I’m getting a taste for Turkish coffee, boiled in a big open pan over the fire, thick and black, with plenty of sugar, though I never have sugar at home. What it really needs is a slug of liqueur and a dollop of cream on top.
Here I sit in the woods, drinking my coffee, eating chocolate biscuits and apricots, listening to the drums. The next session starts at 4:30. Lunch from 1:30 to 4:30. the time keeping gets more erratic as the days pass.

It was grey and drizzly when I woke today, not really the kind of morning for a walk, so I sat in the cabin and read. Gabriella woke about 6:30.
We walked to the shop despite the drizzle, the lure of the pastries was too strong, and Gabriella was running out of cigarettes again. I managed to get change for my 10,000 forint note yesterday, there was a book sale, and I bought one about European approaches to respecting inter-generational equity, for 600 forints (about £2). So now I have cash of my own, and I buy a snail-shell Danish pastry, a bag of apricots, some chocolate biscuits.
The coffee machine is open, the man is fixing something, I pull bits off my pastry while we’re waiting. In the end he pours out two cups and hands them to us, he won’t accept payment.
Too damp to sit on the grass, we drink our coffee as we walk along. The coil of my pastry seems to go on forever, it’s not the best I’ve ever had, but in the circumstances...
I go for a shower when we get back to camp. Yesterday I was the first, and had the shower block to myself, but the water was freezing. Today I’m later and there are a few women in there already. I leave my clothes on the bench in the middle of the communal shower area, as I did yesterday when I was on my own. There are no doors on the cubicles, and when I come out my clothes are soaking wet. I pull them on and walk back to the hut damply through the drizzle.
http://melinda-in-surreality.blog.co.uk/2008/07/18/wet-tee-shirt-4465289
Breakfast is even later than it was yesterday. Gabriella takes her 3-in-1 and mixes it with water directly from the hot tap at the hand basins. It’s not great, but in the circumstances...
‘You have to change your attitude to food’ I say, over our morning portion of gloop. At least there’s crusty white bread today, though nothing to go with it.
‘What’s wrong with my attitude to food?’ she bridles. I can see her feathers are ruffled.
‘No, no, I don’t mean YOU specifically, I mean ONE has to, WE have to. It’s just fuel, it’s not there to bring pleasure, just to keep us alive’.
I think I’ve sussed out the reason for the dreariness of the food. It’s not just vegetarian, it’s vegan. Not only no meat (which I can live without), but no cheese or eggs either. The carton of milk beside the coffee pan, I noticed, is soya milk. Plus, of course, cooking food for 120 people over an open fire, for less than 10 euros a head a day, can’t be easy.
At ‘lunchtime’ there are various workshops again, but I’m ready for a rest. Breakfast at 9:30 and starting work at 10:30 doesn’t really suit me when I’m awake at 5, by the time the day’s work starts I’m ready to go back to sleep. So after my midday portion of veg, I go back to the hut and lie down for a while. Then I return to the dining room for more coffee, grab my apricots, biscuits and notebook, and go to sit in the woods.
Somewhere behind me, there’s a drumming workshop going in. More surreality.

I meet up with Gabriella before the start of the next session.
‘I’ve been drumming!’ she says. So that’s where she was. ‘You should come too! Very nice instructor!’
But I’ve decided to go to a session on environmental justice, and I’m glad I do. After it finishes, I can still hear the drums though, so I wander over to the place where the workshop is happening.
Gabriella is still there – with the ‘nice instructor’.
Someone shoves a drum between my legs, and I’m away.

The coffee arrives at last, thick and dark, in another large open pan, with a ladle to serve.
‘Turkish coffee’ says Gabriella, spooning in icing sugar from a bowl alongside.
But no fry up – of course. And no pastries either – just a strange gloop of chopped vegetables cooked together, like last night’s risotto, but without the rice. And dark rye bread. No butter, no jam, just bread. Ho hum.
Sitting with our coffee in the relative privacy of the smoking area, we discuss the previous evening’s round table. Gabriella isn’t impressed.
‘We will see how it goes this morning. If it’s no better, we’ll do our presentation at lunchtime, then go back to Istvan’s house, and organise our own programme. Visegrad, Szentendre, Esztergom, swimming, cycling, whatever you want’.
‘Istvan’s gone to Prague’ I remind her. But there’s the ferry. I could make it to the yellow ferry station with my suitcase. But I don’t relish trying to get to the one 5km away, and I have no idea how we would get to Istvan’s house when we reached the other side.

But the morning sessions exceed expectations. Peak oil, the transition towns movement, global food security, all interesting stuff. The transition towns talk is given by a Hungarian yoga teacher who now lives in Coventry. Mid 40s-ish, shaggy blond hair, lovely smile, very fit (in both senses), but... I suspect he might be gay. Anyway, of course I’m far too shy to attempt to talk to him. Most of the lectures are in English today, but the headsets are working better anyway, and everyone seems much more relaxed.
We don’t get much of an audience for our presentation, but as it turns out, that’s just as well. The laptop and projector are fine, but I was planning to show the DVD, and there’s no sound. Apart from denying us the pleasure of hearing the Crazy Frog’s voiceover (Me: ‘any excuse to listen to his voice again’. Gabriella: ‘Step over it!'), it makes it almost impossible to follow.
The techie guy promises to sort it, and disappears.
I go straight into my Powerpoint presentation – no problem, when I showed it in Nottingham I couldn’t get the video working either, I can adapt. The interpreters are on lunch break, but if anyone has any problems with my English, Gabriella is there to answer questions in Hungarian.
The techie comes back with a speaker and plugs it in. As soon as he does so, the projector dies.
I carry on. Now we are all sitting around the laptop, watching my slides flash up on the screen. It’s cosy. I don’t mind. In Oxford, I wasn’t allowed to use Powerpoint at all. This is a very flexible presentation.
Once it’s out of the way, I can start to relax. I check out the programme for the rest of the day, go to a workshop on participatory decision making, run by two young English guys, which is good fun. One of them reminds me of the Giles Wemmbley Hogg character from Radio 4, a very specific English type, the posh, well meaning, bumbling idiot, what is the name of the actor who plays him? Marcus Brigstocke, of course. I try to explain to Gabriella, but I don’t think she quite gets it.

The weather is changing, clouds are gathering . At the afternoon break I go back to the room for my cardigan, sit down on the bed and exhaustion hits me. I check the programme, and decide I can skip the last session, lie down on the bed and listen to my sleep tape.
I doze a little, don’t really sleep. After an hour or so I get up and go on the laptop, upload the photos I took last night and this morning. I try to put them on Facebook, it’s slow and painful, because for some reason I can’t multiple select them, they have to be done one at a time. I’m sure that can’t be right. And all the messages are in Hungarian, which is a bit of a problem, without Gabriella there.
She comes back and finds me struggling with it. But she has brought something infinitely more interesting – a cork screw, borrowed from the blond hippy’s bar.
She opens the wine. We have the plastic cups we got from the coffee machine this morning, washed out with mineral water from a bottle, and swilled over the balcony. Sorted. We toast one another in a very decent Hungarian red, and wonder when dinner will be ready.
Couscous tonight, with vegetables, in the dining hall, as the rain makes sitting around the fire impossible. I’m not keen on couscous. Afterwards, a Hungarian journalist shows a film about his experiences travelling in South America and the rape of Amazonia by logging, mining and monoculture. Scary stuff, the ‘before’ pictures glorious, the ‘after’ heartbreaking. The sound system is working now.
Gabriella leaves early again, I stay till the film finishes, then wander outside. No live music tonight, but someone is playing records over the PA system.
Back in the room, I can still hear the music –. Gabriella is asleep, at least tonight she got undressed and into bed. The rest of the wine is sitting on the shelf. Well, it won’t be any good by tomorrow, will it? I pour out another plastic cupful.
Gabriella’s phone rings. I pick it up, shake her shoulder, pass it to her. It’s Istvan, must be, I can tell from her voice. Calling from Prague.
I step out onto the balcony with my cup of wine, listening to the music. Johnny B Goode gives way to Roadhouse Blues. Let it roll, baby, roll, all night long. Here comes the thunder.
No one’s going to call on my mobile, from Prague or anywhere else.

'Another chance at bliss,
Another kiss....'
.... if only

Sorry, bit of a downer, I know, (not you Trevor ), but I was having a bit of a one-woman Jim-fest, and thought I should share this:

There is light coming through the skylight over my head. I retrieve my watch from the shelf, trying not to make a noise and disturb Gabriella. Five o’clock. Not bad, for me, if I ignore the fact that it’s actually 4 at home.
No point in trying to get back to sleep. I get up and dressed, making as little noise as possible. Gabriella is asleep on the next bed, still fully dressed. Gingerly I open the door, and step out onto the balcony at the top of the steps, breathing in the morning air. The dogs start to bark.
Down the steps. I head for the women’s toilet block – first port of call. A small ginger cat skulks behind a pot of geraniums. The last cabin before the loos looks lived in, as though it might be permanently inhabited. I guess someone must be here all the summer to supervise the place.

Do I go back to the cabin and try to get the laptop going again? Am I really that sad? No, a walk is called for, get out and find my bearings, find out where I am.
Through the gate – closed now, but not locked, I open it gingerly. Down the lane with the muddy ruts, the way we came yesterday in the car. I reach the metalled road, I’m on the bend, it heads off to the left or straight on. Straight on to the river.
Past the rusting hulk on my right. It’s hard to judge distances when you’re on foot and you’ve only travelled them by car, but it takes me five minutes to reach the right bend leading to the ferry station. And in front of me, the Danube – a jetty, a gangplank (is that the right word?), a boat.

There is no one around except me. I step onto the plank (or whatever it’s called) and gaze down the river. There is a ferry with its barge full of cars alongside, heading for the bank. Ducks are dabbling in the shallow water, ignoring me, minding their own business.
I am here. Another of those amazing conjunctions of circumstances that life throws up. Why am I standing here, on the edge of the Danube, on a July morning? What has made this happen?
A shock runs through me. I think someone must be heading down the plank towards me, to ask what I’m doing here, but it’s only the slap of the boat as it rises and falls. The passing ferry has caused a swell.

I remember walking along a jetty in Larnaca, watching the fishing boats. The Crazy Frog talking to me about the video he made of our original project.
‘You caused me such problems’.
‘Me?’
‘I had so much footage of you. And all of it was so good. I watched it again and again, but I didn’t know what to choose’.
Oh, what a charmer. Charming bastard.
But that was there, and now I’m here. And I’m not going to think about him again. History.
I head back towards the camp. The morning light falls through the trees. Even the weeds by the roadside are beautiful.
I walk past the smoking area, and there sits Gabriella. First one of the day. We smile, and I sit down.
‘I need coffee’ she announces. ‘First, cigarette. Then, coffee.’
‘Sounds good.’ I agree. The next priority, the one missing item on the morning’s agenda.
But the dining hall isn’t open, there’s no one around, no sign of coffee. It’s nearly 7.
‘Should have brought it from Istvan’s house. He has 3-in-1’.
Means nothing to me, but I agree.
‘Like the corkscrew’. She nods, ruefully.
‘We could try the café’ I suggest. ‘The one we drove past’.
Istvan pointed it out yesterday. But I feel a little awkward.
‘I still don’t have any change’ I add. ‘And I don’t know how far it is’.
‘It’s no problem. Not far’.

She’s right. Fifteen minutes walk, if that. The café isn’t open, but the shop next door is. And there’s a coffee machine outside.
But first, inside the shop, Gabriella buys cigarettes, while I gloat over the pastries. She grabs something from the shelf.
‘3-in-1!’ she announces, triumphantly.
Outside, we get coffee from the machine, and look for somewhere to sit and savour it. The café has tables outside, but they’re behind a small fence, and the gate is padlocked. Across the road, the grass verge rises to a low bank. We sit on the bank and drink our coffee.
‘What I really want now’ says Gabriella ‘is a full English breakfast!’
Well, no chance of that at the camp. Anyway, I’ve had enough, every day in Oxford. What I really want is a continental breakfast.
‘Pain au chocolat’ I say, remembering Le Pain Quotidien in Brussels, ‘and croissants. And pain raisin. And fruit, and LOTS of coffee’.
Back at camp, no sign of any such thing.
‘There’s tea!’
A large cooking pot, full of liquid, a ladle and cups, a strong smell of cinnamon.
It’s chai – spiced green tea, made with milk. Tasty and comforting. But not coffee.
‘But we have 3-in-1!’
The mystery is revealed. Individual sachets, containing Nescafe, milk powder and sugar. All mixed together.
‘But we don’t have hot water’ I point out, ladelling out another cup of chai.
She shrugs.
‘It’s no problem! We will find hot water’.

I found this in my note book the other day. I wrote it in Brussels in March, no prizes for guessing who it's about. I'd completely forgotten it, I never really finished it, ironic given the title.

Finished Business

For too long
There was an ache, an emptiness,
A space the shape of you
Inside of me.
A scar I could not leave alone,
A sentence with no final punctuation.
But now I wake
And know I didn't dream of you last night*
I visit places where we went
And they are only buildings, bricks and stones,
And streets of people passing through their lives,
Without regrets.
The city sirens wail,
The morning breaks.

(c) Melinda Belynda, March 2008

* [Ed's note - more irony here]

No sign of dinner yet.
We go back to our room, get the laptop working, and upload the day’s photos from my camera. We go into Facebook, trawl through each other’s photos, tell each how beautiful our daughters are – and our cats.
Then we trawl through each other’s friends – those who aren’t mutual. She admires the Crazy Frog’s profile photo – always pops up first on my list of friends, the bastard. Short bastard.
Whatever.
The bottle of wine, requisitioned from Istvan’s house, stares down from the shelf. We don’t have a corkscrew.
‘Should have got Istvan to leave us his Swiss army knife’ I say.
‘It’s no problem, we will find a way.’ Gabriella oozes optimism, I absorb and neutralise it.
I fish out my Swiss army grooming set from my bag, to great admiration. You never know, when you’re out in the backwoods, when you might need a tooth pick or eyebrow tweezers.
While I brood over my emails, she makes the trek to the women’s toilet block (far side of the camp), and returns with the news that dinner is ready.

Dinner consists of vegetable risotto, rye bread, tomatoes, gherkins, and long, thin yellow peppers. Well, they did say it would be vegetarian. I don’t have a problem with that, and it’s all very tasty.
I sit on the edge of the decking area, eating my risotto from a bowl. Gabriella is looking for the organiser to discuss the arrangements for our presentation. We booked late, so aren’t included in the programme, but she says we can present tomorrow lunchtime.
The formal proceedings begin after dinner with a roundtable discussion on climate, food and the economy.
We sit in the front row. A mistake. The discussion is in Hungarian with simultaneous interpretation into English. My headset doesn’t work very well, it crackles and buzzes in my ears and I struggle to follow what’s being said. And I was up at 3:30 this morning.
I notice Gabriella has left the room - for a smoke, I presume. I want to follow her, but I feel awkward. She comes back. I try again to concentrate on the debate. Most of what’s being said is familiar to me anyway, but the level of argument seems rather basic, maybe I am just spoilt after Oxford.
Gabriella leaves again, and this time I follow her.
‘I’m going back to the room to sleep’.
I’m disappointed.
‘I was looking forward to the party’ I say.
‘Only for a nap. I’ll come back later’.
I sit through the end of the discussion, then with a relief, the crowd (what’s left of it) mills out to congregate round the fire.
Back in the room, Gabriella is fast asleep. I check my emails, then my blogs. There’s a comment, but try as I might I can’t open it, and then, when I do and try to reply, I lose the connection again.
Frustrating.
http://husbandorcat.blog.co.uk/2008/07/16/definition-of-frustration-4457550
It’s almost 10:00pm already – soon be my bedtime , and Gabriella's out for the count. Given the problems I have with sleep, I have great respect for other people's. But hell, that’s only 9:00 at home. I might as well go down and check out the party.
The blond hippy is managing the bar. 160 forints for a large plastic cup of wine from a plastic four litre container, 120 for a bottle of beer. Due to a miscalculation at the cashpoint (dazzled by all the zeroes), the smallest denomination I have is 10,000.
‘Or the palinka is free’.
‘I’ll have that!’
Hmmm. Definitely firewater.

The band consists of a girl vocalist, two guys on acoustic guitars, someone on bongos. Or possibly an upturned cooking pot. Whatever. Percussion.
They’re pretty good. Or maybe it’s the palinka.
One of the guitarists is now doing backup vocals. The blond hippy wanders over to join them. I swear he’s playing the spoons. Amazingly effective – unless that’s the palinka too.
I’ve emptied my glass and put it down behind the log I’m sitting on. A girl walks round the fire with a tray of glasses, handing them out, chatting to people. She has one left when she reaches me.
‘Would you like to try our local spirit? Take a glass, my colleage is following with a bottle to fill it up.’
Can’t disoblige the young lady. What more harm can two glasses do than the first one?
A round light comes up behind the trees. Some kind of flood light?
No, there it is, rising above us, round and majestic. Well, not perfectly round yet. But getting there.

I didn't take this photo (wish I had). I stole it form my friend Ilze - well, I asked her permission to put it here. I found it yesterday when I was going through my friends' photos on Facebook looking for ones to use for the project website I'm creating.

I'd forgotten about it, but I must have seen it before, and I guess that subliminally it helped to inspire this poem:
http://www.authspot.com/Poetry/The-Crescent-Moon.190723