When a person gets an education and goes to work abroad with big salary he is an opportunistic. Another person goes to do exchange studies in a different country. He is also an opportunistic. Third person lives in somewhat unstable country and finds out that there is a country offering an asylum for him. He takes a chance and becomes also an opportunistic.

But it happens that the third guy becomes pretty frustrated and doesn't feel too good in his new country. Strange habits, laws, language, no job and so on. He lives in a ghetto and spends his days hanging around with gangs and doing stupid things.

Whose fault? The guy who took a chance and decided to get a better life? Not really. I would say it is the fault of the country. It is totally okay to take reasonable number of refugees. Then it is totally different question whether you want and can integrate them in your society. Do not expect someone without language skills and with totally different cultural background just throw his own world view away and start following yours. Won't happen easily.

So be realistic if you want to save the world. Feel free to comment.

It requires a crappy day to get great thoughts. Weird.

I am now seriously looking for a digital camera. Looks like I will go and buy Canon Ixus 60. Anyways, I ended up to a really cheap online shop. Prices seem to be really low, around 50% less than else where:

http://www.mobiteh.co.uk

But...

that shop is a scam! You cannot click on the VeriSign logo on the bottom of the page. They only accept Western Union payments even though they show logos of various credit card companies on their page. With little searching you can find out that people have bad experiences:

first

second

Washing clothes is a chore that one can't avoid. Either you use somebody's service or you do it yourself. I felt like saving money instead of my time so I decided to do myself also in Zurich.

The first issue was that there was only old reservation list in the laundry room. That didn't really prevent me but then I realized that I don't have any washing powder. The stuff I thought to be washing powder was anti-calc/limescale for washing machines and of course it cannot be used to wash clothes (no, I didn't try - I trusted the label's text). So I took a look around I found liquid dishwashing agent and with that and a bathtub I washed my first set of laundry last week.

This week I was more prepared. I reserved the machine, bought proper powder and went to the laundry room at the right time. I loaded the machine and I started to look for a place to put some washing powder. No luck, this great piece of engineering was a tumble dryer. So, clothes out and in the another machine. That was a top-loader washing machine and I even found place for my washing powder. However, this machine did not start up and didn't seem to have any life signs. I found two manuals, italian and french ones and even with those it seemed that machine is pretty much out of action. Then I saw a card reader on the wall. Damn.

I quickly rushed to visit company secretary and it turned out that I should have a pay card for that reader in order to activate machines and getting one is a little bit complex. But the cleaning lady has one and I could use it later on. However, I needed clean underwear so I took my laundry from the machine once again and dumped some of them in the bathtub.

What Poland has to do with laundry? Well, I had my traineeship there in 2003 and the second accommodation we had for almost two months did not have a washing machine but it had a bathtub...

I don't have a digital camera. Well, I do have one in my mobile but it so useless that I don't feel like calling it camera. But at the moment I have camera with me. I took it from Finland while I was there for a holiday and now it is with me in Zurich.

It is a Minolta 7000i. It is heavy and it is around 15-20 years old. It used to have autofocus but that functionality has been broken many years. Luckily its range finder still works and gives information for manual focusing. I had it with me in Poland and colors of some photos taken in mountains were a little bit strange. Maybe I should have had a filter because it was extremely sunny on that day.

So far I have spent one roll of film here and yesterday I dropped it to be developed. Just for curiosity I wanted also have photos on CD. Perhaps that was the reason why the price of developing and making 24 prints with CD was around 40 CHF - 25 EUR. Huh! With those costs I can easily reason for myself buying a digital camera.

But the issue I haven't yet solved is storing of digital photos. At the moment I have most recent in iPhoto, something on CDs and I think some photos are just gone forever. Only long time solution would be to use some printing service to create paper prints. I don't trust my hard disk or CD-Rs that much as CD-R lasts with some luck 5 years and if stored and handled with care it might do maximum 10 years.

That is just way too short time as photos are supposed to last 100 years. But on the other hand the costs of traditional photographing seem to be high. I was thinking about taking that Minolta to repair shop to be cleaned and I also saw some used AF-lenses for it. Then it would most likely last another 10 years while producing long lasting traditional photos. Hmm, difficult choice.

Tomorrow there is going to be a huge event in Zurich. It is called street parade and it has been organized several times already. I don't personally mind that much about such music but definitely it will be interesting to see. Oh, and I am about to meet my swiss-finn friend whom I haven't seen since 1997 - huh!

This is the only country where dogs are allowed to enter restaurant. I have several occasions so it cannot be just one dog friendly restaurant... I wonder If I could bring my pet lynx there too - which I don't have... =(

I have been spending weekend with my usual way to get to know new city. Walking around and getting sometimes lost. I used to have a small tourist map of Zurich but I managed to forget it to Budapest. Luckily there are some guide maps at tram stops so getting totally lost is more difficult.

Zurich is very pedestrian and cyclist friendly city. There are numerous lanes for cyclist and car drivers stop at zebra crossings - something you can not expect to happen in Budapest.

The downtown is packed with shops. So far I haven't spent too much money, I only bought prepaid SIM card for my mobile and normal food ingredients. But I guess I rather spend my extra money to traveling and visiting different cities in Switzerland.

I have something like a six or seven weekends to spend for traveling. So far I have plan to visit Bern, Luzern and maybe Lausanne or Geneva...

Hmm, I was about to go out but it started to rain again. Here was a period of good weather but it vanished right when I arrived. It seems that it also rains in Budapest because F1 racetrack there is wet. Maybe I will stay inside and watch the race from TV - with wet conditions the race might be interesting.

In addition of rain and colder weather I have to take account the fact that shops actually close their doors around 20. There are no 24h shops anywhere nearby the apartment or the railway station. I met more drug pushers than bread sellers yesterday at 21:30. But otherwise this city seems to be pretty ok.

Today I am about to travel to Zurich. In the early morning there was some hassle because I lost my flat keys. Luckily I managed to find them without unpacking everything and I even avoided being in hurry.

Oh, and a good tip to everybody who has habit to be early at the airport. Bring your own snack with you and you will save a small fortune. Also a laptop and a free WLAN access at airport help you to kill some time before boarding.

Arrived back to Budapest from Finland on Sunday and now I am packing again. As mentioned before I am heading to Zurich for ten weeks. This time I tried to avoid packing totally useless items with me. I hope I succeed and I don't have to buy too many things from expensive Zurich.

Anyways, I feel good after excellent holiday in Finland. Air was clean and weather was pleasant in addition of meeting friends and relatives. I really hope that weather will be okay also in Zurich...