Dodging the rubbish keepers

In the morning I walked to work, and saw that piles of rubbish were sitting outside people's homes. I didn't have time to stop, and couldn't have carried any of it in with me to work, so I had to pass up on a trawl through it. At the end of the day I hung around at work on the pretext of sorting out various accesses to programmes I'd need, hoping to give my sister a call. I tried twice, but she didn't answer. So I finished up my pretext and headed home. It was gone six, and dark outside. Feeling tired I jumped on a tram, and headed for Blaha Lujza Square. I'd hoped to pass a couple of the piles on the way home, see if I could grab something.

I cottoned on that this was something of an annual thing, or at least not too often, when the citizens of Budapest throw out their odds and ends onto the street, and it's picked up by a council service. In the mean time, the local gypsies (as they were described to me, though I doubt they are Romany, probably just the poorest people), come and take from it what they will.

But on the way home there was a slightly scary energy to it all. One woman shouted at a man who was picking up an old rug, and I assumed it was because she'd claimed it first. Suddenly there were lots of people in the street, hanging around, and these are streets where there's normally no one. They all seemed to be looking, with this slightly intense energy. Each pile seemed to have been claimed, with someone standing guard, who I assumed was looking to sell things. If it had been Brick Lane I might have stopped to browse, but in the darkness, in a foreign country, it was slightly scared, and decided to head for the safety of home.

It's such a shame for me, because I'm such a skip-diver in the UK, but it seems I won't get the chance here, even though the flat could still do with a lot of cool stuff.