Pride and Prejudice

We’ve both been to Hungary quite a few times. I had a development team at Siemens in Budapest, and Alex has distant relatives in Hungary.

Budapest

There is Pride in Budapest this weekend. Last year, the Orbán government banned Pride, much to the city government’s annoyance. To enforce the ban, they threatened fines of 500 euros for each participant. The result was a march of 200,000 people and a landslide victory for the opposition in the following elections, which brought 16 years of Orbán to an end.

Of course, it would be presumptuous to claim that Pride brought down the government. But it was one last clear sign that people had had enough of the restrictions imposed by a corrupt government whose arrogance bordered on megalomania.

Laszlo, with whom I worked at Siemens and who we are meeting for coffee, says the new government has different goals, but is just as arrogant. Maybe a leftover from the Austro-Hungarian times?

In Budapest, everything is forbidden, and there is always some petty busybody making a point of reminding you of the rules. We already feel right at home. With a dog, this city is a real obstacle course: I can tell for myself whether my dog can manage an escalator. Why is it always the right-wing conservatives who talk the loudest about freedom, personal responsibility, and independence, and then cover everything in regulations, right down to who you may love and who you may not.

Hot

It’s hot in Europe. The heatwave has moved east and is hitting us full force now. Heat records are being broken all over the place this year, once again. These days, there seems to be a hundred-year summer every decade. Where have all the climate change deniers gone? They’ve gone very quiet. Thanks for nothing.

Visiting a city at almost 40 degrees is not much fun. For Charly, it can also get dangerous very quickly. So in Budapest we spend the afternoons in the hotel room. A pity, because it’s a beautiful city with breathtaking architecture.

Flüge

On Monday we head west from Budapest to Lake Balaton and then on to Vienna. Before Vienna, though, we are stopping in Sooss to visit my school friend Flüge, who has been living here for 10 years.

Just before Vienna, we will also celebrate the 200,000th birthday of our Schleppi, which is starting to show a bit of age-related fatigue.

*This blog post has been automatically translated by a Large Language Model.