was the title for our season opening, referring to the foggy windows of Hungary’s brand new national tobacco shops. In brief: the government decided to centralize tobacco sales. As a result, you will no longer find cigarettes at grocery stores, supermarkets or news-stands. Only licensed “tobacconists” between the walls of specially designed stores are allowed to sell any kinds of tobacco products. Some (or all?) of the official reasons are: preventing the young from smoking and cutting down on tobacco trafficking.

For some, nothing has changed, and this might be the most senseless topic to talk about. But for others, the whole process of distributing the licenses, and the – more or less – well-functioning stores have raised questions.

“Where there are questions, there are take-fivers” as the saying goes… er… or something like that. Anyway, we collected the most exciting approches to the matter which the ever-enthusiastic group of visitors covered with dignity. We discussed the following (straight from the event description):

• What do you think of the new stores?
• Do you agree with all the aspects of the big change?
• Is it a fight against illegal tobacco sales? Is it about preventing the young from smo-king? Or is it just political jiggery-pokery?

Apart from certain differences of opinion, we all agreed that this whole change is far from the romantic story of saving the poor youngsters from the devilish cigarettes. Although it wasn’t too much of a riddle to come to that conclusion, it was interesting to hear every-one’s thoughts and even some personal stories.

In the end, we played amusing games. If you want to take your share of the amusement, join us next week! Follow our Facebook page, so that you can easily find our events and stay up-to-date.

Just one more thing… If a club meeting begins at 6:00 pm, some people have the feeling that it is perfectly fine to be 20 minutes late, while the rest of us are just waiting, since we wouldn’t like anyone to miss a minute of the interesting conversation. We did a triple blind test with eyes wide open and noticed that if we shift the session to 6:30, people from the previously mentioned group will arrive at 6:50, accordingly. Therefore, the triumvirate of organizers have decided to reset the time of sessions to the original 6:00 pm. We promise not to make such mistakes in the future. God save the Queen!