This week has slipped away pretty quickly, and today I’m making lists and plans for this weekend because tomorrow is May Day, Labor Day, and therefore no one works and nothing is open.  Zsolt and Szilvi are having a little BBQ at their place tomorrow evening and Györgyi somehow assigned me the role of Chef de cuisine.  I’m planning on making a Barefoot Contessa summer salad and American-style cheeseburgers.  So if anyone is thinking of going to the Budaörs Tesco tonight, I’m giving you fair warning now to clear out of my way if you see me coming with that oversized cart.

I hate holiday shopping.  Especially in countries (ahem, Hungary) where people seemingly have a complete lack of cart/aisle/next-in-line-for-the-weigh-station/ courtesy training.  Györgyi is no exception to this rule.  She’ll just stop pushing the cart mid-main-aisle and walk away from it.  She’ll even put down her basket right in the middle of the store and go ten to fifteen aisles away, claiming that it’s the custom in Hungary and that who would want to carry the basket around since it’s so heavy and the floor is right there.

Even after almost a year, it still shocks me to see her just abandon the basket or the cart, and I’m still issuing threats.  “Well IN AMERICA”, I’ll say in a really sauceboxy way, “the supermarket employees come and take your basket away from you and put the things back on the shelves.  So when we’re IN AMERICA you better not do it because    you.   will.   lose.   EVERYTHING and have to start all over again.”  As if in the Acme supermarket in Akron there is some kind of institutionalized cart-protective services.

In fairness, she’s not the only one.  People are abandoning their carts left and right here.  And if the abandoned cart is blocking something that you need–fruit or milk, for example–do NOT, under any circumstances, move someone’s cart.  Because putting the cart in front of something is a kind of claim to it.  Even if it’s the whole wall of milk, or whole display of vegetables.  I half-moved a woman’s cart a few weeks ago, and she took two tomatoes almost right out of my hands.  She said something directly to me, and though I didn’t catch all of it, I’m pretty sure it was something like: “Didn’t you see my cart here?  These tomatoes are MINNNE.”

So anyway, my blood pressure is a little evevated for the Tesco shopping trip tonight, but otherwise I can’t complain about a long weekend.  Plus on Saturday we’re going to Szeged, which is always a breeze for me.  And since his new site is getting even more hits than this one, I’ll still be posting pictures of Barnabás throughout the weekend.  Sziasztok, Internet!  See you again in May!