The Long Fog

I think that I wrote a few days ago about the fog that has been hanging its thin, gray curtain over Hungary for the last week or more.  It seems to have lifted today, but this past weekend, while driving through the small southern villages, the fog seemed to take me to an entirely different century.

As if caught in a dream when you realize you might be dreaming but can’t quite wake yourself up.  I suppose it’s a feeling more than any visual image.  But that’s how the fog has affected me the last ten days or so.  The mornings arrived and in the distance there seemed to be some sense of light, but only as if on the water and a storm was approaching.  And at night, the moon barely made an appearance.  When it did, it was only as a hint of itself barely dazzling a strip of light on wanting rooftops.

This week is Thanksgiving, but also, here, it’s not.  So unlike my parents who are anxiously preparing to fly down to Dataw Island for family Thanksgiving, I’ll be here just a little bit homesick.  I have a lot of pictures to sort through from the last week and weekend, and also a lot of stories to recount of more exciting activities.  But something about that old woman in the fog was, I don’t know, familiar.  Perhaps it was the stupid, American image I had of Hungary before I came here.  Before I learned that it wasn’t all old women on worn-torn dirt roads, inched by hunches, surrounded by fog.  But then this weekend it was exactly that.  And I had to post this before I could get on with the rest.

Staying In

Detective Barnabás Poirot on the case of Mono the cat

Detective Barnabás Poirot on the case of Mono the cat

This and last week have been sort of a blur.  Post birthday-post Easter-post Prague-back to work kind of blur, I guess.  We’ve been lucky here in central/eastern Europe because the weather has been insanely gorgeous for about two steady weeks.  And then I checked the weather for today, eagerly anticipating the weekend, and we’re looking at two days of thunderstorms and rain.  We wanted to go to the castle and walk around tomorrow, sit at a Cukrászda (ice cream, cakes, coffees kind of place), but now it looks like we may have to stay inside.

Tulip Trees

Tulip Trees

Even with the rain coming, the tulip trees have bloomed and look magnificent all over the city.  These were snapped in Szeged about two weeks ago.  They’ve opened now.

And even if we can’t go to the castle tomorrow, I have a lot to look forward to in upcoming weeks.  The biggest, perhaps (other than going back to America at the end of July for a few weeks) is my birthday present from Györgyi:

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July 3rd--County Cork, Ireland--Josh Ritter Live at the Marquee--w/ Full Orchestra!!

Yes, that did bring a little sun to my day!

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend wherever you are in the world.