyi-kert,  and laid around for an hour or two. now that's  another thing, i had never done before, lying in the grass on a nice yellow blanket in károlyi-kert on a fine tuesday morning, when it's not even 9 am yet, when so many people haven't even drunk their coffee or brushed their teeth yet. 

so that's how we ended up reenacting the szabadság bridge scene from moszkva tér. 

it wasn't quite authentic i had to admit. we did not have any kifli or zacskós tej with us, neither did we promise that we leszőnyegpadlózzuk a moszkva teret. yet, i guess, that the guys of the movie would be quite proud of us had they known about the whole thing.

 it was one fine 2011 edition, that's for sure.

“I am completely a loner. In my head I want to feel I can be anywhere. There is sort of recklessness that being a loner allows me.”

                                                                       Arundhati Roy

So What Should I Do Now?

If only all my wishes would become true as fast and as simply as the one about my master studies. A couple of nights ago I received the small envelope text message that starts with "We regret to inform you...". I did not get into masters in American studies, even though I got maximum points for the admittance interview (or whatever it's called in English), and had an extra six points. I only had 76 in total, and missed the limit by four points. 

But I don't mind it at all. I am not disappointed the slightest bit; as a matter of fact, the feeling of unlimited freedom has taken over me. I did not want to go there, I did not want the see the smug and ever so bored faces of the same teachers for another two years, and study the exact same things I have spent the last four years with. It would have been a waste of time and effort (not to mention the semesters  payed for by the state). I feel as if this great burden has been taken off my shoulders, the bell jar has lifted, and I finally breathed in some fresh air. 

But then, on the other hand, it is as if the door of the cage has been opened up,  and I am free after four years of continuous squirrel cage, but now I have no idea what to do with this great, immense freedom. I am floating in the air, not belonging anywhere. I have no idea what to do next. 

Obviously, what would make the most sense is to start looking for a proper nine-to-five job and a room to rent where I could live from September. I could stay in Budapest, live and work here, but it would be utterly expensive, and rather difficult to make a living with the minimum/starting wage of a fresh graduate, paying for rent, travel, food, etc, especially since I am not a student anymore. 

I could also move back home to Miskolc, where living would be much much cheaper, as I would not have to pay for rent & food. I could work for a language school there, and even save some money. But I am afraid  that if I move back home, I would get stuck there, and never come back to Budapest. 

I could also pack up my stuff and hit the road. I could finally feed my wanderlust, travel, and gain some real life experience again. I could go back to England. I could go to Norway. I could go back being an au pair for another year or half a year, and set my foot in a foreign country. I am dying to travel and get to know new people and new places. I could finally put my English into good use. But, honestly, I don't have enough money saved up to start a living somewhere abroad. I would have to start working in Hungary first, save some money, only then would I be able to try my luck abroad. 

I will probably stay in this dorm for a few more months, as it's the cheapest way of living I can think of right now, continue working in the language school (why would I give up and leave a job that I already have? Doesn't make sense at all, does it?), start looking for another job (another language school, maybe? Is it possible to coordinate the two?). And then, I will see how things turn out. The important thing is to remain calm, and not to rush into a decision I haven't thought through properly. I do have the habit of making decisions in a rush, but then realizing that I should have given it a bit more thought. I might want to listen to other people's opinions and ideas as well. They might be cleverer than I am at seeing the entire picture and having a more objective point of the current situation. 

But until I make the final decision, all I can think of is what the great literary figures & the big influences on my life would do in my situation...

• Charles Webb would tell me to go home, spend the summer floating around in a swimming pool, find myself a Mr Robinson, let him seduce me, then hook up with his son as well, fuck up my life completely, so I can become a real grown-up in a few months.
• Jane Austen would advise me to find a husband and get married ASAP, settle down in a nice mansion in the countryside, then give birth to half a dozen children.
• Flaubert would also advise me to get married, get pregnant, get bored of my husband and fed up with marriage, commit adultery, and then, just to put the dot on the i, poison myself with arsenic.
• Tolstoy would also have me get married, get bored of my husband and fed up with marriage, commit adultery, get pregnant with a bastard child, and become an outcast. But, instead of poisoning myself, I would end up throwing myself under a train. Nice perspective, huh?
• Proust would simply tell me to go back into bed, stay there for the rest of my life and start writing unbearably long & unreadable, but critically acclaimed novels.
• Kerouac would tell me to hit the road already, and not give a fuck about anything. But bring along an insane friend and a typwriter on the road, so I could write about our crazy adventures. 
• Nabokov would also find me a husband but with an underage son, tell me to get married, murder my husband, deprave the child, and only then would he send me on a cross-country road trip with the beautiful & innocent boy on my side.
• Mark Twain would also tell me to hit the road, but find work, possibly something of the hard labour kind, meet a bunch of people, and gain some serious experience out there in that crazy little thing called life. Only then should I sit down, and write books about it.
• Plath would advise me to go down into the cellar, crawl under the floor with a bottle of pills and a glass of water in my hand, and give up on life completely (and, should I not succeed in the first place, turn the gas tap on and stick my head in the oven).
• Salinger would tell me to fuck it all, and leave for New York. I would fuck everything up even more on my way, but then I would feed the ducks in Central Park. And life would go on, anyway.
• Hemingway would advise me to go to war, experience some heavy stuff, then move to Paris, spend the days in grand hotels and charming little cafes drinking, smoking, talking, hanging out with Capa, Fitzgerald, and other extremely talented and supercool expat artists, and write novels in top-of-the-iceberg style every once in a while.
  
• F.S. Fitzgerald would tell me to party hard, find a mentally instable but incredibly handsome man, get married, party harder, write the great Hungarian novel about my college years, then move to Paris, and hang out with Hemingway. Party even harder, until I drop dead poor and unremembered.
•  Robert Capa would tell me to gather my cameras, go to some distant war zone, or at least to a relatively dangerous place, and start shooting people (with cameras, never with guns, even though other people might be shooting at me with heavy arms). I might get wounded on the way, might struggle, starve, and even steal bread and not pay for rent every once in a while, but I would meet the most fascinating people, and make my name famous by brathtaking photographs. I would also live in the gratest capitals of the world, such as New York, Paris, London, and Berlin.
• Joanne Harris would send me to a tiny, distant French village where, for months, I would struggle to fit in, but in the end I would succeed. But by that time I would get bored, and wanted to move on with the coming wind.
• Carrie Bradshaw, just like Salinger,  would also advise me to move to New York, but she would also tell me to buy a pair of shoes, play dress up, and write an article about my non-existent love-life every once in a while.
• Rory Gilmore would tell me to. Well, Rory Gilmore would never get into such a situation. But in case she did, she would steal a boat with an excessively rich and handsome blond guy on his side. Eventually she would suck it up, pull herself together, and not give up until she found some non-paying internship job at an acclaimed newspaper. Of course, she would not have to care about money, 'cause her grandparents are notably rich. And she went to Yale, anyway.

If I had the chance to choose, I would go with Robert Capa's way of life, and not just because Hemingway must have been real fun to hang around with. If only it wasn't the 21st century, the internet did not exist, and printed press weren't dying.

So, I guess what makes the most sense is Mark Twain's solution to my problem. I will probably have to stick to that one, I am afraid.

...and then i was an official graduate

"Hát ezt meg most hová tegyem? Zacskóba' kell tartani?" were my first words upon returning home from graduation ceremony. 

i don't really know how to feel about it. 

mostly, i don't care. i'm just glad it's over. i guess it's good to have another certificate on my shelf gathering dust.

i don't feel like going back there in september.

Caught in a Thunder Storm

Do you know what's the best thing about summer? Nope, it's most certainly not the sunshine, the heat, or all that shrivelling on the sun. 

It's all those amazingly beautiful thunder storms! I love love love storms, the larger the better (that's what she said), especially when there are earthshaking thunders and breathtaking lightnings all around. Not to mention the sweet and ever so marvelous scent of rain, and random cool drops soothing my blazing skin. Heavenly, isn't it?

We have had one of those gorgeous thunderstorms tonight, the air filled with the roaring sound of thunders for hours, while hundrends of lightnings have hit the ground. And I finally managed to catch a lightning with my camera! Well, actually, it was the first time I have ever tried, so there's no point in saying finally. Still, taking a photo of a lightning has always been one of my photography-related goals. Because it's something very unique, something that does not happen every other night, that is rather hard to catch, that's more instantaneous than more than anything else. Taking a half-decent photo of a lightning is not that easy at all. (Well, probably it is not that difficult if you have a decent camera and you use the proper settings. But I never found out what the proper or most helpful settings were. I guess I like making things more difficult than necessary.)

Anyway, with all those lightnings gilding the sky, I took my chance tonight, pegged down by the window as soon as the storm broke out, and did not leave until I had something relatively half-decent stored on the memory card of my camera. As you can see, it is a tiny-little, baby lightning, rather boring, no branches (or whatever they are called), no grandiose phenomena hitting the sky whatsoever. 

It might be yellower, it might be sourer, yet, it's mine. Next time, it will be better. I promise. I will not leave the window until it's better.

Until then, it's one small thunder for mankind, but one giant thunder for my photography.

Stacked Up

Fortunately the local library in Miskolc does not close for the summer until August, so I, too, could invade at least one library, and get a bunch of books before their month-long recess. As I have consumed enough silly little paperbacks lately, not to mention that I have plenty more of such entertainment at home on my shelves, I thought I would get some proper literature in Hungarian. But then this is what I ended up with:

• Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney : This is the first volume of the widely popular and critically acclaimed series of children's books. I had already bumped into it several times on different book blogs, plus on imdb as well, as it has already been turned into a movie. I was quite taken by surprize when I saw it on one of the very few shelves of English books in my local library. It was an instant get, without a doubt. In fact, I have already read it, it is extremely hilarious, you simply cannot wipe off the smile from your face once you start reading it.
• Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby: I have only read High Fidelity by Hornby so far, but no doubt, he's one of the best contemporary British writers. He never fails to create a truly unique British atmosphere in his books, and complex & oh-so-hilarious characters. Not to mention all those pop culture references. This book is one long ode to the love of his life, football, that is (what else can you expect from a British bloke like him?), especially the club team, Arsenal.
• About a Boy by Nick Hornby: (never made it into the photo) Same reason as for Fever Pitch, plus, this is a novel that was adapted to the big screen. I liked the movie with Hugh Grant, I am curious about the book.
• Az ajtó by Szabó Magda: Hungarian classic, by one of my favorite Hungarian writers. Nuff said. (Should have read it a long time ago.)
• Puszibolt by Cserna-Szabó András: You may remember that I already loaned it back in January, but never got around reading it. I hate returning unread books to the library, nevertheless, it happens to me all the time. I thought I would give it another try, as I have heard only good things about it. Plus, I love the title! ( I do know the saying says that books should be judged neither by their covers nor their titles, still, they are and can be.)
• Kronópiók és fámák története by Julio Cortázar: I have never read Cortázar before, but Zsö has been chewing my ear about giving him a chance. So here I go, giving in to all that chewing & Cortázar.
• Robert Capa kalandos élete by Richard Whelan: Robert Capa is pretty much the greatest Hungarian photographer, and one of the best war photographers/correspondents of all time. I was surprized to find this biography of him in the lib, and since I am pretty interested in the guy, I got the book.
• Kissé elmosódva by Robert Capa: This one is written by Capa himself, supposed to be a story that he was trying to sell to movie producers. Thought I might as well get it together with his biography.

Furthermore, I placed on record (is it how előjegyzés called in English?) Közel Afrikához and Vissza Afrikába by Lángh Júlia. I have alread read Egy budai úrilány and Párizs fű alatt by her. Loved both, especially, the former. I enjoy Lángh's style, her first person narrative, and I can hardly wait to find out about her adventures & experiences in Africa. 

Well, as you can see, I have plenty of volumes stacked up for the next couple of months, so now all I have to do is get down to business and enjoy the ride.

What are you reading this summer?