Szabadidő, szórakozás, kultúra

Newspapers, libraries

For each week all radio and television programmes are published in the Radio and TV Times. This weekly has quite a big circulation, bigger than most dailies. Daily papers are almost the same in appearance and lay-out. They all have a political section containing world and domestic news. The main news is usually placed on the first page right under the heading. Current events or topicalities may also be reported and commented on by the editor on the front page, usually with big headlines. The arts review and the science pages are usually in the middle of the paper followed by the fashion, gossip and travel columns while sports news is generally on one of the last pages. Apart from news, newspapers also contain many other features like advertisements, announcements of births, marriages and deaths, crossword puzzles, horoscopes, letter from readers, obituaries of famous people who have died, weather forecasts and classified advertisements, which may be personal or advertise jobs, houses or cars for sale. Just like many other countries, Hungary, too, has local and national papers. They are either serious or sensational. At present most of them are tabloids. There are also several periodicals coming out weekly, monthly and quarterly. Journals dealing with specialised subjects such as medicine, science, trade or education are usually published monthly or quarterly. The well-known Hungarian daily papers perhaps are “the Napló” and “the Népszabadság”. The popular tabloids are the Blikk or The Story Magazine and there is a journal with financial affair called HVG. Some serious British papers are The Times, The Guardian, The Sun or the Daily Mirror. I always skim through the whole paper first and choose the articles that at first sight seem to be interesting. The headlines are printed in block letters so they easily catch the eye. After scanning the paper I always start reading the sport pages first. Then I read the jobs or the political reviews and the internal affairs. I can borrow books from a library. In fact, nowadays I don’t need to have a lot of books, therefore I quite rarely use the local lending library of which I am not a member at the moment, but my father is. Anyway, I used to be a member there when I was a student. At that time I was used to reading as we had to read all compulsory readings. To join a library you have to fill in a lending card. If you want to borrow a book, you write the author’s name, the title and ISBN number on the book card and the librarian puts down on your card the date when the book is due for return. Books are issued for three weeks, but can be renewed for another three. Only a limited number of books can be borrowed at a time. For overdue books fines are charged. There are a lot of books in a library that normally cannot be borrowed. They are mainly encyclopaedias, dictionaries and lexicons. You are allowed to work with them in the reading room, where you will also find newspapers and periodicals published in Hungary from the 1930s. I often go to the bookshops just to look around. But sometimes I can’t resist temptation and buy some languages books, maps or a magazine for my mother. Last time I bought two expensive dictionaries, but it was worth buying them, because I can use them in the future, too. Készítette:  Somogyi Péter – [email protected]