Typical Saturday

ceo for the kids
My typical Saturday morning routine here in Szeged consists of getting up early with the cats, who want to be fed at 5:00...I usually go back to bed for a couple of more hours.....and then I head to the "PIAC", or market! It's like a farmer's market, which is open year-round, even in the cold winter months. This morning as I perused the yummy looking fresh fruits and veggies, I couldn't help but think about how cold it must be for those vendors, who don't have the luxury of "picking up a few items and heading home to a nice hot cup of tea!" I went inside this long building they have there where one can find lots of different little shops, from the meat vendor to the bakery. My first "sight" was a gypsy woman, about my age, carrying an empty beer bottle (mind you it was 9:00 in the morning) and looking a bit dazed. I walked past the people standing at the tall tables busily cutting up their sausages and dipping them in mustard and eating them up with a bite of bread followed by a slosh of coffee or beer and was a bit taken aback that these scenes no longer surprise me. This is life in this little part of Szeged Hungary. I proceeded to my "meat man" who sold me some beautiful boneless chicken breasts, while old "nenis" looked at me and ordered their chicken claws for their soups, feeling a bit guilty for being so "rich". Then I ordered my usual 20 dekagrams of turkey breast, sliced, and my favorite cheese, and made my way back out into the frigid temps to buy some bread from the bread truck. Making my way back home, I unloaded my treasures and set out again to the post office and then to the "normal" grocery store where I loaded up my rolling backpack and walked 4 blocks to the pet shop to get more kitty litter, loading that in my basket and making my way home through the brisk winter air and back into my nice warm apartment where I was warmly greeted by fuzzy cats, curious to see what I'd found on this Saturday at the markets! Shopping done by 10:30 or so, I'm able to sit down and enjoy my coffee and breakfast before embarking on the cleaning. You see, life isn't so different for me here than for you in other places around the world!