Glimpses from Pusztaszer - Part Three

MONIKA VS HUNGARY - PART THREE

So are you all ready for some more thrilling stories about my life as a farmer? Of course you are, here we go!!
Because my days are so similar in that I wake up, work, then eat, then work, then eat, then work, then I read Dracula, then sleep, I feel like I have nothing much interesting to say "Today I fed the pigs..............um.... hmmm." I will try though.

One thing I have noticed is that the type of physical labour means that you have many hours of repetetive toil, where you are working physically but there's nothing for my brain to do. So I've since discovered I have a really weird brain that thinks weird things in an attempt to liven up the day.

One day as I was working in the fields I suddenly heard Zsuzsa calling out "NO MOLLY NO, NOOOOOO". I frown, Molly??? Molly was the sheep that died last week of mysterious circumstances and I helped bury her. I look up startled, to see a great white thing hurtling towards me. Oh good lord, this is it, I'm gonna die, that is a zombie sheep on the rampage and it is going to tear me limb from limb.

Now the thing is this family has a habit of calling all their animals by very similar names. Molly, Polly, Poula, etc.. So it was actually Polly, the hulking great Komondor dog, covered in matted white dreadlocks rampaging about, not some undead rotting sheep. But in the moment, it was almost believable. Almost, I swear.

Yesterday we all packed ourselves into the family van and went hurtling along random dirt roads, driving further and further into strange peasant back villages. I watch the people I see out the window, wondering at them. There's not a town in sight, they live their entire lives out here. I look at the children, and wonder what their lives are like, when they will be like when they grow up. Crooked toothed and googly eyed, gangly limbs and a wary spark. We finally wind our way through a labyrinth to a farm where we pick up three little Hungarian Mangalica pigs. You pick them up by their hind legs, whilst they squeal and shriek... and put them into sacks, then into the back of the van, where they squirm about and squeal the whole way home. I was a little, I don't know... surprised by this. Now they're back on the farm in a happy little pen, getting on with it. Just a little snippet I found interesting.

Oh, a few of you asked, since I didn't specify my living quarters. I am lucky enough to have a cottage all to myself, built in the old peasant style, it is freezing cold and there is no hot water. But beats sleeping on a bed of hay. In the evenings as twilight descends on the farm, the evening nightingales sing hauntingly beautiful songs that carry over the fields. These are the lonely hours, when I wish I had someone with me to share in the peaceful tranquility of those moments. I try to compose my letters and postcards then, so I still feel as if I am "in company".