Monday, 31 August 2009
Saturday, 29 August 2009
Paris
Travelling
Travelling to Paris by bus is quite tiring. It took us two whole days to get there, which is because we did stop for the night and we also stopped to see Passau and Reims on the way there and Wels on the way back. I forgot to bring a book, so one of the things I made sure was that I bought a book in Paris for the way back. That turned out to be a good investment and I finished the 350 pages about an hour before we got back to Budapest.
The group
One of the downsides of travelling by bus and attending the guided tours organized by the travel agecy is that you are part of a group. Almost naturally, our group consisted of grandma aged women coming with their best friends or their grandchildren. There were very few middle aged people or people of my age, and naturally, almost none of these people spoke French or English, so they had to rely on the tour guide, who was by the way a really cool and knowledgeable Hungarian woman. So, the group was fairly slow at times - obviously, a 66-year-old woman is not going to run up the stairs of the Montmartre... At least, most of the time, people made sure to be at the right spot at the right time, so we didn't lose much time waiting for people. And since both my mother and I like our independence, we mostly explored the city together, without the group, at our own pace, seeing exactly what we wanted to see.
The room
It was tiny. If you've ever been to an Étap hotel, you know what I'm talking about. A double bed, a small table in the corner and a basin. A small shower cabin and a toilet opening right from the room. That was it. And the indispensable TV. As if we needed it... Anyway, we bought a bottle of wine in Reims and we opened it on the first night. The plan was to get a baguette or something similar in a shop close by, but they completely ran out of everything, so we celebrated our first night in Paris with a bottle of great wine and two bags of chips/crisps.
The food
I remembered that I used to like snails, so I had them twice :) We had a really nice dinner on the Champs-Élysée - boeuf bourgogne, which resembles our stew a slightly, but the spices are entirely different, and apparently, it needs two days of preparation. It was absolutely delicious. We also had dinner and wine on the Montmartre, sitting at a small table at the edge of the square and looking at the unending flow of tourists. I refused to eat anything that I could also eat at home, such as roasted chicked or spaghetti, and I made very good picks in terms of French food. Once we had lunch in the Jardin de Tuileries - and had the original French onion soup, which everybody should try if they are ever in France - and met the rudest and most incompetent waiter ever. That's also where I started feeding a crippled pigeon, which looked very ill and had one of its legs end in a blob. (Little did I expect to limp like him in a couple of days.)
People
Paris is a very multicultural city with a lot of ethnicities, a real "melting pot". I hated seeing a lot of Black immigrants selling little, useless Paris souvenirs, small Tour Eiffels, 6 pieces for 1 euro. They came up to the tourists, often the very same moment they got off their buses, offering what they had, the souvenirs, watches, bags etc. They knew what they had to know in at least 20 languages to try and sell their things; even in Hungarian and that's not a very common language. The moment the cops showed up, they disappeared, and then slowly walked back once the police was gone. It's insane how many people they have to walk up to earn a euro, how stressful it must be, how hard it must be to live like this. Imagine if they actually had families to care for. Or if they came from somewhere in search for a better future. And there were hundreds of them... Another group of people I felt strange about were the artists on the Montmartre. They had so much talent, their portraits were so great - and I'm sure that some of them went to art school - and they literally had to beg people so that they would be able to draw them and earn a couple of euros for them. So degrading.
Culture and art
Paris is a wonderful city. Sometimes I felt like I was walking in a larger version of Budapest because of the similar style of the buildings. No wonder it's one of the cultural capitals of Europe - there's a museum, a monument, a church, a park on every corner. I'm not going to list all the places we've been to, but here are a couple of highlights. While the group was in the Louvre, we went to see the Orsay Museum, which was beautiful... I've seen Monet, Manet, Klimt, Rodin, Van Gogh works, which just have something magical about them. I loved the impressionist part of the exhibition. We've also been to Monet's house in Giverny. He was a great fan of flowers and his garden is like a symphony of hundreds of flowers. A hundred meters away from his house there's THE pond with the water lylies that he'd painted several times. I can't blame him for it. It was beautiful. What I couldn't make much sense of was the modern exhibition in the Centre Pompidou, and I centainly can't see why a photo of a vulva, or a white canvas with a black line on it constitutes art. Apart from the art in the museums, there was plenty of art on the streets. I sometimes stopped to watch the performers (breakdancers, clowns etc.) and the musicians in the subway. My favorite one was a Chinese man playing his traditional Chinese instruments. At one point he started singing so loud that he literally scared the people standing next to him :)
Toilets
I must comment on the state of the toilets. Firstly, they were disgusting. From the moment we crossed the border from Germany to France, the toilets were dirty and the most unpleasant odours were lingering around. The floor wasn't cleaned either and there were always pieces of toilet paper on the ground. Paris, the capital of fashion, the capital of culture - and they can't even clean their toilets??? Secondly, there were hardly any toilets at places which should have dozens. For example, in Versailles, which is a place that is visited by thousands of tourists daily, there were 2 bathrooms around the castle, both with 3 toilets. There was a queue of about 30 meters in front of the door. Despicable.
Weather
I think we were really lucky in terms of weather. It was warm from day #1 onwards. It was sometimes too hot - the queue in front of the Tour Eiffel was bearable only because of the large fans that were placed behind the fence, but the queue in front of Versailles was horrible. My mother folded my map of Paris into a funky little hat (csákó), with which we started a movement among the people waiting to get in. People get attracted by water in such weather and so we cooled down in the fountains in Versailles, in the fountains in front of the Louvre and the ones below the Trocadéro. This last one was really the "pool of Paris". A lot of people came by just to have a bath and they actually had their bikinis or swimming trunks on. It was the children who had the most fun, sliding into the water, swimming and playing around, but I couldn't complain either while sitting at the edge of the fountain, my legs in the water, the Tour Eiffel in full view across the Seine.
Travelling to Paris by bus is quite tiring. It took us two whole days to get there, which is because we did stop for the night and we also stopped to see Passau and Reims on the way there and Wels on the way back. I forgot to bring a book, so one of the things I made sure was that I bought a book in Paris for the way back. That turned out to be a good investment and I finished the 350 pages about an hour before we got back to Budapest.
The group
One of the downsides of travelling by bus and attending the guided tours organized by the travel agecy is that you are part of a group. Almost naturally, our group consisted of grandma aged women coming with their best friends or their grandchildren. There were very few middle aged people or people of my age, and naturally, almost none of these people spoke French or English, so they had to rely on the tour guide, who was by the way a really cool and knowledgeable Hungarian woman. So, the group was fairly slow at times - obviously, a 66-year-old woman is not going to run up the stairs of the Montmartre... At least, most of the time, people made sure to be at the right spot at the right time, so we didn't lose much time waiting for people. And since both my mother and I like our independence, we mostly explored the city together, without the group, at our own pace, seeing exactly what we wanted to see.
The room
It was tiny. If you've ever been to an Étap hotel, you know what I'm talking about. A double bed, a small table in the corner and a basin. A small shower cabin and a toilet opening right from the room. That was it. And the indispensable TV. As if we needed it... Anyway, we bought a bottle of wine in Reims and we opened it on the first night. The plan was to get a baguette or something similar in a shop close by, but they completely ran out of everything, so we celebrated our first night in Paris with a bottle of great wine and two bags of chips/crisps.
The food
I remembered that I used to like snails, so I had them twice :) We had a really nice dinner on the Champs-Élysée - boeuf bourgogne, which resembles our stew a slightly, but the spices are entirely different, and apparently, it needs two days of preparation. It was absolutely delicious. We also had dinner and wine on the Montmartre, sitting at a small table at the edge of the square and looking at the unending flow of tourists. I refused to eat anything that I could also eat at home, such as roasted chicked or spaghetti, and I made very good picks in terms of French food. Once we had lunch in the Jardin de Tuileries - and had the original French onion soup, which everybody should try if they are ever in France - and met the rudest and most incompetent waiter ever. That's also where I started feeding a crippled pigeon, which looked very ill and had one of its legs end in a blob. (Little did I expect to limp like him in a couple of days.)
People
Paris is a very multicultural city with a lot of ethnicities, a real "melting pot". I hated seeing a lot of Black immigrants selling little, useless Paris souvenirs, small Tour Eiffels, 6 pieces for 1 euro. They came up to the tourists, often the very same moment they got off their buses, offering what they had, the souvenirs, watches, bags etc. They knew what they had to know in at least 20 languages to try and sell their things; even in Hungarian and that's not a very common language. The moment the cops showed up, they disappeared, and then slowly walked back once the police was gone. It's insane how many people they have to walk up to earn a euro, how stressful it must be, how hard it must be to live like this. Imagine if they actually had families to care for. Or if they came from somewhere in search for a better future. And there were hundreds of them... Another group of people I felt strange about were the artists on the Montmartre. They had so much talent, their portraits were so great - and I'm sure that some of them went to art school - and they literally had to beg people so that they would be able to draw them and earn a couple of euros for them. So degrading.
Culture and art
Paris is a wonderful city. Sometimes I felt like I was walking in a larger version of Budapest because of the similar style of the buildings. No wonder it's one of the cultural capitals of Europe - there's a museum, a monument, a church, a park on every corner. I'm not going to list all the places we've been to, but here are a couple of highlights. While the group was in the Louvre, we went to see the Orsay Museum, which was beautiful... I've seen Monet, Manet, Klimt, Rodin, Van Gogh works, which just have something magical about them. I loved the impressionist part of the exhibition. We've also been to Monet's house in Giverny. He was a great fan of flowers and his garden is like a symphony of hundreds of flowers. A hundred meters away from his house there's THE pond with the water lylies that he'd painted several times. I can't blame him for it. It was beautiful. What I couldn't make much sense of was the modern exhibition in the Centre Pompidou, and I centainly can't see why a photo of a vulva, or a white canvas with a black line on it constitutes art. Apart from the art in the museums, there was plenty of art on the streets. I sometimes stopped to watch the performers (breakdancers, clowns etc.) and the musicians in the subway. My favorite one was a Chinese man playing his traditional Chinese instruments. At one point he started singing so loud that he literally scared the people standing next to him :)
Toilets
I must comment on the state of the toilets. Firstly, they were disgusting. From the moment we crossed the border from Germany to France, the toilets were dirty and the most unpleasant odours were lingering around. The floor wasn't cleaned either and there were always pieces of toilet paper on the ground. Paris, the capital of fashion, the capital of culture - and they can't even clean their toilets??? Secondly, there were hardly any toilets at places which should have dozens. For example, in Versailles, which is a place that is visited by thousands of tourists daily, there were 2 bathrooms around the castle, both with 3 toilets. There was a queue of about 30 meters in front of the door. Despicable.
Weather
I think we were really lucky in terms of weather. It was warm from day #1 onwards. It was sometimes too hot - the queue in front of the Tour Eiffel was bearable only because of the large fans that were placed behind the fence, but the queue in front of Versailles was horrible. My mother folded my map of Paris into a funky little hat (csákó), with which we started a movement among the people waiting to get in. People get attracted by water in such weather and so we cooled down in the fountains in Versailles, in the fountains in front of the Louvre and the ones below the Trocadéro. This last one was really the "pool of Paris". A lot of people came by just to have a bath and they actually had their bikinis or swimming trunks on. It was the children who had the most fun, sliding into the water, swimming and playing around, but I couldn't complain either while sitting at the edge of the fountain, my legs in the water, the Tour Eiffel in full view across the Seine.
Wednesday, 26 August 2009
Back!
These days were way too busy to blog and there were way more important things - and especially people - to focus on. I'm in love and it feels great. I've never thought after Joram that I'll be able to experience this emotion so intensely and to give in to it so naturally, but it seems I am. The last couple of days Jani and I have been all over each other. Nothing could ruin these days, not even that I badly injured my right foot, which kept me and will keep me from dancing for some time. Walking was so painful that... well, I just can't describe how painful it was. Touching a pebble with my foot was as if the sky fell. Now, a week later, my foot turned purple on the side and at the toes and after a couple of days of improvement it's getting worse again.
To those wondering about how I'm doing, I'm fine. As you can imagine, there are a lot of things going on now. Moving, starting uni again next week. I went shopping today and I spent approximately 100 euros on cleaning stuff (I bought so much that I actually managed to surprise myself), food, kitchen supplies, a trashcan, a teapot, a low-rim pan for making pancakes, a charger for my phone, tea, an agenda and so many other things that I managed to fill the luggage I usually use for one-week trips. How nice it actually rolls. So, I'm trying to make myself feel at home at the new place and I've also already decorated the walls. What's missing is a couple of plants but I'm sure I'll get some soon.
To those wondering about how I'm doing, I'm fine. As you can imagine, there are a lot of things going on now. Moving, starting uni again next week. I went shopping today and I spent approximately 100 euros on cleaning stuff (I bought so much that I actually managed to surprise myself), food, kitchen supplies, a trashcan, a teapot, a low-rim pan for making pancakes, a charger for my phone, tea, an agenda and so many other things that I managed to fill the luggage I usually use for one-week trips. How nice it actually rolls. So, I'm trying to make myself feel at home at the new place and I've also already decorated the walls. What's missing is a couple of plants but I'm sure I'll get some soon.
Monday, 10 August 2009
Out of office
I'll have one very long holiday starting tomorrow and it's not really going to be over till 24 August. Paris, Tihany, Siófok - almost in one go. Updating the blog won't be on my to do list, but I'll be back with new posts around the 26th most probably. That's going to be the start of a new chapter again.
Monday, 3 August 2009
Summer weekends 4 - Balatonlelle and Balatonszepezd
Yet another post to document how summery this summer is :)
We left for Lelle hours later the intended time, but hey, who cares, we're on holiday. The hotel where we stayed used to be a "SZOT üdülő", meaning that it was as social realistic as a building can be. After the registration, we carried up our luggage - one bag for each of us, filled with clothes, a huge sportsbag filled with bottles of alcohol and energy drinks, a box filled with bottles of wine and a plastic bag of (dancing) shoes. It's not hard to guess the purpose of our stay: we were there to dance salsa.
I wasn't planning on staying for the whole duration of the camp because I had plans for the weekend anyway and because I know guys need their freedom. That's extra true for Jani and I didn't want to babysit him, so I was about to stay for a day and then leave for Balatonszepezd.
If you've never been to a salsa camp, you might find it hard to imagine what you do all day. This is what a day looks like. You get up for breakfast. (This will be getting harder and harder as you're approaching the last days of the camp.) You go to the first class. Then the second. Then the third. You have lunch. You have a shower. You decide to have a half an hour nap and then go to the beach, BUT you end up sleeping the whole afternoon and waking up half an hour before the afternoon classes start. You go to the fourth class. Then the fifth. Then the sixth. (A class is an hour long, by the way.) You have dinner - and I have to say dinner was actually pretty good with a large selection of meals you could choose from and fresh fruits. Time for another shower and the drinks. And... party!
After the first day it was hard for me to believe that I could do this for a week. It was hard to believe that anyone would do this for a week and pay for that, but clearly this was the case for plenty of people. The fact that I managed to screw up my right knee on the first day didn't help much. It kept on hurting the whole week. I blame the tiles on the floor for that - no one should dance on such surface. The halls lacking proper air conditioning nurtured a disgustingly sweaty smell, especially before the 3rd and 6th classes. Luckily, your nose - well, brain - gets used to that quite quickly. Still, I can't get how some guys just don't take showers before they go to class. Fresh sweat doesn't have such strong odor, but sweating once, letting it dry (or putting on sweaty clothes) and then sweating again is a deadly combination.
The second day I left for Balatonszepezd. Very conveniently, it is situated right across the lake, so I took a ship and I was in Révfülöp in 25 minutes. Szepezd is right next to Révfülöp and since Igor had told me that it takes about 20 minutes to walk from one town to the other, I planned a 30-minute walk and bought an ice-cream. I thought of the wheels on my luggage as a God-sent invention and comfortably walked to Szepezd on the bikepath.
Igor welcomed me at the campsite and soon the rest of the group arrived from the beach because it was dinner time. It was great to see all the EVIME people again. The alumni - some of them I only see once a year, during "storkcamp", and the new first years - the "storks". The programme of the first evening was my responsibility and so I prepared with a pub quiz. Last year it was a big success and once again, it turned out really well. We spent the rest of the night on the beach doing what we do every single year: telling stories to the newbies and updating each other on what we are doing.
At one point I realized that I was finally part of the "old group". About 2/3 of the people or more were younger than I, I was an organizer and a Board member. Suddenly, it felt strange to listen to how the IB was this year and what score people got. It seemed very distant. IB? Choosing uni?
The weekend went by as quickly as it usually does, packed with games, activities, fun stuff and enjoying the lake. The second evening we had a bonfire and made lecsó for all of us. I don't know how many bottles of wine were drunk, but at one point about 7 of us started singing old campsite songs and this went on for at least 2 or 3 hours. Once we ran out of old songs, we started singing folk songs and then quoir pieces... Till we were completely exhausted.
I had already arranged a ride home with Börő and Anna when I called Jani the next day to ask how he was doing. He asked me not to go home but to go back to Lelle. I was honestly surprised by this, and even more so by him insisting when I said no. So, I walked back to Révfülöp and took the ship back :)
The rest of the salsa camp was nice and exhausting. My knee was still in a bad shape, so sometimes I had to stop dancing, but apart from this, it was fun. The organizers thought up some hillarious stuff for the evenings, such the the male leg beauty contest and a contest of dancing with a balloon tied to your ankle. The idea was to try to burst other couples' balloons and to protect your balloons at the same time, while dancing salsa. Jani and I came 4th I think, in a very hard and physical battle... Acrobatical salsa :)
We left for Lelle hours later the intended time, but hey, who cares, we're on holiday. The hotel where we stayed used to be a "SZOT üdülő", meaning that it was as social realistic as a building can be. After the registration, we carried up our luggage - one bag for each of us, filled with clothes, a huge sportsbag filled with bottles of alcohol and energy drinks, a box filled with bottles of wine and a plastic bag of (dancing) shoes. It's not hard to guess the purpose of our stay: we were there to dance salsa.
I wasn't planning on staying for the whole duration of the camp because I had plans for the weekend anyway and because I know guys need their freedom. That's extra true for Jani and I didn't want to babysit him, so I was about to stay for a day and then leave for Balatonszepezd.
If you've never been to a salsa camp, you might find it hard to imagine what you do all day. This is what a day looks like. You get up for breakfast. (This will be getting harder and harder as you're approaching the last days of the camp.) You go to the first class. Then the second. Then the third. You have lunch. You have a shower. You decide to have a half an hour nap and then go to the beach, BUT you end up sleeping the whole afternoon and waking up half an hour before the afternoon classes start. You go to the fourth class. Then the fifth. Then the sixth. (A class is an hour long, by the way.) You have dinner - and I have to say dinner was actually pretty good with a large selection of meals you could choose from and fresh fruits. Time for another shower and the drinks. And... party!
After the first day it was hard for me to believe that I could do this for a week. It was hard to believe that anyone would do this for a week and pay for that, but clearly this was the case for plenty of people. The fact that I managed to screw up my right knee on the first day didn't help much. It kept on hurting the whole week. I blame the tiles on the floor for that - no one should dance on such surface. The halls lacking proper air conditioning nurtured a disgustingly sweaty smell, especially before the 3rd and 6th classes. Luckily, your nose - well, brain - gets used to that quite quickly. Still, I can't get how some guys just don't take showers before they go to class. Fresh sweat doesn't have such strong odor, but sweating once, letting it dry (or putting on sweaty clothes) and then sweating again is a deadly combination.
The second day I left for Balatonszepezd. Very conveniently, it is situated right across the lake, so I took a ship and I was in Révfülöp in 25 minutes. Szepezd is right next to Révfülöp and since Igor had told me that it takes about 20 minutes to walk from one town to the other, I planned a 30-minute walk and bought an ice-cream. I thought of the wheels on my luggage as a God-sent invention and comfortably walked to Szepezd on the bikepath.
Igor welcomed me at the campsite and soon the rest of the group arrived from the beach because it was dinner time. It was great to see all the EVIME people again. The alumni - some of them I only see once a year, during "storkcamp", and the new first years - the "storks". The programme of the first evening was my responsibility and so I prepared with a pub quiz. Last year it was a big success and once again, it turned out really well. We spent the rest of the night on the beach doing what we do every single year: telling stories to the newbies and updating each other on what we are doing.
At one point I realized that I was finally part of the "old group". About 2/3 of the people or more were younger than I, I was an organizer and a Board member. Suddenly, it felt strange to listen to how the IB was this year and what score people got. It seemed very distant. IB? Choosing uni?
The weekend went by as quickly as it usually does, packed with games, activities, fun stuff and enjoying the lake. The second evening we had a bonfire and made lecsó for all of us. I don't know how many bottles of wine were drunk, but at one point about 7 of us started singing old campsite songs and this went on for at least 2 or 3 hours. Once we ran out of old songs, we started singing folk songs and then quoir pieces... Till we were completely exhausted.
I had already arranged a ride home with Börő and Anna when I called Jani the next day to ask how he was doing. He asked me not to go home but to go back to Lelle. I was honestly surprised by this, and even more so by him insisting when I said no. So, I walked back to Révfülöp and took the ship back :)
The rest of the salsa camp was nice and exhausting. My knee was still in a bad shape, so sometimes I had to stop dancing, but apart from this, it was fun. The organizers thought up some hillarious stuff for the evenings, such the the male leg beauty contest and a contest of dancing with a balloon tied to your ankle. The idea was to try to burst other couples' balloons and to protect your balloons at the same time, while dancing salsa. Jani and I came 4th I think, in a very hard and physical battle... Acrobatical salsa :)
Saturday, 1 August 2009
"I know where you live"
I check the statistics of this blog once in a while to see how it's doing. Till January, I only got approximate results from a program but certain visits made me take measures in order to be able to follow the visitors more closely. That is, following you, guys.
It's really quite comfortable. I don't have to do anything and a program collects all the data. I know the browser you're using, your screen resolution, your operation system... you name it. It's really only a question of security; it's not that I'm planning on using the data for anything until something goes wrong. I usually check how many people arrive via facebook, search engines and directly. I also check the keywords you use to get here. The beauty of the web :) You leave your footsteps everywhere.
So, these were the keywords that have led some of you here this past month:
"GRE experiences" has been a constant favorite since I've started looking at these things, alongside some salsa search terms. These are pretty usual results. So are the Utrecht and the bartenders weekend searches (this latter one grew somewhat more unpopular these days). But the joram searches are new and slightly strange. They all come from the same person from Oxford. And it's not Joram.
It's always intriguing to see someone being interested in this blog, especially, when the person doesn't know me at all. After all, this is just a random collection of diary entries and I wouldn't think it would be very interesting to anyone but friends and mainly, myself. I started writing in my first diary when I was 13 and I filled 7 books, all handwritten, by the time I reached 19. I've never had a system in writing, I have never written every day, but I noted down whenever something happened that I found interesting enough to note down. That's pretty vague, I know, but that's how it was and how it is, still. Except that this blog is far less compromising than any of my real diaries. Imagine those...
And once in a while, this blog becomes interesting enough for some people to follow it for some time. This is how I got in contact with Kim, for example. I also get a couple of people from time to time who arrive via the random blog buttom and stay here for 4 or 5 days, reading several pages a day before saying goodbye to the posts. Other interesting cases are the girls from the Budapest salsa scene. They had found my profile on iwiw (a Hungarian community website) ages ago and some of them still visit this blog regularly, even though they have become less interested since Jani and I have reached a certain timespan together. One day, one of these women loaded my page 8 times and not to read older posts but to see whether I had written anything new. On the one hand, this program is a wonderful tool to have to get such detailed information about visits. On the other hand, sometimes I'd rather not know the freaky habits of readers that don't even know me. Anyway, the program will stay.
Now, back to our new visitor. I'm not saying it's freaky what this person is doing, but it's definitely intriguing. (S)he is doing his/her homework researching Joram on my blog. Which looks like this:
(Click on the screenshots for a bigger view.)
Why is this different from anyone researching salsa in Budapest or what it is like to take the GREs? Sure, salsa and the GREs play(ed) an important role in my life, but it feels very different to have a stranger collect information that's about a person I was once sharing my life with. The only people who know this blog address are friends - please disregard my mistake of putting the link on iwiw and the random visitors that won't care too much about what I'm writing anyway.
So, when I see that this person selectively reads all the posts which have "Joram" or "boyfriend" in their text, that this person has come via Joram's old blog, that (s)he checks my blogger profile twice in a month for whatever reason, it feels weird. Dear, I hope you've found what you were looking for. Any questions you may have you can send in an e-mail. I'm sure you can find that - I also leave my footsteps everywhere around the web.
And, since you're probably more interested in Joram himself than in how I felt about him, this might be the best help I can give: my grandma once said everything one needs to know about Joram in one proverb: "kutyából nem lesz szalonna". You can find out what it means here: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kuty%C3%A1b%C3%B3l_nem_lesz_szalonna.
It's really quite comfortable. I don't have to do anything and a program collects all the data. I know the browser you're using, your screen resolution, your operation system... you name it. It's really only a question of security; it's not that I'm planning on using the data for anything until something goes wrong. I usually check how many people arrive via facebook, search engines and directly. I also check the keywords you use to get here. The beauty of the web :) You leave your footsteps everywhere.
So, these were the keywords that have led some of you here this past month:
"GRE experiences" has been a constant favorite since I've started looking at these things, alongside some salsa search terms. These are pretty usual results. So are the Utrecht and the bartenders weekend searches (this latter one grew somewhat more unpopular these days). But the joram searches are new and slightly strange. They all come from the same person from Oxford. And it's not Joram.It's always intriguing to see someone being interested in this blog, especially, when the person doesn't know me at all. After all, this is just a random collection of diary entries and I wouldn't think it would be very interesting to anyone but friends and mainly, myself. I started writing in my first diary when I was 13 and I filled 7 books, all handwritten, by the time I reached 19. I've never had a system in writing, I have never written every day, but I noted down whenever something happened that I found interesting enough to note down. That's pretty vague, I know, but that's how it was and how it is, still. Except that this blog is far less compromising than any of my real diaries. Imagine those...
And once in a while, this blog becomes interesting enough for some people to follow it for some time. This is how I got in contact with Kim, for example. I also get a couple of people from time to time who arrive via the random blog buttom and stay here for 4 or 5 days, reading several pages a day before saying goodbye to the posts. Other interesting cases are the girls from the Budapest salsa scene. They had found my profile on iwiw (a Hungarian community website) ages ago and some of them still visit this blog regularly, even though they have become less interested since Jani and I have reached a certain timespan together. One day, one of these women loaded my page 8 times and not to read older posts but to see whether I had written anything new. On the one hand, this program is a wonderful tool to have to get such detailed information about visits. On the other hand, sometimes I'd rather not know the freaky habits of readers that don't even know me. Anyway, the program will stay.
Now, back to our new visitor. I'm not saying it's freaky what this person is doing, but it's definitely intriguing. (S)he is doing his/her homework researching Joram on my blog. Which looks like this:
(Click on the screenshots for a bigger view.)
Why is this different from anyone researching salsa in Budapest or what it is like to take the GREs? Sure, salsa and the GREs play(ed) an important role in my life, but it feels very different to have a stranger collect information that's about a person I was once sharing my life with. The only people who know this blog address are friends - please disregard my mistake of putting the link on iwiw and the random visitors that won't care too much about what I'm writing anyway.So, when I see that this person selectively reads all the posts which have "Joram" or "boyfriend" in their text, that this person has come via Joram's old blog, that (s)he checks my blogger profile twice in a month for whatever reason, it feels weird. Dear, I hope you've found what you were looking for. Any questions you may have you can send in an e-mail. I'm sure you can find that - I also leave my footsteps everywhere around the web.
And, since you're probably more interested in Joram himself than in how I felt about him, this might be the best help I can give: my grandma once said everything one needs to know about Joram in one proverb: "kutyából nem lesz szalonna". You can find out what it means here: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kuty%C3%A1b%C3%B3l_nem_lesz_szalonna.
Just to test something...
This is an empty post - apart from these sentences, of course. I'm just checking something.
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