A Colorful Day in the Village

Dishwashing, sweating, riding a scooter to the city, vampire exhibition, bag repair, Tif, bull running. This is a day’s program. I know many people who, when asked what happened today, say nothing; and they really mean nothing.

Tuesday and Wednesday are my dishwashing days, and because of this, the chefs, who didn’t know what to do with me, are now very supportive. It’s very hot in the dishwashing area, and I sweat through at least three shirts in a day. My fingers are full of scratches due to using a more efficient metal sponge. In the evening, after returning from the village, I went back to the kitchen for a quarter of an hour at midnight so that I wouldn’t leave too many unwashed items for the next day. Because I finished at ten, but there were still two tables in the restaurant. I scared poor Tiffany; she was the only one left in the restaurant and wasn’t expecting me to come back.
I scooted into town in the afternoon. It’s pleasant to ride a scooter in the warm summer weather because of the headwind. I went into the city to inquire about the repair of my bag. And with the remaining time, I went to a photo exhibition.
In the former Holy Trinity church opposite the museum,
there was an exhibition called “Les Vampires N’ont Pas Peur Des Miroirs” (Vampires Are Not Afraid of Mirrors). They summed it up nicely: Gothic style. They photographed Venezuelan men, but mainly women. Venezuela is a country where drug cartels, oppression, and corruption are prevalent. Despite this, these people live, or rather, want to live. They want the same everyday life and feelings as anyone else. They want to play, love, laugh, and be happy, just like everyone else. They were photographed in everyday life situations. For example, playing soccer in the housing estate, having dinner, lying on the couch. I wondered what the woman in the bathtub might be thinking. I think the use of depressive clichés is characteristic of the Gothic style. For example, these are the teenagers who always wear black and want to die. After laughing at these photos with a black setting, I realized that these people just want to live.
My bag, which I left for repair a week ago, is still not ready. I will go pick it up next week.
I won’t gain weight from the staff food today. For dinner, I had simple potato chips with boiled eggs. This is the kind of situation where you can’t even laugh anymore. After ten, I had green beans and fox mushrooms for dinner, as the chefs have been praising my dishwashing work lately, so they give me the extra guest plates unnecessarily.
Actually, I wanted to finish the dishwashing quickly because there was a bull run in the village in the evening. I don’t even know how to say this in Hungarian: bull in the water event. It’s a small arena built for bull running (more like a little arena). In the middle of the sand-covered arena, they set up a paddling pool, the kind kids play in the yard in the summer. A young bull is the main character, and local young guys face off against it. The trick is that the guys lying in the water are not harmed by the bull – at least not intentionally. So, if a guy is not skilled enough, he just lies flat in the pool, and the bull jumps over him.
There has been a long and heated debate about how animal-friendly bull running is. In the absence of a better argument, I usually say that you can also root for the bull – for lack of a better argument. The animal is not subjected to unnecessary suffering, it is respected, not harmed. It’s enough for the bull to be annoyed, just to make it run. I watch it mainly because of its communal nature.
July 17, 2024, maybe, but Wednesday, that’s for sure.