Blue Danube Part II
March 29, 2014
Budapest, Hungary
Sunrise in Budapest colors the entire town pink. The hefty layer of smog helps too, I imagine. My view over the river is serene, the architecture muted into shades of cream. Birds sing through my open window as I crack open an eye. I guess I should get up.
Then I find the Nespresso machine! Yea! It’s Saturday, let’s go! After a fantastic buffet that spans three whole sides of a room with tables piled with fruits, yogurts, eggs, French pastries and champagne, I am off to see the market hall. In an unusual moment of forethought, I have confirmed that today is the last day it is open on my trip (tomorrow being Sunday). It looks just a ten minute walk away, as well.
Built at the end of the 19th century, it’s a charming concoction of steel girders and Byzantine-esque tile work, crowned with an onion dome cupola, all painted a subdued ochre. Mostly destroyed during WWII, it has been returned to service with glory, a shopping mecca for locals and tourists alike.
I have learned to pass everything once, considering overall price and quality. My only real interest is acquiring some paprika, since it’s a specialty. However, I really wish I had a kitchen here, as the vegetables are as fresh as any local market at home. The prices are really decent and the variety is awesome. Cucumbers line up in neat rows next to a stable of carrots. Next to them are stacks of eggs in cartons, all homey brown ones (which may explain my unusual egg color and flavor at breakfast).
Round after round I make, taking pictures. So far, there has only been one super weird item- a chicken with a head. Plucked and pink, his dead eye stares at me. I take his picture and say a blessing. Next to the chicken are stacks of wings in pointy piles, rows on languishing gizzards and mounds of tender thighs. It all looks incredibly fresh, and not particularly gory. It is, however, immediate and present in its rawness.
Until I see the doll, that is. I am reminded of the Dutch doll my nanny gave to me from her country when I was little, a blonde maiden in black felt dress and wooden shoes that sat on my shelf for all of my childhood, too fragile to touch, This doll, though, is stuffed and soft with yarn hair, chubby legs that swing like a little girls kick and a pink embroidered apron with flowers. I can’t resist it for my youngest niece.
I start breaking my 10,000 Hungarian forint notes (about $44) with the shopkeepers, slowly accumulating plastic bags full of felt Christmas ornaments, a linen peasant blouse, and wooden eggs. I choose an embroidered handkerchief with a fancy cursive letter D, which I collect and use, for myself. On a whim, I buy a small felt hat for one of the kids, unsure if he will wear the point cap in blue or no, but it is vey cute on the mannequin.
Emboldened by positive exchanges with shopkeepers, I am ready to try negotiating a purchase of dried kiwis I have been eyeing in one stall. They look very appealing and safe, housed under plexiglas in bins. Dried cherries, plums, apricots, kiwi, strawberries and pineapple read from 2800 to 4800 forints per kg. I do the math and hope I am not about to own a cartful of fruit. I ask the unsmiling owner if he speaks English. He does, but I can’t tell if his stall is empty because of his offering or his sour demeanor. He quickly bags my kiwi and strawberry in clear grocery bags and returns correct change. I have done it! My treats are just enough to share with family in small amounts, but small enough to shove into my suitcase, allowing that they are dried and not forbidden by customs I hope.
I luck out at a tiny stall when I pause after I hear a young woman kindly explaining the paprika to a couple in English. Language and a smile wins. In fact, I buy more than planned, deciding to make gifts of the excellent local Acacia honey and foie gras, as well as spice for me. At the last moment, I choose some caviar, praying what she says is true- it doesn’t need refrigeration in cool temperatures. Theoretically, it can make it home in the next few days as a surprise gift.
What I don’t buy is the excellent kolbasz, a Hungarian hard sausage laced with paprika. It’s delicious, but I can just imagine customs yanking the aromatic meat from my bag in Seattle, then taking my strawberries and maybe even my oink leather flask. What I also do not buy is any pickled onion, cabbage, rutabaga or cucumbers form the subterranean floor. It’s dank and cold, smelling of vinegar and fish. Two stalls of fish mongers keep tanks piled deep with carp. I silently cheer for the one near dying, he is at least granted pardon. I stick out my lip for the fish convict and spin away. The realities of food production are not something I am really comfortable with. That said, I realize I just bought goose liver pate and fish eggs. Without my denial, I would have to be a vegan, I admit.
On that note, I leave the market, strolling a wide promenade along the river in the 70 degree day, peeling free of my jacket as my bags rustle along with my step. I snap pictures of an intricate manhole cover, as well as the yellow yarrow-like plants erupting through the railroad ties of the riverside tram. One the other bank in Buda, I can see a castle carved from the cliff face, dark and alluring. So much of Budapest is that way, dark one moment, filed with flower bouquets the next.
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My afternoon is something of a failure, with one exception: I joined a Peace Parade.
A note on my bed in my hotel warned me that there would be closed streets and delays due to a parade, so I am not surprised when I am out looking for a hop on-hop off tourist bus that a mass of people waving Hungarian flags comes down the street in a cheerful roar.
It must people the newspaper person in me that walks towards a scene, not away. Without hesitation, I step into the crowd of elderly people and children as they wind around the bend from Bajcsy-Zsilinszky Ut to Andrassy Ut. Police line barricades in front of a stage full of people wearing white shirts with red kerchiefs around their necks, waving proudly as they blare patriotic music (something very Communistic sounding). One older man flips the stage off. Some people wave at the stage. Some are singing. Over my head, signs bob on garden stakes. I think some are districts or sates, with official looking seals. others are simple spray painted words. Still others have pictures of people. It’s all very nationalist, assuring me that I am not supporting some awful hate parade. At least, I think.
I walk a block or so, then weave tot he sidewalk to back track to the corner I began on. Locals carrying flags are jointing the crowd I walk against the stream of people. One man in a wheelchair wheeled by his wife grips a tiny Hungary flag, his face and hand etched in stone while the flag flutters in the breeze.
Finally, I locate a ticket seller who tells me the tourist bus is quitting today because of the street closures. He does, however, tell me that it’a a conservative parade supporting the current government. He also explains the white paper butterflies attached to the streets all around are made by school children celebrating the arrival of spring. He looks frustrated and bored, unable to sell tickets, a youth uninterested in something as arcane as politics. Like American young people, he feels it’s all so very pointless.
I rush down a dark walkway, using my photograph of my walking directions off my laptop to navigate the ten minute walk to the Central district location of my tour. I am late, on the verge of lost and maybe a little hopeful I will miss my last evening tour.
Alas, my arrival two minutes after the hour brings me a to local bookshop and bike rental where my guide Kata informs me I am the only guest. I raise my eyebrows in disbelief. She sweetly tells me it is a mistake, that it should have been cancelled for low numbers but they will honor it anyway. I am thinking this is worse that the twenty Russians I had envisioned. I am having dinner and drinks with a total stranger, worse than even a blind date because I have no promise of romance with this. Sometimes, I hate my adventure side. Book reading me wishes I was still home fighting with my Hungarian remote and room service goulash.
I fake a smile and decide to get with it. It’s my last night out in Europe. Tomorrow I will have to turn in early for a 4 a.m. airport transfer. This is it for me: the Budapest Nightlife with Dinner and Drinks Tour.
A short walk takes us to the Strudel House (I crack jokes about pancakes and try to explain IHOP, but to no avail). I learn we will be tasting palinkas (spirits) and I do the math on a taxi ride because there is no way I am walking home in the dark. Kata assures me she will get me a taxi and I order a beer, Soporani a bright local lager.
Over dinner, we discuss careers (she is a psychologist at the hospital moonlighting beer tours) and dogs. We share pictures of our dogs over creamy spiced sausage on bread, then julienned pepper glazed pork, followed by sour cherry strudel. Each course brinks a vodka-like palinka, too strong to do anything but down in a gulp. The last, Unicom, goes down in a swirl of herbs like Jaegermeister, only with a bitter finish that requires a chaser, for a full two minutes. Wow, learn something new every day, I think.
We visit two ruin bars, establishments set up in the ground floors of abandoned buildings. Many are mish mash interiors like a garage sale on absinthe, but the first one has a charming forest animal theme. Drawings of bears, bunnies and foxes playing instruments cover the walls, alongside picturesque nudes with moustaches (yeah, here too) and fairy lights. A warren of wooden rabbits arch over the inner atrium of the bar where I drink another small beer. We discuss Hungarian politics and she elaborates on the upcoming elections, but shrugs off any interest, echoing the man earlier today.
Kata and I make our way to the second ruin bar, a hopping place with a pounding Latin beat. Neon lights in green and oink expose the crumbling rock walls. One room has monitors displaying kaleidoscope fractals on their CRT screens. Wires run the length of the walls in post modern apocalyptica, tied into stuffed animals. The next room has broken children’s toys for seating. I see what she mean, it’s mostly junk.
Groups of men shouting for shots surround us as we take small stools by a wall. Thank goodness for the palinkas, so I can actually enjoy the din of the bachelor parties for half an hour. Although made popular by the guidebooks, this bar lacks the charm of the first., lacking access to the upper floor of former flats where we admired bright rooms with parquet floors peeking through linoleum overlay.
I finish my beer and tell Kata I am ready for my taxi. I have made it to 10:40 local time, something of which I am proud. Due to my dead phone, I have collected coasters from the bars, hoping to remember their names since I can’t tag them electronically. With a huge grin she has been wearing all night, she directs me t the street.
As we make our way to the corner to catch a taxi, we pass a group of drunk guys in tees shirts singing a wonderful four part harmony version of the BeeGees How Deep is Your Love to a group of admiring girls with cameras going. We laugh as we bib down the street around group after group of revelers, most of whom, like my guide, are decades younger than me.
The taxi arrives and I dump the contents of my right pocket in Kata’s hands, give her arm a squeeze and wave good bye. It was a fun night, but I know she is looking forward to meeting her friends on the Buda side in a while for wilder fun.
As I lay in my bed, the clip clop returns under my window.
Ah, hell. Why not?
I redress and at 11:37 I climb into the carriage. It’s a mere $10 for a half hour under a blanket in the coach. The man in his bowler and his wife in a Aussie drover hat, both swaddled in green oilskin drover coats point out the sites as I rest my bare feet on the blanket. The wool blanket and the beer has me leaning back to look at the stars through the towering grey buildings, most of the windows dark in the late hour. Only the sound of the hooves on pavement rings on the side streets barely wide enough for the carriage.
We swing left onto the riverfront road in front of Parliament, our journey over much too soon. The ponies start a trot as we enter traffic. I can smell their sweat and hair as they trot on to the cluck. Strangely enough, a whistle from the driver slows them. This couple loves their horse, never adding any command from the long whip.
Back at my hotel, I take a picture of the grey cart ponies and overtip the drivers. They are sweet and I realize they begin their evening rounds somewhere around 10 p.m. each night, coaxing tourists into their coach.
This is now how I see Budapest, a beckoning local who knows that if you can just see past a crumble here, a tear there, you will experience the spice and charm of Hungarian heart.
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And...A video of me singing in the park. Because it is as close to busking as I can get.
And...A video of me singing in the park. Because it is as close to busking as I can get.
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