Flowers From My Enemy: Budapest gallery.

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I haven't got around to writing much since my trip to Hungary last summer. I would be lying if I said I haven't had the time - it's more a case of me having lost my mojo, now I'm not able to scribble my ideas down in lunch-hour long bursts and without Mr. Volkov's coffee machine to boost my imagination.

Perhaps one day an article about Budapest will materialise; I still have my notes, and some of them even make sense.

The Hungarian word for 'flowers', virag - written on florists' windows across Budapest - sounds like the Russian word for 'enemy', vrag - hence the working title "Flowers From My Enemy".

Below is the beginning of a story I wrote about my journey from Hungary to Ukraine:



"An hour or so before dusk on a chilly late summer evening I stepped onto the train at Budapest Nyugati station. As we pulled away from the platform I stayed in the corridor for a while rather than going into my kupe compartment; twenty four hours is a long time to be confined to a musty six foot square cabin with nothing for company but a bunk bed, brown bedding and, more often than not, boredom.

I pressed my nose against the window and took one last look at the Hungarian countryside as it rolled past. Eastern Hungary is gorgeously European: arable fields reach all the way to the horizon; men on old bicycles unhurriedly make their way to and from neat villages, which have sumptuous names like Puspokladany and Nyíregyháza.

I reflected on the previous three days in Budapest. Against a background of grand architecture, summer rain and a mass of other tourists I had met a girl from Azerbaijan, who asked me to help to translate the screenplay that she had written. She introduced me to her neighbour, a Hungarian girl with a powerful imagination, whose dreams take the form of impromptu nineteenth century novels set in Italian castles. I had also said an indefinite goodbye to Jared, an American missionary and a close friend, whose sofa in Kyiv I had lived on for two weeks the previous winter. After months spent hunched over translations the week had been unusually sociable."



Next diary: King's Cross and the Queen's Neighbour.

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Photos

The Hungarian Parliament.
Budapest.

Cherubs.
Budapest.

Budapest panorama.
Budapest.

Budapest skyline.
Budapest.

Easy like Sunday morning.
Budapest.

Church spire.
Budapest.

Church spires.
Budapest.

A plaque in Hungarian.
Budapest.

Pest statue.
Budapest.

The pianist at the rooftop bar.
Budapest.

A fountain.
Budapest.

Budapest building.
Budapest.

Street scene.
Budapest.

The view from the Basilica.
Budapest.

The view from the Basilica.
Budapest.

An icon inside the Basilica.
Budapest.

The roof of the Basilica.
Budapest.

Angels, Pest.
Budapest.

Tram stop.
Budapest.