I had a nice weekend, read a lot (though not as much as I could have) and I did not go to the swimming pool because it was not very warm and even rained. I read really good parts in The Savage Detectives, and I read about it too- that it was chosen the second best Spanish-language book in the past 25 years. I wonder which one is the first? How can you make such a statement without saying what the first one is?!

Anyway now I'm at a part where they are talking about the Nude Descending a Staircase and I did a search and this is the painting:



This is Marcel Duchamp but I thought it was Braque (clearly I know nothing about paintings) and in the book they say something like, "and then they mentioned Nude Descending a Staircase, but what does Picasso have to do with any of this"?

Anyway, one character said he felt like this, he heard some news and he said, "I'm feeling like the Nude Descending a Staircase" which I think is quite funny. Also, somebody said, "If they want to wait till I come back then they better wait sitting down" haha! like me coming back to Germany. (Wer braucht die Piefkes?)

I went to a café on Saturday with Zsuzsa, it's right at the Venloer Strasse stop of the 707 (not Starbucks) but an Italian café, I like it a lot. They have excellent coffee and cakes that look better than they taste, but probably it's just me because I like creamy cakes. Zsuzsa said very interesting things about politics and language, for example, that in Hungarian we put affixes on colors, like we say "I painted the house ON red".

Then Rich sent me a text asking me if I wanted to watch tv series with him, an invitation I gladly accepted! I was really happy. We watched House and made pizza and although Rich was sick it was a nice evening. Now I'm sneezing and my throat hurts a bit but it must be my imagination. I'm drinking tea just to be on the safe side.