The lack of foreign languages in everyday life in Hungary is something that I have been wondering about lately. In Finland you just can not avoid hearing and seeing English no matter where you go. Maybe marketing people find it better than our own language. Product and brand names are often strange mixes of Finnish and English.

Another thing is the subtitles. Only the cartoons and movies meant for small kids have Finnish voices instead of originals. So during the time you sit in front of your television you will hear English in movies, German in krimis and Swedish in a home improvement show. Of course few lines of text can not describe everything but at least you have original voices and right content.

Some time ago I read a story about the reasons why many countries decided to dub or voice-over the television content. Cost savings wasn't the reason because adding subtitles is cheaper (maybe that is the reason for why Finns have subtitles) but the author of the story suggested a different reason. Controlling the content used to be important in old times and what is better way to control content than replacing the voices. Anyways, that is not the reason anymore I assume.

Today I visited a book store while I was wandering around a shopping mall. Naturally I ended up in to IT-books section but for my surprise I did not find a single title in English. Even though Hungarian population is only twice the Finnish, every one was in Hungarian. Maybe the cost of the translation is so much lower than in Finland, where you can find only the most common IT-books in Finnish. Or perhaps Finns are so used to read technical books in English so there is no demand for translations.

It will be interesting to keep observing this native vs foreign language matter and how it develops. Personally I prefer to have content mentioned above in original language if possible. Unfortunately that is only either Finnish or English for me at the moment as my Swedish and German are not that fluent due to lack of practice. And I definitely can not read Hungarian magazines or books at the moment...

This was a weekend of music. On Friday we had a St. Martin's concert. He is a Hungarian artist playing various instruments but mostly he performs with saxophone or pan flute. This concert was held outside in downtown and it gathered many important looking persons of Miskolc. His music is good for relaxing so I really didn't get too much out from live playing - it is much better to listen on cosy sofa at home.

Saturday was then a little bit different. The NOX was performing at the Miskolc castle area. This band represented Hungary in EuroVision contest and it is also really popular around here. Originally this band was supposed to play inside the castle but the demand for the tickets was so high they decided to move it outside. This band works pretty well on live shows as their performance is partly theatre with magician acts and torches. Their music is based on traditional folk music and they also utilize classic instruments.

St. Martin

NOX

Yesterday evening we set up a fire for preparing some kind of food. And I was surprised because the food we ate was different. Instead of frying meat or sausage we fried fat. A big block of pork fat on a stick and an onion on top of it. The idea was to warm up the fat so it starts to drip and then pour that liquid fat on a bread slice.

This grease dripping bread was then eaten with cucumber and different kind of onions. Also other kind of vegetables can go. Yesterday beer and Vilmos were involved too. Today we had left over breads with some additional fried fat and espresso coffee.

Of course people are not eating this everyday. But for someone who has tried to look for more healthy food it might be a small shock =)