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Published: February 4th 2012
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I mentioned before about Budapest not being somewhere that gave me any distinct images or pictures in my mind before I arrived there, idaresay that chances are you may be the same, meaning that you won’t know about probably my favourite thing about this whole city – the cakes.
Of course, the relative anonymity due to my ignorance, may well have worked in it’s favour to an extent because while you go to somewhere like France expecting to see and taste the most beautiful treats, from the most amazing Boulangeries and will likely come away disappointed if there is a 5 minute period in any day when you’re not stuffing chocolate bread into your face, Budapest doesn’t have to deal with that level of expectation and is probably all the better for it. You’ll find bakeries, cake shops, Patisseries or similar on almost every street in the city as far as I’ve seen, and even the ones that seem to be the Hungarian versions of Greggs, produce these incredible things that make you want to stop talking to whoever you’re with so you can give it your full attention.
Given all of this, it constantly surprised me that not
everyone was morbidly obese, and that people aren’t walking the streets with huge grins cemented onto their faces. Infact, the opposite is true in reality as most people, don’t seem to smile. I am by nature quite a smiley person – I tend to find it helps when youre bumbling through someone elses language, as usually if you smile while messing it up, it gives off the air of Village Idiot rather than arrogant man who expects everyone else to learn his language. But in Hungary, smiling just wasn’t the done thing. I was told by someone that it was to do with a fear/suspicion of showing too much emotion to strangers, I don’t know about that but I did find it all just a little disconcerting. The weirdest thing about it though was that while smiling is not acceptable, apparently public displays of affection, to the point where it looks like you’re in your own private perfume advert, are. I wouldn’t class myself as a prude and there’s something beautiful about seeing two people looking at each other as though no one else in the world exists or matters, but at 7am on a dirty subway? These little shows
seemed to be everywhere in the city, no café too busy, no tram too crowded and no bridge too windy and uncomfortable. Amusingly, these small scale collisions (for want of a better phrase) had an unexpected benefit as they became movable obstructions for cyclists who believed that everyone should move to accommodate them, ironically (in a Zimbardo-esque manner) the exact same thing that many cyclists accuse motorists of.
One of the joys of my walks between classes around the city was watching cyclists weave around children and scare elderly pedestrians by cutting them up on the pavement, before being forced to slow down and ring their bells incessantly but pointlessly as an oblivious couple kissed infront of Parliament, not caring about anyone else around them.
Having now left Budapest (about 6 weeks ago, which shows just how far behind I am with all this stuff) there are a few things that in the few months I was there I do confess I regret not seeing. One is an old secret Communist hospital, built underneath one of the hills – which actually sounds made up, now I write it down. I wish I’d got to more of the museums
or spent more time in the bookshops (I’ve never been to a city with what felt like a bookshop in every corner before. Not just shops either, almost every major street had market stalls selling books too – there was an odd moment at one of these stalls which was selling what looked to be antique books, where the proprietor was sitting on what amounted to a deckchair, using a Kindle, which surely must be his natural enemy, mustn’t it?) The other, rather gruesome spectacle that I have a strange desire to see is an event that one of my students told me about, which takes place in small, more traditional villages and is basically a festival which centres around the killing and eating of a pig, as a village event.
Apparently, what happens is that the men are sent out to kill a pig, the women wait at home and cook it once it’s brought back, and then the whole village eat it. While I have no desire at all to watch an animal die, it is the build up that attracts me because the way it was described to me was that all the men chase the poor thing around the field, which makes it sound like a bizarre Benny Hill sketch. They fall over it, slip in the mud, run into each other and generally just look foolish for quite a while. Of course, the end of the process is not something I’d enjoy witnessing, but any fan of slapstick couldn’t help be drawn in by such a weird mix of Cannibal Holocaust and You’ve Been Framed, although I bet all that still wouldn’t be enough to make most of them smile.
Pura Vida.
Dave
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