Siehbi l-Ungeriz Balint You know for the first time I really feel at home in Brussels. It's partially the alcohol. Where do I put my ash? But it's not just the alcohol it's also the sense of being understood by people whom I never thought would understand me. This is why I've always been hanging around with Hungarians. If I want to be understood and understand I need my own people. The people who speak the same language, who watched the same television shows, who lived under the same regime, who went to the same goddam schools. I've always thought you need to speak to your tribesmen to be understood. But lately I've been proved wrong. I had never ever thought I could speak the same language as someone from the South. And this is a guy who has lived most of his adult life abroad. And I've broken down the barriers. And now that I've broken down the barriers I'm gonna smoke another cigarette. Then I'm gonna go home. Hungary? Hungary is a place which after 15 years is still behind the wall. It's a place where people like a French person because he's French, an English person because he's English. Because they're from the civilized place. From the West, you understand? The streets in Hungary? There's a lot of dogshit. It's not so much the streets. It's the buildings. They're worn and crumbled as if a thousand years of oppression is weighed upon them. They look slightly suppressed as if they are bearing this unnatural weight. Not just their own weight. But an unnatural weight bearing them down. Dictatorships and oppression and closed worlds. The weight of life really. Buildings in Budapest look tired. Just tired of themselves, tired of their history. It's the sadness of being alive, of having seen things, of having gone through it all. But! - and it's a big but. It's a happy sadness. The sadness of an old man who's seen all the wickedness, all the evil but he's seen it all. It's like a good satirical magazine. A good satirical magazine is not meant to be happy. It's meant to be sad. It's like Monty Python. If you see it for the first, second or third time you think it's funny. But if you're willing to watch it for fourth time, and you still like it, and I mean really like it, you realize that it's not funny at all. It's fucking sad. Monty Python is the saddest thing in the world. It's like a madhouse. If you look at a madhouse you think it's funny 'cause people are acting unusually, they're acting fucking weird aren't they? But if you watch them long enough you just realize something's wrong. Not only something's wrong. It's badly wrong. And you get badly scared. Monty Python scares the living shit out of me. So Hungary's about being a loser and laughing about it. And it's a big laugh to be sure. But listen, we've got 3 types of national heroes. The first type is a poet or writer who whines about Hungary and then probably dies poor and outcast after having spent the previous fifty years whining. Most streets in Budapest are named after poets. The 2nd type are idealistic politicians, reform-minded, liberal politicians who died in exile after having failed to beat the system. And the 3rd type are scientists who fled to America and made it there. Guys like John von Neumann who invented the computer, Edward Teller who invented the hydrogen bomb. All made it but made it in America goddamit. So I left because I didn't want to be a failed poet, an exiled politician or an exiled scientist. So I left. And I ain't never goin back there not if I can help it.  ¶ 4:40 PM