How politics work

After the last elections in Slovakia, the political party SMER-SD with it's leader Fico got the best results. After the elections I have seen the small video clip below, which pretty nicely describes his tactic between the voters, and works marvelously. Czechs made a lot of good movies during the socialism, some extrelmy funny ones, and some with words of wisdom like this. I tried to translate it from czech... I had my difficulties in the process, but hopefully it understandable :)



Grandpa: What is our strategy for the campaign before the elections?
Candidate: ...
G: That everyone should have everything. Am I right?
C: Yeah, of course.
G: Every dumb ass knows that. But, what strategy to use to get to this? ... Come on, say it. ... So that everyone won't have anything.
C: No way!
G: Yeah. We just won't tell anyone. Just like you can't allow anyone to think, that you don't understand something. Your the head of the city, that means that you understand everything!
C: But I can't do that!
G: I know that to, but you can't let that show! See, the only thing you really must know is, that you need to know something about everybody... But be aware! Most importantly with those people who understand this.
C: Gramps, were did you take this from?..
G: ..and be careful! With the nit witted people be gracious! Show them that, that anything the clever people say is complete idiocy! Cause you can't argue with those who understand it, so you'll hurt your reputation! Because if you don't have the aggrieved, the harmed and the incompetent on your side, then you won't get far. Remember that!

Title of the movie: Tri chlapi v chalupe

Deevastating icy rain

A few weeks ago there was a huge icy rain in here. In a near city it had horrifying effects (roof, cars destroyed). I was home, we had "just" nut sized ice pieces falling down... at my grandparents place the ice stayed for another half an hour in the garden. I didn't make pictures from my grandparents garden before the accident just this one:

We were there to cut the wine, cause there were to many fruits (are they called bunches?) on them. Just 1 day before the rain :(

The garden afterward:

That time when I prelonged my stay in Bratislava

A small reminder of a few beautiful days in Bratislava this summer.

Just a few days ago one of my best friends visited Bratislava for a few days(he lives on the other end of Slovakia), so there was a need of meeting him. In Slovakia you usually try to find a good fake reason to meet up (or go for a drink) with people. In this case he wanted to give me my birthday present. :)

After failing to solve some thinks out in Bratislava I met with the guys at around 5pm. With him there was also Pivet a German girl and her Romanian boyfriend (with whom naturally we had a fight about Trianon and the Hungarians living in Romania. I'm pretty sure that I've picked the fight. Now that I think of it, he may have had no real overview about the matter, but had enough national pride to defend his nation by saying the same argument over and over again... Will need to focus more on reading peoples behaviour, was never good at it, but maybe now it will work better :) ). Afterwards also Petkan joined us. :)

Anyway we went to Slovak pub, ate from all kind of Slovak specialities. Then I had a meeting with old friends from AIESEC (something like a CU alumnie meeting), but had just 45 mins. before my bus left from to my hometown... At least I thought I would like to catch it.

The fact was, that I had nothing to do at home. This gave a very good position for Luki for convincing me to stay, what he used out... At the end we grabbed a few more beers and stayed at Petkans flat that night. After 3 of us drunk around 4 liters of mulled wine (The wine was pretty much undrinkable before boiling and adding some special Tesco mulled wine spices :) So for you to know, if you come to Slovakia and want to buy bad wine it is pretty easy to find them in shops, because it is cheap and is in plastic bottles or cartons...)

Continuing our tail the next day was pretty calm as Luki had stomach ache, and I wanted to go home to eat properly... Yes, wanted to, but as easily as yesterday I was persuaded to stay. We had a quite day, having a good talk in the city with Janie. Never had an opportunity to hear her out till now, what I do regret now. Quite an interesting person with a good taste of humor.(I write this here cause it is unsure when I'll meet her again.)
Then went back to Petkans apartment and killed time.
I went afterward to Doms beer pong party. Was as good as it used to be one year ago, but there are now again a lot of people I don't know, and won't have a chance to get to know for a while. Which made me realize, that I'm now in the same situation Sherisse was telling me about half a year ago, and heard also from a lot more people: there comes a time, when you get tired of getting to know new people and not being able to rely on the fact that they will be around even after you made a strong bound to them. It is definitely a hard thing and I'm not sure how I'll handle this situation.

I left early from Doms party. I haven't seen Luki for ages as he was in Australia, and he planes to leave again for an internship in Europe. I got back at around 11pm, and we were singing till 1am :) Luki was playing mostly Pink Floyd songs on his guitar + I will need to learn Hey Joe again in Hungarian... Awesome experience, as I'm a fan of such events.

We took the next day easy... Watching a movie, just chilling and as usually I wanted to get home with a bus at 7pm. We went to the "beach", had a drink and went to the Slovak pub to meet an ex-intern who was in Slovakia in 2001/02. It must have been a lot of fun having her around, we had a lot of good talks, there were a lot of people I haven't met for ages (alumni meeting number 2 :)) We finished at around 1pm. We were going again to Petkans apartmant (yep, was convinced to stay again... but wait for the twist...), when I suddenly realized that I forgot my bag and the flowers for my mother in the pub! While running back I realized that at around 2pm there should be a bus going home. Now I know 2:15, bus stop 11... Thou these facts were unknown at that moment, so I waited at the usual spot (at the other end of the station), and nothing came, so I called a cab and went to sleep with the others again :P

The next day I missed my bus again, and waited for 2 hours for the next bus to come, luckily Vaida was waiting with his brother at the bus station also, so I made them company. They met another Lithuanian girl, with whom they were talking afterwards. In a nice sleepy state I was able to listen to the Lithuanian language, remembered YouCan in 2004 and listening to Spanish and Portugese people :) I liked it. (On the photo, there am I with the same clothes for 3 days... Which were spend with friends and in a very good atmosphere, I definitely smile in my heart ;)

There are two more things I want to mention.
The perfect cooking skills of Pivet, though there were meals, which are easy to prepare, the taste was marvelous! Thank you!
And the few hours spent talking with Nadja, who I discovered lives in the same flat where we were staying. It was nice to her speak about annoying neightbors, dogs, german comedians and studies. Looking forward for the next opportunity!
As a lot of years in my life I was spending before the German television (we had satelite). I've got a quite good German vocabulary from those days + a piece of German culture just stick on me. Talking to her makes me get nostalgic feelings, spicing up the talks to an interesting person even more :)

Thank you all! Looking forward to meeting you again!

Tesco curiosities - Red Fruit Flavour?

I was wondering maybe I missed the marketing campaign of the next generation soft drinks... hmm this was quite a surprise: