Biography of a football player (part 2) [every correction/comment is highly appreciated :) ] In 1968, they didn’t manage to qualify for the European Championship, they lost again against the Soviet Union. This was the first time in decades, that Hungary didn’t qualify for the tournament. It was even more of an infuriating failure because the country - so proud to their football team - was defeated again by the Soviets, the “big brother” whose troops occupied the country since the 1956 revolution. Two years later, the national team arrived at the absolute humiliation: in 1970 - for the first time in history - Hungary failed to qualify for the World Cup. In the tie-breaker match against Czechslovakia, the Hungarians were defeated by 4-0. This loss can be considered as the official start of the agony of the Hungarian football, that keeps going on ever since. According to Mészöly, the flop was - at least partially - because of the bus driver’s diarrhea, which resulted that the team arrived at the stadium late, so they missed all the warmup and pre-match preparation. This was the last time that Mészöly was leading the national team to an international tournament, after that - as he puts it - he was forgotten.

Biography of a football player (part 1) [every correction/comment is highly appreciated :) ] Mészöly was one of the defining football players of the 60s in Hungary as a defender for Vasas and the Hungarian national team. The Magyar team at that time - after the legendary Golden Team of the 50s - was not invincible anymore. As Puskás, Hidegkuti, Czibor and the other top players left the national eleven, a sad, long and inevitable decline has started. Mészöly was one of the emblematic players of that era. According to him, the reason of failures was that the Hungarian team had been stricken by a series of misfortunes, that prevented them from achieving any significant success. Contrarily the real reason for the failures was that Hungary was no longer able to compete with the very quickly professionalizing Western European football. A decade of misfortunes Mészöly was playing central midfielder for the national team of the 1962 World Cup, in Chile, where after getting through the group stage, the team suffered a defeat against Czechslovakia. According to the memoir of Mészöly, they lost because of the Soviet referee, Nikolay Latyshev didn't award a Hungarian goal on purpose. Two years later, in the European Championship of 1964 in Spain, the Hungarians started well the qualifying round, they arrived at the final four by defeating Wales, East-Germany, and France. Here the Magyars met with Spain and got defeated. After that the Hungarians managed to defeat Denmark, winning the bronze medal. In the 1966 world cup in England, during the group stages, the team was defeated by Portugal, on its first match. They needed to win their next match in order to keep the hope of moving to the knock-out stage, however, the next opponent was the titleholder Brasilian selection. Although Pelé didn’t play on that evening, the Brazilian team was brutally strong with Garrincha, Tostao, and Jairzinho. Eventually, Hungary managed to defeat the Brazilians in Liverpool. Mészöly points out in his autobiography that after leaving the field as the victorious team the Beatles came down from the tribune to congratulate them. After defeating Bulgaria, the third team of the group, Mészöly, and his team faced the Soviet Union in the knock-out stage and as it was cast by the faith on the Hungarians, they were defeated again.

Very Merry by Zsigmond Móricz - book review [every correction/comment is highly appreciated :) ] Very Merry - Zsigmond Móricz One of my most surprising reading experiences of this year. The title originally means something like Gent’s Merry-making, which made me think that this book is like the anthology of humorous anecdotes of 19 century rural Hungary, which - let's be honest - isn't the best subject to immerse in. What also made it hard to get down this book from the shelf is that - despite his folksy and wordy language and the relatively slow story flow - Móricz is mandatory in Hungarian high schools, so it's no wonder that most kids lose their interest for a lifetime. Anyways, I got interested in reading Móricz after a magnificent redaction from a contemporary stand-up comedian, Tibor Bödőcs, who has written an anthology of short stories mimicking the style of well-known writers. After listening the story, written in Móricz-style, I decided to take action and to look up a Móricz novel next time in Budapest. The novel takes place in rural Hungary, somewhere in the Great Hungarian Plains, in the year 1896. The protagonists are Hungarian noblemen, who feel a great nostalgia about the times when they were really wealthy and powerful, and they try to ignore the fact, that their class has become something that we would call now middle class. They clinch to their noble privileges and the ancient habits which they summon with constant wasteful and senseless junketing. The main protagonist, Zoltán Szakhmáry is a landowner who tries to quit the habits of his peers, to modernize his economy and to invest in new technologies. He is also madly in love with a young girl with peasant origins, who lives alone in his county house. Things get confused, when it turns out, that he is no longer able to finance the investments and he gets to the brink of bankruptcy, and on top of that, his wife discovers the love affair, after which his mistress leaves Zoltan for good. After this, Zoltán has no other option but to admit that all his passion to break away from the swamp of the Hungarian gentry lifestyle has become a total and probably inevitable failure. This realization strikes him during the vinous spree in his country-house when seeing that one of the barns caught fire. He feels that the only solution for his dire situation is to burn up everything behind himself and to commit suicide.

Spadework for a Palace by László Krasznahorkai - review I'm not entirely sure if I liked this book or not. The style of the novel is really frustrating, even suffocating, as almost the whole book consists of a single sentence, an unedited, uncoordinated flow, of thoughts, of a deeply delusional and neurotic person, who corrects and contradicts himself in every single paragraph. That writing style made me feel like I was locked up in the narrator's head which in this case is a rather "painful" experience. The book contains some philosophical thoughts on the role of catastrophes and destruction in human society and the role of artists, but for me, these argumentations were not supported well enough. My impression was that those are more like statements, then theories. As Krasznahorkai was described by Susan Sontag as the “contemporary Hungarian master of the apocalypse” I can believe that this philosophy is a recurring element of his novels but I think that in this book is not elaborated enough to give a consistent view of the theory. So I think it is not optimal to start the Krasznahorkai oeuvre with this book (as I did) however it is unquestionably a very well written, imposing work.

Mon boulot [every correction [every correction/comment is highly appreciated :) ] Mon boulot Je travaille pour une société française qui s’applent Selectra, comme un product owner. La société a été fondée il y a environ huit ans, pour deux étudiants de la prestigieux université, Sciences Po. Le profil principal de la société est comparaison des prix de l’energie. En France, il est possible de choisir parmi un grand nombre de fournisseurs d’énergie qui offrent tous des prix différents. J’y travaille comme product owner depuis plus de 6 moins maintenant. Généralement un product owner travaille sur le développement de software. La principal responsabilité de ce boulot est de dessiner des softwares qui soutenir les processus d’entreprise et de fournir avantage compétitif pour à l'entreprise. J’ai commencé ma carrière dans le développement de software il y a plus de six ans, à Budapest. Pour l’instant je’ai travaillé pour un start-up, pour une entreprise de taille moyenne et pour multinationales aussi, car Selectra est mon lieu de travail préféré. La raison pourquois j’aime travailler chez Selectra est que là j’ai une grande liberté pour faire mon boulot comme je le souhaite, et tout mes collègues sont très utiles.

Le défi lire [every correction/comment is highly appreciated :) ] Peut-étre le mieaux livre qui j'ai jamais lu est Les Sirens de Titan de l'ecritour americain, Kurt Vonnegut. Pour la première fois, je l'ai lu dupui 10 ans en hongrois. Plus tard, je'ai commencé a penser à le lire dans la langue d’origine: l’anglais, mais éventuellement j'ai oublié tout la chose. Quelques années après, quand je cherchais un livre pour pratiquer le grec, je me suis de nouveau rappelé. J'ai essayé de chercher ca livre pour tout la journée á Thessaloniki, mais je ne l’ai pas trouvé. Pendant que je marchais entre les librairies de la ville, j'ai decidé d’achater et de lire ce livre dans toutes les langues que je parle: hongrois, anglais, espagnol, grec et français. Donc le défi est le suivant: lisez votre livre préféré dans toutes les langues, que vous parlez. Les règles sont simples: On doit acheter les livres d'occasion. On ne doit pas acheter le livre en-ligne. Jusqu'ici je n'ai pas trouvé la version française du livre, même si j'ai visité beaucoup de librairies d'ocassion du Paris. Je sais, que l’edition espagnole est disponible á Madrid, alors je l'achèterai la prochaine fois que j’y serai. La version grecque est malheureusement uniquement disponible á Athènes. Mais est très fácil d’acheter la version hongroise, car l’auteur est très populaire en Hongrie et les librairies sont plein de leur livres.

Mon jour [every correction/comment is highly appreciated :) ] Je me suis réveillé très tard. Normalement j’essaye de me lever tôt pour éviter la foule dans le métro. Je me suis duché rapidement, j’ai mangé un croissant et je me suis allé au travail. Du matin j’ai eu une vidéo conférence avec un collégue á Madrid. Ensuite j’ai écrit un entrée de blog dans anglais sur la vie sans TV et ces j’ai uploadé á italki. Puis je me suis allé manger. J’ai acheté une salade et ce j’ai mangé dans un jardin public très beau, qui s’appelle Jardin de l’ancien hôpital Boucicaut. Il aprés-midi était très ennuyeux, c’était vraiment difficile de se concentrer sur le travail. Aprés avoir fini dans le bureau, je suis allé dans un restaurant indien, à proximité de notre appartement. Nous anvons soupé avec ma fiancée.

TV, Our Cultural Plague I don't have a TV. I have never had, never will. Period. The whole idea of having an additional 'family member' speaking constantly in the background, broadcasting unwanted content and silly ads are just repugnant. It is no wonder that the Spanish simply just call it 'la caja tonta', the stupid box. Please don't consider the following lines bragging, but I just can't promote enough the advantages of not having a television: better social life, more time to read, to talk, to think, being much more conscious about the content that you take in, eventually being mentally cleaner and healthier. The moments that I feel the most the change that the TV-less years have made on me is when I go home and watch TV together with my family. In these situations, my first and most important observation is that I can't take my eyes off the screen. The instinct to pay attention when someone is speaking to me is just too strong to be ignored. The other thing that I notice quite frequently is the brainwashing that ads do. There used to be different ads during the interruptions of a tv show, but now, most channels air exactly the same spots, which invokes an immediate response from my brain: it wants to avoid the information, and when it is not possible the result is frustration and anxiety. As members of Generation Z are used to surfing on the internet, using youtube and on-demand services, I really hope that traditional tv will cease to exist in the near future. It gives me hope that people will consume content more consciously and won't waste their time in front of the box, zapping, till they don't even remember why they have ever turned it on.

I can't keep up with my library I'm a bit ashamed to bring up such a 'first world problem', but I'm really curious about your experience about the phenomena, that I describe below: I love to read, I love newspapers, magazines, blogs, books, and basically every form of written communication. I'm fond of reading about political ideas that I've never shared, football clubs that I never supported, even call girls that I never visited. The situation got worse by learning languages. Whenever I visited a country of which language I spoke, I always felt an irresistible urge to buy as many books and papers as possible. If a friend was traveling to Spain for example, I often came up with a wishlist of magazines that they needed to purchase for me. As a direct result of this notorious addiction to the written words, now my bookshelves are slumping under Hungarian, English, Spanish, French and Greek books, magazines and comic books. Half of them are yet untouched. Because after every book that I read I got the urge to get hold of some more books from the same author (or the same book in a different language), or to get familiar with other writers' similar works too. So no matter how much time I spend with reading, the book pile of unread books simply keeps growing. Have you ever had the same experience? Is there an easy solution for keeping the reading/purchasing balance? Thanks for helping! Markosz