Yesterday afternoon I was taking my yelping brat for a spin around Budapest’s City Park when I suddenly ran across the odd sight above, of a military-like encampment on the big cement area used in the winter as an ice-skating rink (and supposed to be used in the summer as a boating pond, if they ever get around to fixing it up). It turns out that it was a NATO-related event, probably timed to coincide with last week’s summit meeting of defense ministers from the alliance. At first I was like, oh, nice, maybe they’re doing some cool military demonstrations to encourage the city’s young brutes to trade their lives of petty criminality for a career in the armed forces, and to remind Hungarians how important it is to take their nation’s defense seriously. Instead, the whole thing seemed to be about something called the NATO Partnership Running Festival. Well, I guess that if they aren’t going to figure out how to get Hungarians to fight, they might as well make sure everyone is prepared to run away real fast.
