I have been thinking about why my dreams have not changed to Hungary. Everything in my dreams has been totally location independent. Until now. Last night I saw a dream about Rubik's cube. I had one in my hands in the dream and in the beginning it was normal 3x3x3 cube so decided to rotate it few times. But then it changed its form to much more difficult 4x4x4 cube. I tried to revert my moves but I couldn't because each cube had mutated to four smaller ones. So my Rubik's cube was in the end 16x16x16... aaargh!

This weekend's menu by Dóra:

- Chicken in cream cheese sauce with rice.

1. Fry chicken breast with smoked ham in oil&butter mix. Add salt, pepper and garlic.
2. Mix food cream, cream cheese and tejföl (sour milk).
3. Add mixture to the meat. Let it be some time and it's ready.

Serve with rice. Delicious.

Some other highlights from the weekend...

- Süti. Cake based on white chocolate. Yum!
- Greek salad. Finom.

There were some minor set backs during the weekend, like headache on Saturday and shower hose nr. 3 broke down. I don't care - my stomach is full :-)

It has also arrived here. During the week I saw increasing amount of christmas related things downtown. Lights, advertisements and huge amount of toys in shops. I have been trying to find christmas presents for my relatives and it hasn't been that easy. I thought I could easily find things that are not available in Finland and at the same time they would useful. Also my swiss colleagues share the problem.

Yesterday a german trainee was having his farewell party in Budapest and I attended, too. First we had a beer at a restaurant while some of the group were having dinner. Then it was time to move to next place but many places were too full for our group. Eventually we ended up in a some sort of karaoke pub. I have to say I haven't spent too much time in such places but it was fun anyways.

Today I have been just relaxing and recovering. Yesterday there was some talks about doing skating today but I feel too lazy for that. Besides, skating hasn't been my favorite hobby. I always preferred skiing during school's sport lessons. But no track for skiing here...

Having loads of free time during the weekend I ended up thinking what I will do in near future... well, the list is something like this.

- Figure out and buy x-mas presents. I thought it would be easy to find those from Budapest but no way. Maybe everybody gets a bottle of palinka.

- Visit Finland during x-mas. One week time to see friends and relatives. Half a year to catch up.

- Sports. I definitely need some activity but my favorite, biking, is not too easy here due heavy traffic. But there was some discussion at work about doing sports together...

- Hungarian language. Well, some progress but far from good. At least I have noticed that I understand at least something what people are talking around.

- Trips to London and Zürich. Sounds interesting at least... I should think a little bit before what I want to see in London because I don't have too much time there.

Another rather different weekend. Due the Tuesday's national holiday I decided to take Monday off. In Hungary there are at least 20 holidays and amount increases along worker's age. This time I have around ten days because I started somewhere in the middle of the year. Most of the holidays will be spent during my trip to FInland during the x-mas time.

But back to this long weekend. From Friday to Sunday I spent in Budapest, doing mainly nothing special. The only thing worth of mentioning was the movie I saw with Dóra. We went to see Hotel Rwanda and at least I did expect to see a good movie. The movie is about the genocide of Rwanda which happened between Hutus and Tutsis. The reasons behind anger and tension between these two groups was lightly explained in the movie and it goes all the way back to colonialism.

In my opinion this movie is worth of seeing but it is not a happy movie. It can be touching at some points and despite sort of happy ending you won't leave smiling from the theater. After the movie I decided to read some comments from IMDB and I searched those comments from people who did not like it. I could understand some comments about poor explanation of conflict's backgrounds but then there were some comments demanding more gore and blood. That was a sign of stupidity for me. If somebody can not understand what genocide is about without seeing detailed beheading he should stay away from such movies.

Rest of the long weekend I spent in Miskolc where I had chance to do some trekking in Bükk area. We took a narrow gauge train up to the end stop and the we continued by foot. Weather was really good taking account that it is last day of October. Because it was also all saint's day I visited with Dóra's family several graveyards. The main difference between to my home country is those structures over the ground. In Finland there is only a stone showing name and dates but here a grave can be really massive, especially in case of a family grave.

Bükk