MORE MONEY! MORE MONEY!

there is something horrible happening in hungary. civil servants, including teachers, police, firemen, etc. will be bearing the brunt of the economic crisis alone as the prime minister and the other powers that be decided to freeze the current salaries and withhold the 13th month salary (which is what most of these people depend on to make ends meet). everyone is outraged. so, they staged a protest in budapest this weekend. and i was among the protesters!

a few teachers from my school and a bunch from my city met and boarded some buses for the 3 hour ride to the capital. we met at 6:30am... so, no pictures of that.

don't worry. teachers brought palinka (really strong hungarian liquor) for the bus

we stopped a couple times at gas stations for the facilities and to get hot coffee or whatever.
aniko' and i waited outside in the snow/rain for the ladies' room with a million other ladies.
ooooh, taking pictures in line. it was all we could to to keep from freezing.
we drove past parliament before the big demonstration. see how it's all empty? remember that.
aw, these are some coworkers of mine. margo' and miklos (no relation) were jolly protesters.
when we arrived at the starting point (oh, there was a short march which ended at parliament) they gave us little flags that said civil servants' union or something like that. our flags also said something about teachers. here we are not yet frozen. aren't we cute?

we were so cute, in fact, that some camera man was video taping what can only be described as ... well, me. so i took his picture, too... to return the love. too bad it's blury. he seemed annoyed.THEN they (the ministry of education people... i think) gave alllllllllll the teachers these precious little smocks! i wore it proudly because it said teachers' union or whatever on it... and plus... free smock! (someone may or may not have kept her smock and gave it to me as a keepsake.)
here is smock-ed up aniko' with her little flag and umbrella.
aniko' (2) and tama's (thomash), some engaged coworkers of mine. they are so fun!
some people brought their own signs. this one says something like what else can you take, or something. i forget. but there is a saying in hungarian about people's pay being so low the frog can crap it out, or something. so, haha. clever magyars.
teachers civil service, NYIREHYHA'ZA (my city) city and surrounding - i took these strangers' pictures, and look, some of them even smiled!!! look even more closely and you will see the guy in the middle is wearing a tamba bay lightning cap. WHOA. 2 florida things in one week.
so, we stood around listening to speeches for a while. aniko' 1 got bored and stuffed people's flags into aniko' 2's smock. she didn't know, and when we told her she was not amused. i was.... :)
ahhh, this is parliament when we were there! it was nowhere near empty now! there were probably 5,000 people there. ok, i have no idea how many, but it seemed like a million.










well, who WOULDN'T take a picture with hungarian firefighters, i ask you!?!?
more emergency people...
more... with their own little smocks... so organized.
and some more nice fellas posed with me... making an american girl's dreams come true.
there were buses and people from all over hungary! none of these are our buses. :(
while we waited tama's suggested he take my picture in front of the danube. so, sure. why not.

parliament, firemen, me, danube

heroes square - it's sort of a big deal tourist spot in budapest. statues of hungarian heroes. in fact, i can name like 10 hungarian heroes because EVERYthing is named after the same people.
aniko' refused to let me sleep on the bus home, so i made her take pictures. i think it's fair. i'm pretty sure she's not gonna like this one of her (she doesn't like any of her pics). oh well.
who knows what will come of this demonstration. we are supposed to hear the response tonight, if there is one. as of right now, though, there is a STRIKE scheduled for january 12th. woohoo, my first protest and my first strike! i love hungary!

you can read about it HERE