I had a small issue at the airport of ferihegy, Budapest was saying goodbye to me in the shape of a 40 year old check in lady telling me I have 7 kilos overweight and thats going to cost me a little over 150 EUR. Despite my numerous and smarter than smart arguments leading to the point that I think my shape is closer to perfect than hers will ever be.. I had to pay. Much less in the end but still pay. Looks like I DID loose some of that charm.

Anyway.

Its Denes Toth reporting from Minsk, Belarus.
The outside temperature has risen from -16 to +4 degrees and than went back to -7 today since I am here.

Some things that tell you, you are in belarus.

1. At the local ready food place the waitress tosses what you buy into a plastic bag and microwaves it well all together. If you ask her why the bag, you get a 5 minutes lecture about her doing this since microwave owens were invented, and that plastic plates actually melt.

2. your wallet never felt this rich from the 10 rubel paper money that worths 1 forint, thats 0.00337 EUR today.

3. this hangs from the wall said-to-be heating the room:

You press the brown botton and you can never know what blows up where. Definately one of the machines inspiring the character of Darth Vader, and I am not only talking about voice.

4. people send you CV-s where they leave the instructions in the fields for example: "you might want to inculde hobbies you dont really do but sound good" followed by the words: "chess, reading, fintess" - gosh.

5. People drink this (yes, its a giant mushroom in there), and it tastes pretty good, DONT TRY THIS AT HOME
5. KPMG offers you this: "Be happy forever and let us praise the holy globe we have just thrown up together" club, religion or whatever. Under the cover name: consulting. Oh wait, this is global, my bad.

6. If you say hi to working people (eg.: gas station, bank, grocery store), you get a strange look and an "is that all" face back. Lovely.

8. Police are arresting stand owners at the market for raising prices more than 20%, they are sentenced for "speculating with prices, using the opportunity of the crisis" - how is that?

7. There is a canteen where you can have lunch for 4.000 Rubel, less than 2 dollars, while gorcery shopping costs exactly the same as in Hungary. So, there is NO WAY, they are making money, since ONE of the ingredients would cost more. As I found out its state owned, and they get support for keeping the prices low. Sort of a "feeding people" program of the sort.

The food is really nice there. Much better than in a restaurant called Falcon that beats the crap out of any gallery in terms of art displayed, and a carbonara costs about 20 dollars. Here's to balanced pricing!

8. you need govermental licence to start your hown Wi-Fi system. This is a matter of "national security" as I learnt, and you go to jail if you dont have one.

9. A police fine can be 17 dollars if you are not careful.

All in all its time of my life :D