Pestiside.hu

So with that we bid goodbye to another exciting and inspiring year here in Hungary. Following some long-overdue site maintenance that will likely involve some temporary outages, we'll be back sometime in the first week of January, hopefully with a bit more verve and zeal. That is, if we or anyone else are still around. Seriously. One needn't be a conspiracy theorist to get the distinct sense that the powers-that-be in this country are actually going out of their way to drive us foreign cosmopolitans away. They - or at least some of them - are pretty open about it. But what's really striking is the creeping feeling that somehow the grand plan of our Insect Overlords is to get everyone - Hungarian and otherwise - who is even vaguely of an international mindset to clear out.

Holy Christmas it's getting cold out there. According to various local weather websites - which, by the way, don't seem to agree with each other - it may get down to -8ºC today, or almost as cold as inside the Budapest Ice Bar.

In yet another unmistakable sign of we're not exactly sure, a grocery store operating in the county jail of Bács-Kiskun was raided by tax collectors after they received an anonymous tip-off from inside the joint that the store was engaged in a massive tax-evasion scheme.

When our politicians aren't busy crawling back to the IMF or ending the "Republic of Hungary", they're busy proposing laws to protect Hungary's youth from the "dangers of nightlife," proposing a curfew for kids under 14 from 10pm to 6am, and kids under 16 from 11pm to 6am. What is not mentioned in any of these articles, however, is that Hungary's age of consent remains at 14 years of age, meaning that the kids can be punished for being out on the streets late at night, but screwing on the old couch in the garage is still A-OK. It makes us wonder if this "family-friendly" legislation doesn't simply intend to increase family sizes.

In other Romanian hockey news involving Hungarians (since it seems like most Romanian hockey players are actually Hungarian), the sole ethnic Romanian on Romania's U16 hockey team got into an altercation with three of his teammates recently. Apparently one of them was insulting him in Hungarian, to which the Romanian replied that they should all be speaking in Romanian, since it's was a national holiday, and because all the Hungarians "are actually Romanian." Apparently not the best thing to say, for later when he was taking a shower, the lights got switched off, and he was attacked by three teammates using wet towels. The head of the Romanian national hockey association, who, surprise surprise, is also an ethnic Hungarian, has said that the three attackers should be booted from the team. We guess it's not so good to be an ethnic minority in Romania these days. [sportgeza.hu]

The Romanian nation is currently in an uproar following the Hungary-Romania match held over the weekend in Miercurea-Ciuc, better known to Hungarians as Csíkszereda. The reason for the uproar has nothing to do with the final score, which was 4-1 in favor of Romania, but because the players on the Romanian team remained silent while their national anthem was played, but joined in when the Hungarian anthem was sung. The Romanian press has apparently been scandalized by this, with former tennis star Ilie Nastase already announcing his fears that if this goes unpunished, that the Hungarian flag would soon be seen flying from Bucharest's triumphal arch. As for why the Romanian national team would prefer singing an anthem aside from their own? It might have something to do with the fact that 22 out of 24 players on the Romanian national team that night are ethnic Hungarians. [sportgeza.hu]

In a sweeping legal opinion destined to be laughed at for years to come, Hungary's supreme court last week ordered the local unit of Tesco to pay compensation to 170 cashiers for underpaying them. According to the court, the hypermarket giant improperly classified those working at the cash register as "unskilled," while such labor should instead be properly be considered "skilled," allowing for a higher minimum wage. Which would be ridiculous even if you didn't take into account that some of the company's outlets don't even have cashiers, because customers can use the machines themselves. Ha. [ateceged.hu]

Hungarian swimmers Gergely Gyurta and Dávid Verrasztó have been ordered to appear at a disciplinary committee meeting after the two got in a fight after Gyurta sent a congratulatory text to Verrasztó's former girlfriend Sára Joó, who is also a swimmer. All three were at the European Short Course Swimming Championships in Poland, where Verrasztó apparently got so worked up he managed to punch a trainer in the nose (which the trainer now denies) before security managed to stop him. Guess someone's isn't exactly over his ex-girlfriend. [sporthirado.hu/hvg.hu]

So all week we've been quietly watching the developing story that started on Monday with the discovery by a trash-picking homeless wretch of the remains of a human body in a heap of garbage on a street in Budapest's District XVIII. At first, policy were not even sure whether the body parts - a pair arms and legs, wrapped up nicely in a plastic bag - indicated a crime, apparently holding out hope that the severed limbs had somehow been inadvertently tossed out by a hospital, morgue or some other place with lots of arms and legs lying around. But as it turns out, someone actually did hack them off of someone else who wasn't ready to give them up. And that someone is a she!

While some commentators have cast doubt on the effectiveness of the current government's drive to cut down on the number of Hungarians claiming early pensions, a 55-year-old man in Veszprém single-handedly proved the critics wrong.

As of today, trains on Budapest's metro line 3 will be limited to a top speed of 60 kph due to the bad conditions in the tunnels. This new rule will not apply to those sections of the line where the top speed is already lower. Apparently the main problem is not with the rails so much as the rail ties, which due to corrosion and vibrations keep degrading and falling apart. Combined with the regular fires, there are now worries that the line might even have to be shut down, leading to widespread travel chaos. Nonetheless, travel would still remain faster than by ambulance. [mno.hu/hvg.hu]

Despite how fast they careen around the streets of Budapest, our nation's ambulance drivers apparently travel much slower in the countryside. A man struck by a truck in Pusztamérges became brain-dead en route to the hospital in Szeged, located 43 kilometers away. While that in itself is not shocking, what is is that it took the ambulance two and a half hours to get there, including a switch halfway through, meaning they were doing an average of 17 kph, thus raising the possibility that his coma is not the result of his injuries. [index.hu]

It didn't take long for someone to build a statue in honor of recently-deceased "demigod" Steve Jobs, but we're willing to expect you didn't expect it to be a Hungarian (they're usually much too occupied with stupid world records). However, sculptor Ernő Tóth felt the former Apple guru was deserving of being immortalized in bronze, and won a tender launched shortly after Jobs' death. The statue, which is 220cm tall, is nearly done, and despite looking bearing much more of a resemblance to C-3PO than Jobs, will be dedicated this Saturday at the Graphisoft Park in Óbuda. Because there weren't enough weird public sculptures already. [hoc.hu]

Hungary will ban nine psychoactive drugs from January 1, including five synthetic cannabinoids, Methylone, 4-MEC, 4-FA and MDPV, in a bid to prevent the spread of new types of designer drugs that caught on in Hungary after the ecstasy market collapsed in 2009-2010.

A homeless man recently confessed in court to making off with Ft 850 million (roughly €2.7 million) from a bank in Budapest in a brazen robbery in which he used a gas pistol to disarm the bank's security guard. The man said he gambled away all of the loot within a few days of the the heist and then went back to living on the streets, throwing himself on the mercy of the court by claiming he was in such a bad state of mind due to his poverty that he was bound to commit a serious crime sooner or later. If that sounds a bit familiar, it should, because it's essentially a sequel to the "Whiskey Robber" story that captivated Hungary - and almost got made into a Johnny Depp picture - a few years ago, give or take some smoldering good looks and ice-hockey hi-jinx. The unnamed 31-year-old could face 20 years in jail for his crime, not including any lawsuits from the rights-holders to the original story. [nepszava.hu]

Firefighters called out to a Chinese market in Békéscsaba, southeast Hungary, discovered that a stall which had caught fire contained a heavily burned body. Police said there was "no evidence of wrongdoing." Move along, noting to see here... [index.hu]