Apologies (Elnézését kérjük)

to the very few people who read my blog....I apologize for the sloppy appearance of the blog itself. The captions under the photos are not centered properly after I've posted the drafts to the blog. They are, however, centered in the draft, so I do not know what the fuck I am doing wrong. I intend to spend some time on the layout, try to figure out what is going on. I also want to apologize for my tendency to edit my posts only after I've posted them to the blog. I find all kinds of spelling, grammatical mistakes, awkward sentences. I'll work on that too.  

Lomtalanítás

                                                  browse at your convenience (own risk? peril?)

    I knew it was coming, I looked forward to it. Suddenly, it was here. Then it was gone.

  I should have known...that cluster of large, stubbly headed men, each chain-smoking Bond  ciggies, lingering on the corner of  Kádár  and Visegrádi utcas last Friday morning, acting as sentinels for an old Econoline van which was bursting at the rivets with broken furniture, clothing, boxes of all kinds...that was a hint.

  They were staking their ground. Quite successfully too. No one else claimed that corner.

 Later that day, I knew. As I ran down the last flight of stairs with Cosmo for our afternoon walk, I saw the big, metal, front doors to our building were held wide open by an upended box spring on one side and a heavy dresser on the other. A warm, early, spring breeze swept in, like a tease. Behind us on the stairs, men were hauling boxes from someone's apartment, destined for the curb outside.

  Aha. Lomtalanítás had come to the thirteenth district. 

    Lomtalanítás is kind of like a district wide seasonal house purging/sidewalk sale, which begins in March and lasts until October, district  by district. People are notified with a paper announcement, stuffed into letter boxes. So much paper gets stuffed into our letter box that we generally recycle most of it, without even looking, so this year,  Lomtalanítás came as a surprise. By Friday evening piles began to appear, piles of everything from half used bottles of detergent to dissasembled furniture to sheets of really old and very brittle wall paper. Headless dolls. Filthy rugs. I saw a confounding number of lucite cubes,  each about the size of a small aquarium, all lidless. Nothing is arranged attractively for passersby, it's all just dumped out there. It's a bounty, but it ain't free, make no mistake or you risk a scolding. There's always someone sitting close by, waiting to accept forint. But not until Saturday.  Friday evening is for browsing, eye-balling. I saw an unloved and unwatered houseplant that I was determined  to save. Friday night, the owners of the junk slept outside, in window recesses or in their cars, to make sure nobody made off with anything. 

  Saturday morning, and the piles had grown smaller by ten o'clock. DIYers had come by with their trucks and snatched up all of the crushed vanity tables and slats of moulding, others were sitting with their newly acquired purchases, waiting for friends with vehicles to haul the booty. The potted palm I wanted was gone by the time I made it outside. At that point, I was on my way to Lehel tér when I spotted something I would not have minded forking over a few hundred forint for...

                                     guess they finally decided they were completely over ol' V. I. Lenin. 

  Alas, the portrait had been claimed upon my return from the market. It may have served as someone's heating fuel later that evening, who knows.

  Last year, in Csillahegy, Lomtalanítás came upon us unawares. Suddenly, in our neighborhood and in the apartment blocks across the road, the piles appeared, and after them, several Roma families, who picked through the debris, left a representative to watch over the loot, then returned with trucks to haul it away. One woman sat on a new- to- her, black and red vinyl foot rest, all day long. She had to have that foot rest. She made sure that no one one else would, with her determined posture and stony expression.

  On one of our daily excursions through the blocks, we saw a few unattended piles, containing only what absolutely no one else wanted. I found a couple of left over treasures, snatched them just for the novelty.

      an old Christmas record, so brittle, the album broke into shards on our move to Pest. I still have the cover though!

  

     an old Russian record, which survived the move to Pest. says "made in the USSR" in English, lower right side

       The piles in the blocks were left to diminish on their own, some items dissolving into mud, some blown away by the winds. It took a good week for things to vanish completely. I suspect the waste management services were not dispatched for monetary reasons...perhaps the attitude the city took was  that the blocks do not need to look tidy, so let the piles of trash minimize on their own, with time. Not so here in the thriteenth district. By the time Saturday night arrived, most of the piles were gone. A few weather beaten bags had been gone through and thrown into the street or in the middle of the sidewalk. By Sunday, there was no indication that any sort of commerce took place down on the streets at all. Not even a single item was left. The only piles littering the streets of Újlipótváros after Lomtalanítás 2012 are those of dog shit, always in constant supply, happily deposited by the numerous canines of district thirteen.