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Budapest in time for the last of winter

Saturday 26 March 2005

A very early morning flight. We'd stayed up the night before keeping some good whisky company, but rising in time for the cab was not undertaken in high spirits; it was almost not undertaken at all. Fortunately the run through Northwest London was largely unobstructed at 5am on a Saturday, and we made it to Heathrow for at least our interpretation of 'on time'.

Tiredness robbed us of any more than vague early impressions of Budapest. There is a lot of tagging in Budapest; at least it is occasionally colourful and not 'toxi03' repeated in black every half a yard. There is little glass or steel, and plenty of monuments, statues and gothic stone buildings. Decrepitude clings to things near the ground — higher than a couple of stories they catch the sun and are soaring, imposing, grand.

We determined to meet SarahC and DougW in Pest after a nap. The meeting was hindered by my interpretation of 'Chain Bridge' as a description rather than a proper noun. On the Pest side of the (wrong) suspension bridge, workmen were dismantling a large Coca Cola sign, which was heartening until I realised they were merely replacing it with a Nescafé sign.

After DougW eventually figured out that I had misplaced HollyF and me by a bridge, we met and meandered along a forgettable high street into a market square. The market consisted of more or less permanent stalls selling tourist tat. There was, to its credit, a stage with a folk band, and people folk dancing to the folk music. We ate al fresco at a restaurant on the square. We catalogued eye colours:

DougW

Blue, flecked

SarahC

Light blue or grey

HollyF

Light blue, a single brown fleck

MichaelB

Amber, burning with an inner golden fire that all but consumes the viewer

One meal — goulash soups consumed: none.

SarahC and DougW were staying in a pension (a sort of bed and breakfast) on the Buda side of the river. We retired to their room after skimming the palace and surrounds, drank a bottle of Hungarian wine that would have made an effective fuel for lawnmowers, and in a local bar some beers. My faith in the brotherhood of man was raised a notch by being understood when asking in my best frantic gesticulation for anything but Stella. Later we ate on the river, and had a Hungarian red wine that was everything the earlier petrol wasn't (for example, drinkable).

Sunday 27 March 2005

Not quite so early a start. The meeting place was specified with no ambiguity; however, because of daylight savings, the meeting time was a source of anxiety. A race 'twixt SMS and phone battery. Arriving first, we climbed halfway up the steps to the citadel and kept watch over the Northern approach in the rain.

None of the shops were open on Easter Sunday. We found a hotel café that was prepared to take us in and give us coffee, as well as supply heat to dry wet coats and in DougW's case, sponge in the shape of a coat.

Fortified with coffee we stalked up the switchback road to the museum, and spent a good few hours exploring the history of Budapest and Hungary, presented only occasionally in English and hence requiring significant input from the imagination.

The sheer intellectual energy required for wandering around the museum making up picture captions and the hours since breakfast summoned a demon hunger. By way of appeasement we found a cute and busy café and ordered ridiculous meals like pork with half of the world's onion and potato output.

Goulash soup count — one.

Whether because it was Easter Sunday or Sunday at all, not many shops were open. We sniffed out an off license though, with the idea of fetching some wine and beer and retiring to base camp alpha. The shopkeep was our first encounter with a person unfamiliar with English; charmingly he was sure to greet each of us with a cheery 'Hello' as we left the shop. 'Hello' is more than any of us can manage in Magyar.

Goulash soups at EOP — two.

Monday 28 March 2005

Our plan for Monday was to travel out to Statue Park, a plot of land well outside Budapest to which the communist-era statuary had been transported. We took the effectively free public tram system out to the end of the line, then a non-free but cheap bus to the park. It was an oddly dispassionate scene: the entrance is through a shop selling cheesy 'memorabilia', while the individually impressive statues, monuments etc. stand soulless in among red brick partitions.

We caught the tram back into a part of Pest we hadn't seen, and had the good fortune to stumble on the best eating place yet, a brasserie called Gerlóczy Kávéház.

HollyF and I were flying out in the evening, so we headed back towards the hotel via the museum for a last few photographs. A quick, confident cab ride saw us to the airport, where we shelled out the last of our currency on duty-free booze and waited near the gate for entirely too long.

Even on an airplane it is hard to be bored when there is pen and paper available. We played hangman and wrote progressive stories about Little Red Riding Hood on the sick bags.

Landrovers!

My father Philip digs Landrovers, so every time I see one and I have a camera on hand I take a picture. Since my mobile is (charitably speaking) a camera, that's most times.

This one I saw in a side street in Shoreditch on the way to work. It's surprising how many four-wheel drives there are in London, even given the high incidence of roadworks. For some reason I never mind seeing a Landrover though.

I didn't realise this one was occupied until I put the camera up to my eye, so I was in a bit of a fluster because I'd just been wandering around it staring. Hence blurriness.

I've never seen one of these before, but I can be pretty certain Dad has. It's an odd beast, named (BenH maintains) for its wheelbase.

Dad replies:

BenH is right: it's a L~R 101 — guess what the wheelbase is in inches — originally made only for the British forces. This one was an ambulance or possibly a wireless vehicle. Surplus ones like this are popular for long overland journeys, e.g., London to Capetown, although they are quite slow, noisy, and frighteningly thirsty unless they have been retrofitted with a diesel — then they're merely slow and noisy …

and more from BenH:

I think [the 101] is also colloquially known as the Forward Control by dint of its cab-forward layout.

So there you are, Landrovers.