Back to work, this time over Horgoš, for some reason, probably a better crossing, as the Bački Breg was too full of smugglers and the staff weren't used to this much traffic. The Horgoš/Röszke was faster, it being on a more important road, it had to be better organized and therefore faster.
The sales of DentoSys got somewhat stuck, even with no competition. We even got some guy to be the seller, he gets 30%. Wow, buddy, don't tell me that selling is so much harder than making...
While waiting for some result to come from this guy, Mihály came up with a triper. He took me to Pest, to talk with... not quite the health minister, though some connections were hinted at, but rather the editor of the doctors' society magazine or some such thing, so that the magazine would run a positive critique of DentoSys (written by Mihály himself, or by some local dentist who already uses it), for nothing... except Szoftex may be perhaps willing to contribute to the permanence of issuing of the magazine, voluntarily and perhaps even anonymously. So the doctors' association's magazine is a payola... eh, the capitalism.
The talk itself is of some interest to me. First off, it was in an old building in some sidestreet in downtown Pest, not even close to shine and glamour of what I'd expect, it looked more like a staff room of a provincial weekly twenty years ago. Second, my hungarian was just good enough not just to stay abreast of the conversation, but even to contribute here and there, which was, I suppose, the reason I was here and not one of the two Hungarians (Joška or Vanji).
There's really something to it. Just like Ileš would frequently grumble when some aborigine caused the traffic to get stuck, "what are you waiting for, a directive from Budapest, get going you idiot, may your internal Kádár fuck you". And he was somewhat right, the Hungarians had fourty-some years of drill to learn to not think, not decide, to wait for orders to come from you know where, you know what happened to that guy who got it into his head to bring on his own decisions, how seriously he got fucked up... And that's why we reigned there these years, we who came with experience of surviving 1993, with reflexes which can outrun any inflation or sudden change of rules. And I don't mean just the three of us, there were many who opened small businesses here and traded in anything they could find. Because the aborigines didn't understand that the directives from the central are no more, it's stick to your guns now, you're in the market now. So if Mihály got the idea that he may impress the guy by showing his own hired yugo, there probably was some sound reasoning in it. We had the fame.
Though I don't think it helped much. Even though the app was ship shape, had all it needed, including the famed export to floppies for the ministry, for which the practice would get 2000 HFR per floppy (and would save uncounted hours of work which would now not be spent on filling the forms for the ministry), only a few dozen were sold, as far as I know. Perhaps some number went through other channels, I really don't give a damn, I'm not getting a percentage, I'm just a worker employee here.
We did write that install floppy generator for DentoSys, which kept all the data on the disk, to be able to make a spare copy if the first one was bad - and it was also tied in with defg.prg, so one floppy could be used any number of times, on any number of machines, but all the app's instances would have the practice name, phone and address welded in, and these would show onscreen and in headers of all reports, and there was also the code in that floppy for the ministry. And if anyone messes with defg.prg, the checksum won't match and the app will refuse to work. So the number of forty or sixty sold is probably right, unless the generator was run from more than one machine - but in that case, if any of such users made a phone call, hope that the right person takes the call. So, the sales flopped, nowhere near the expected 2000, no hope to park the merc* upended on the door...
We still didn't have a lunch routine, it often occurred that Ileš and I remain for later because it turned out that others lunched already, on the way back from Gemenc - was it at the cops', in some tavern with a workers' menu, or in the pedagogical [high school]. In such case, Ileš liked to take me down to a tavern around the corner, actually two corners, it was another street parallel to where Szoftex was, just a few meters lower, because it was exactly on the western edge of the Pannonian flatland, while the office was on the last slopes of the Alps. The tavern was a flat-roofed nondescript box, just brick and shop windows, strewn by curtains floor to ceiling. It was cozy inside, what with dark red carpet everywhere and them curtains.
On their parking [lot] bigger and better and newer cars would appear - not just the classic trabant, lada or wartburg, but west made too, which was a sign of good cuisine. You can't fool a Hungarian, never falls for the makeup and fenseraj [fancy but with german -erei suffix, mix often done when mocking]. A tavern may look like the last hole, he doesn't care, what matters is good grub. And on these cars I noticed a miracle yet unseen - the bumpers weren't nickeled steel sheet metal, as they always were. Which actually looked well all the way to the eighties, when someone decided that the likewise nickeled coverings of the rivets where the bumpers were attached to their holders were too expensive and complicated to make, so these were replaced with black rubber coverings, which still looked good... until someone decided to lower the cost even more and introduced black plastic instead of rubber. Within two-three years the black would become smeary gray, with cracks and faded edges, and soon made the whole car look like shit. These new cars now had the bumpers in the chassis, not standing away from it, and painted the same as it. Looked much better, even later when I understood that these were not sheet metal but plastic, and serve only the looks and aerodynamics. Okay, also hold turn signals [žmigavac - winker, flasher] and foglights.
Csülkös bableves - beans čorba with butkice (then still called kolenica, the knee part of ham) was the house special, and it was regularly good. We did this several times this fall and winter, almost acquired a habit, had to do it at least monthly. Ileš insisted that I try the best dish in the world for dessert - eh, a nostalgicist, must have been the big deal when he was a kid: túrós csusa [toorosh chussa], literally (young) cheese slide. Boiled noodles, amount fitting one full ladle, topped with three spoons of young cheese mixed in sour cream, and on top of that a spoonful of finely chopped bacon, down to about 2mm, fried. A poor man's delicacy, but it was good, went down nicely, I could do that every year. Okay, not every. I see no other reason why he insisted on it, except nostalgy. But he's far from being a rarity in that respect - these guys had it on the menu, and not only them, I saw it in other places later.
His other favorite specialty, which I never ever tried, was the hawaii pizza, the one with pineapple. It occurred fisix times that we lunched in one pizzeria in Délkút, where they had it, and he'd take one for himself every time. Thanks you very kindly, what mattered to me much more was that it was when I started learning hungarian, reading their menu. When it said „sonkás, gombás, sajtos“ (with ham, mushrooms, hard cheese), I understood the first two, guessed the third almost, and henceforth got lucky.
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* here it's „mečka“, lady bear
29-VI-2021 - 7-IX-2026