Ah, many fond memories! Thanks to bringababe for the tip!

And I’ve lost a wheel.

Anyway E and I left “early” at about 2:30am and went to Corvinteto, which has all the charm and style of a red light-swathed opium den (and I’ll let you decide whether that sounds cool or not), where we proceeded to get our boogie ON. Long story short, my 7:45am alarm came WAY too soon.

So I got sad.

Part of it is that we’re leaving. Sometime. More on that soon, when I force myself to sit down and write again. But then I read the news about the NYPD goons getting acquitted, and I just felt terrible for Sean Bell and his family and friends. I have no clue why, except that they are so obviously the victims of a racist and unjust system – but what else is new? Bang off twenty shots. Stop. Reload. Bang off another twenty shots. It was him or us, judge. Who was Amadou Diallo again?

Then we heard that a bicyclist had been killed yesterday. Riding on a bike path, hit by a truck that took a right without looking. Maybe he wasn’t either. And I wanted to cry for his family and send them cards and hug his kids or siblings if he has them. Maybe he doesn’t. I mean, didn’t.

We decided to join a group of 150 or so bikers that had gathered at Heroes’ Square to paint a ghost bike and chain it to the spot where he was killed. It was pretty powerful, all these people who didn’t even know the guy coming together to ride. Along the way we stopped at another ghost bike, one for the victim of a similar incident that happened a few months ago. This madness must cease.

And you would think it would – soon – judging by the turnout of last Sunday’s Critical Mass ride. It was only the biggest in the world, EVER, at an estimated 80,000 participants. The only things bigger are the anti-government rallies and the Sziget Festival, but I don’t even know if that counts because most of those people are foreigners.

But the truth is, Hungary is changing impossibly slowly. It is a wildly squawking Turul with its wings drowning in a thick paprikas. Did I tell you yet why we’re leaving?

And this is the most poetic thing I’ve read in months. It makes me sad to know these truths.

But don’t worry, I’ve been drinking water all day.

The first example is the entrance to our building. There are two doors, which each take the same key. For over a year, the second door has stuck just enough so that it doesn’t lock, and can be just pushed open. While obviously a security issue, the crime in the neighborhood is so l0w (aside from my bike being stolen from right outside this very door) that most residents probably believed that the one outer door was enough. Recently, however, the inner door closes and locks as it should. But instead of being relieved that we are one glass door safer from burglary than we were before, our reactions have mostly been negative, along the lines of “whose stupid idea was it to fix the door? Now I have to unlock BOTH of them. That’s double the work! What a travesty!”

Another example has been the effort on the part of the mass transportation authority to field more ticket inspectors at all metro station entrances and many trams and buses, including the night “drunk” bus, and thus preventing the estimated 60% of riders who do not buy tickets to actually do so. Again, instead of people recognizing that more people actually paying for the rides will help improve the quality of service and (hopefully) eventually lower the ticket price, it seems like an affront: “what do you mean I HAVE to buy a ticket now? This has always been optional; I can’t believe they’re making us actually PAY to ride the subway!”

Link (scroll down a bit for English instructions)

The show starts at 8 p.m. here in Hungary, so that would be 2 p.m. east coast time, 11 a.m. west coast time, and 4 a.m. Japan time. Gomen nasai!

Your host, the Def Selector.

We begin around 1:30pm, Hungary time, for the first meal with the family. Click the “more” tab and keep refreshing as I will try to update every 30 minutes or so. With pictures! Entries are from newest to oldest, so start at the bottom and work your way up.

10:24pm GMT +1: This concludes part one of Liveblogging Christmas. Stay tuned in just another 18 hours for part two of the series: Liveblogging Christmas Part II: America. This is Def Selector, signing off. Good night and good luck (sleeping on that huge stomach).

10:10pm GMT +1 Ákos calls relatives in Canada. It’s been years since they’ve seen each other. We are packing up our things and getting sleepy.

9:53pm GMT +1: The tube comes on again. In America we watch football, in Hungary they watch swimming.

9:13pm GMT +1: Guests leave. Quiet ensues. Moans due to full stomachs continue. 

9:09pm GMT +1: It’s snowing!

8:42pm GMT +1: Bizarrely, I weigh less than I did before dinner: 69.9kg before, 68.4kg after. I explain to the guests that despite constantly looking thinner every year, I’ve stayed almost the exact same weight for nearly 10 years. We’re entering the post-meal lull.

8:30pm GMT +1: And now it comes to this:

8:11pm GMT +1: The Rolling Stones 5-DVD concert set has been put on the tv. Start me up! 

7:56pm GMT +1: Dinner is consumed. Talk revolved around how delicious everything is, whether we will take a train from Vienna to Budapest upon our return or not, and how many children my sisters have. Plan is to look at pictures of Owen in J-tree and Abram in bed after dessert.

The BIG MEAL (#1) breakdown:

First course: “French Salad”. Vegetarian-friendliness rating, on a scale of 1-5: 2-3 = Hoo-ha that’s a lotta mayo. And eggs. BUT, there are vegetables such as corn, peas and carrots swimming around in there. I promise.

Second course: traditional fish (carp) soup. Vegetarian-friendliness rating, on a scale of 1-5: 2 = those fish were once swimming around freely, seeing things that only their weird beady eyes could see. But mmm are they yummy. Strong Steve added for spiciness.

Main course: Turkey, fried carp, potato-onion salad, rice, pork stuffed with plums. Vegetarian-friendliness rating, on a scale of 1-5: Turkey – 1 = Do. Not. Want. Potato-onion salad – 5 = Go Vegan! Rice – N/A = yo, rice is rice. Still yummy though! Pork stuffed with plums – 1 = Do. Not. Want. Oh my Jesus I am full.

Ákos makes the fish and pours the wine simultaneously. You don’t get this far without serious skills.

6:30pm GMT +1: Presents are exchanged, many laughs and kisses as well. 

6:15pm GMT +1: I get yelled at for liveblogging during present opening. I suffer for my art. 

6:00pm GMT +1: A glass of champagne is poured for all. Five minutes later, they take my music off again. Now it’s some corny “normal” Christmas songs. I’m just waiting for “An Irie Reggae Christmas, volume 3″ to come on. A bell rings and it’s time to open presents. To learn more about Christmas traditions, see this article, by our friend Michelle Enemark. 

5:50pm GMT +1: Shot #2: Shot of pálinka, plum brandy with honey, homemade by Ákos. They decide to put my music back on. I go along with this and put my watch back on, to better keep track of time. Hi Abby and Dad!

5:45pm GMT +1: Final guests arrive, the farmer cousin and his girlfriend (wife?). She used to have short, boyish hair, now it’s ear-length and dyed blonde dyed blonde with pink streaks, but the roots are showing hardcore. 

5:32pm GMT +1: Shot of pálinka, plum brandy with honey, homemade by Ákos. 

5:17pm GMT +1: Waiting for the guests to arrive, and finishing up making dinner. I sliced the bread. The Wolf sisters are barking and snapping at eachother over something I can’t understand. Oops, here are the guests! 

4:38pm GMT +1: Showered and dressed, the Christmas music is playing. I found a special mix CD for the occasion, but no one seems to like it. Maybe they’ll feel different in America, the land of the free and home of the copyright. 

4:05pm GMT +1: Return from run. Do 30 pushups and 60 sit-ups. I’m like Rambo, only pacifistic.

3:38pm GMT +1: Go for a run. Gotta prepare for the Christmas dinner to come.

3:01pm GMT + 1: Singing the Christmas song (in Hungarian). I hummed along and played music director.

G-money gets his present early. It’s a picture he took in New Zealand, where he backpacked around for a year.

The presents are under the tree. I’ve been told one of them is for me. 

2:15pm GMT +1: Lunch.

1st course: Cherry soup with soy milk. Vegetarian-friendliness rating, on a scale of 1-5: 5 = Go Vegan!

Main course: Cottage cheese strapacska (potato dumplings) with sour cream. Vegetarian-friendliness rating, on a scale of 1-5: 3 = no animals were harmed in the making of this cheese.

Dessert: Various cakes and strudels. Vegetarian-friendliness rating, on a scale of 1-5: 3 = who would put meat into such sweet delights?

1:37pm GMT +1: Sugi gets ready.

It’s a Puch, and once it was yellow, with electric blue mud guards. That was before it was stolen. I bought it from a bike messenger at the old, and now demolished, West Balkan for about $90 (diesel lock included), which is still on the expensive side for a used bike in these parts. It had a bent back fork from when he got hit by a car and was pretty banged up in terms of paint and handlebar tape, but it was light and still worked fine and had some “history”, so I took it. While the brand name is Puch, the previous owner had added an “i” to the end, making it “Puchi”. My bike has a name, and that name is the same as Garfield’s teddy bear (different spelling).

I began to think it was a bad luck bike when I got hit by a car too – sideswiped by an idiot making an illegal turn and not even having the gall to signal. I was ok, and Puchi made it through fine, though I was more than shaken up. This was all in the summer of 2006.

While usually we would bring our bikes into the stairwell of our apartment and lock them there, which is out of sight from the street and relatively safe, we occasionally got lazy and left them locked to the lamp post outside. I was confident that my 2cm-thick cable lock would be enough of a deterrent.

I was wrong. I walked out one morning, a bit late and needing to jump on the yellow streak that Puchi was in order to get to work fast, and was shocked and appalled that it had disappeared without a trace. I was crushed. We tried reporting it to the police, with little confidence that they’d do much of anything about it, and listed it on a stolen bike forum. This is the description I wrote:

The bike is an old, bananna yellow Puch, 10-speed, with electric blue mud guards, narrow street tires, an old and cracked black seat, with half handlebars (I don’t know how to explain these) and a Shimano gearshifter. The bike looks old and beat-up, with many scratches and marks all over the frame. The Puch logo has been modified to say “Puchi”, and the same thing is engraved on the vertical seat support strut. There is also a bit of hose or tire attached to the top horizontal support, held in place with plastic ties. The right rear wheel strut is bent inwards slightly from a car accident by the previous owner, who is a bike messenger named Tonja. He also did all the other modifications.

About a week later I was getting pretty sure it was gone for good. We had called several shops to see if it had turned up anywhere, and even gone to an awesome flea market to look for parts. I kind of felt like that part in one of the Star Wars flicks when they find C3-PO all blasted apart, except I didn’t find Puchi.

Then my co-worker Anna’s bike got stolen. She had left it locked up in the courtyard at the office over the weekend (exactly where E’s bike would get stolen, many months later, in broad daylight, which is another story), which is easily accessible and less-savory types are known to come and go as they please. We commiserated.

A few days later, Anna went to the bike shop just a few doors down from the office to look for a new bike. I had been there a couple times to get miscellaneous repairs done on Puchi, and Anna had accompanied me there to ask about where to look for stolen bikes the day after mine disappeared. This time when she arrived, it was there being repaired, and the repair guy recognized it, despite the fact that the mud guards were gone and it had been hastily spray-painted black. The thieves must have screwed up the brakes while tearing off the guards. She called me, I went down, and sure enough it was Puchi, looked abused. A few minutes later the chump who brought it in returned, saying that he had paid 3,000 forints (about $14) for it, which I was hesitant to reimburse but I felt was a small price to pay for such amazing luck.

I was mad as hell that I got my bike stolen and desecrated, only to be sold for a mere 3,000 forints, but I was amazed and happy that things had taken such a fantastic turn. My coworker’s bad luck was my own fortune – if she had not gone to the bike shop during those few minutes in which it was there being repaired, it would have ridden off under the chump’s ass never to be seen again.

I still ride to work every day, but this time it’s on Puchi II.