The story I’m going to tell you this time is not about how a Russian sees Europe, but the other way around. I’ve been in my home city Tyumen for two weeks, and it’s noteworthy (although logical) that after three years in Holland I’m noticing now more peculiarities in Russia than there.
Note: this script will not work in GNOME 3 and Ubuntu 11.10; for these systems you have to use the new version.
This bash script picks up a random image file (.jpg, .jpeg or .png) from the predefined directory and sets it as wallpaper.
This track was written by me in collaboration with Igor Abakumov back in 2002. Those were our first, and up to now also the last, feeble attempts of Progressive Metal composing.
The name is Latin for “After the clouds there is sun”, which symbolizes contrast vicissitudes of mood in the tune.
The Chinese technology is amazingly advanced. So MP5 player production is in full swing:
Some planned changes have been made to the blog.
As it has matured, it moved to my own domain, and the new URL is: blog.yktoo.com.
Neal Morse, one of the most famous progressive rock musicians, visited us in Holland. Yesterday, June 4, 2011, he performed in Zoetermeer, which is near the Hague, in the club named Boerderij (“farmhouse”).
Google amazes me with its awareness—they congratulate the Dutch with the Queen’s Day:
On our last day, (morning, to be precise), we decided to visit St. Stephen’s Basilica (Szent István-bazilika), a famous Roman Catholic cathedral.
On our way to the cathedral I spotted an interesting mechanism at a building yard:
A constructor tried to explain me in signs that I wasn’t allowed to photograph there, but I pretended to not understand Magyar signs.
We borrowed a city guide from our Viennese friends (in German, of course).
So imagine, a Russian and a Dutch in Hungary, at the metro station “Moscow square” (Moszkva tér), speaking English, try to find their way using an Austrian guide printed in German.
Our accommodation in Budapest was luckily very affordable. It was a two bedroom apartment near the city center, built in the mid twentieth century—with high ceilings, spacious and cozy (we wouldn’t have chosen for worse, yeah).
Budapest is the capital of Hungary (honest). Hungary is a part of the EU (which Hungarians are undoubtedly proud of, because of the number of EU flags hung out everywhere). But it isn’t part of eurozone, which was a complete surprise for me. They have their own currency called forint, and you exchange it at the rate of one kilo 260 for one euro. Because of that, you usually count them in thousands (1000 HUF ≈ 4 EUR).
