The mere name rings fear in my heart. It reminds me of the wrong side of town in Los Angeles - and by wrong side I don't mean as soeen on the local tv news scary. By wrong side I conjur up lost hours of my life spent in traffic on the 10 freeway and Starbucks on every corner with ample parking in the rear. Sorry.
So my second day in Budapest was spent at a Westend mall. Not just in the mall, but inside the T-Mobile shop trying to sort out mobile phones. You have to be a resident to buy even a pre-pay mobile so a local friend was roped into the painful excersion to help phones for my flatmate and I. Such the good sport is she. I don't know if I would have the temperment for such an outing I did not have a direct investment in. And after taking a soul-destroying amount of time to buy said phone, we topped off the outing with McDonald’s. Thank YOU ‘Merica. The only thing worth commenting about McD’s is that here, you buy your ketchup. Though there is no bottomless fountain of condiments, you do avoid having to laboriously squirt out a reasonable supply of ketchup from no less than 4 tiny foil packets. Truth be told, I have managed to end up at a McDonald’s at least once in most countries I’ve been too. Why NOT try a veggie burger in Dubai or have a Quarter Pounder with beer in Spain? Or stumble in for a happy meal in Amsterdam completely high after your first and only attempt at coffee shop culture during which you failed to properly roll your own but managed to soak up enough secindary effects nonetheless. McDonald's is currently the subject of a boycott from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) farmworkers. After a 2 year campaign, the CIW was able to pressure Taco Bell to pay whopping (no pun intended) .1 cent more per pound of tomatoes. They have extended this campaign to target McDonald's who has so far resisted 'addressing the crisis of human rights abuses and sub-poverty wages in its tomato supply chain'. So no more McD's for me, but sometimes it's tough to remember one's values when in a Hungarian mall buying mobile phones from German-based transnational telecomms.
But back to mobile phones. Say what you want about portable culture and disposable consumer electronic goods, but mobile phones are forever. I know, not for everyone. Who hasn’t lost, dropped or otherwise ruthlessly abused a mobile to the point of cruelty? But for me, I pick my team and stay with them. I am not a casual consumer of technology, but I probably spent less time buying a far more expensive and mission critical laptop than I did my mobile. The closed model of mobile service provision is such that you not only choose your team, but you pay a steep price should you pick the wrong one. I think there should be a new dating service in Europe exclusively for pre-pay mobile phone users. Instead of sorting people by geographic location, they are organised by mobile providers. Because is T Mobile were to date Vodaphone, the consequences could be very expensive. I know it happens all the time, but it is not recommended for those on a budget.
So mobiles sorted, the only thing left is to work out internet access in our flat. We haven’t bothered to send out our physical mailing address to anyone, but have spent a fair amount of time trying to decipher why our router is so unfriendly to our Mac computers. I was worried about the Apple / PC / Central Europe thing, but I have already stumbled across an honest to gawd Apple store (minus the creepily named Genius Bar). And the IT department had no more or less trouble setting my computer up to the university system than anywhere else.
(ps. this is my new phone. isn't it a tad new romantic? it matches my new wave bedspread.)
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