Wintery wonderland at Vörösmarty
I’m jumping a wee bit ahead here. By December 2018, I’d made at least three visits to Budapest, the first one in August 2016. However, as it’s Christmas I’m going to reflect on my most recent trip there, a year ago, when Zuza and I went to the Christmas market at Vörösmarty.
Sobota (Saturday) 15.
decembra, 2018 (excerpts from my journal The
Pressburg Diaries, vol. XII and a travel notebook)
Snow day! We took a
major-crowded train from Bratislava to Budapest, and we were forced to stand
next to the WC because it wasn’t possible to get any seat reservations. No free
seats and a lot of peeps. But we sort of got accustomed to standing for quite a while.
Two and a half hours
later, we were at Nyugati Station. What had started as a few flakes of snow
about halfway to Budapest was now a sort of mini blizzard. As we got out of
the station and found our way onto the street, there were already at least two
centimeters of snow on the ground. The biggest problem I have arriving in any
new place is finding my bearings. I mentioned three previous trips to Budapest,
so why should I find myself confused now? Because in all three previous trips
I’d arrived at Keleti Station. I supposed Keleti was under reconstruction or
something, so now the “international” train from Bratislava (which originated
in Prague) was routed to Nyugati. This was a part of town I wasn’t familiar
with. Add to it the sort of gentle chaos the snow was causing, and you get a
sense of confusion. First, we wanted to find the train office so we could
secure seat reservations for the return trip the next day. That was a little
tricky. Eventually, we found it. And I found a “tabak” (magazine stand) at which
to buy tickets for the streetcar and metro. First I had to locate an ATM, as
well, because the lady at the train office said the forints I had were “old”
and no longer valid. Hungary had changed to a new version of its currency.
She suggested I could exchange my old ones at a bank, but those aren’t open
until Monday. Never mind, I’m only losing ten or fifteen euros or so. I did
find an ATM, which gave me new money. With our train reservations secured, all
we had to do was buy our public transport tickets.
Communicating with the “tabak” lady to buy the tickets was easy—sort of. Thanks to Google Translator, I asked for utcai jegyetek, and then the lady asked how many. “Négy" (four), I replied. I’d studied a little Hungarian but hadn’t really learned enough to do simple commercial transactions. And she returned the change to me in thousands, “egy, kettő, három, négy…”
Pleased I had managed
that, the next step was to find the #6 tram to Móricz Zsigmond Körtér mégalló (tram stop). I was on a mission
to find a fountain pen to add to my growing collection, and the Fiók Arts shop was the
one shop in Budapest selling the particular brand of pen I wanted. The journey
by tram to Csiky ut., on the Buda (west) side of town where the shop was
located, took 25 minutes, and then a 10-minute walk. The snow was coming down
hard with no intention of letting up anytime soon. The shop was tiny but very
artsy. I suspect it served as a supply shop for art students at the local
university. The manager was very helpful, and I found the pen and ink I was
looking for, and paid cash for the damage, feeling as though I'd made a very posh purchase at a fine store.
Next, we wanted to
find a café to get out of the wet cold and to just warm up and relax a bit. After all, we desperately needed to sit, having stood 2 ½ hours on the train! We found an
artsy-fartsy coffee shop on Bartok Béla ut. and went in there for a nice
cortado (espresso with a little milk) and cake. Zuza had an apricot cake and I went
for chocolate cake. There was also a soup of the day, which was pumpkin. The artwork
was a little creepy: lots of well-known paintings with funny little “add-ons”,
such as the Mona Lisa with googly eyes. We sat in plush, antique chairs and
enjoyed the Count Basie and bebop jazz playing. The service was great and the
tab came to a little over nine euros.
We decided to walk through the Gellért district and then cross the Szábadság híd (bridge) on foot, back to the Pest (east) side of town. The snow was still coming down, and the winterscape and dark grey of the snow-laden sky created the perfect cozy holiday atmosphere. We couldn’t have asked for a better day to come to Budapest! It was still at least a 15-minute walk, once we got to the other side.
Winterscape in the Gellért district
Tourists were bundled up like the Michelin Man against the cold, but all the locals seemed to take it in stride. The streets became more and more crowded the closer we got to the center. The streets were full of colour and aromas of various food cooking. We knew when we’d arrived at the Vörösmarty market because we saw an enormous Christmas tree in the center and the whole place was jam-packed. It seemed half the crowd was speaking Slovak. The rest of the crowd were either Germans (or Austrians), Chinese and, I suppose, a few Hungarian-speaking locals. Or if not from Budapest then some town elsewhere in Hungary. Inside the market itself, we saw lots of festive decorations and traditional handicraft shops, and despite the cold and the dumping snow, we took delight in meandering and gazing at everything there was. Eventually we stopped at a kiosk for grilled chicken kebabs and veggies—Hungarian style! Hot peppers were optional. We found a table for two and stood in the open to eat. I ate quickly because the snow was falling so wet and heavy that it threatened to cool my food fresh from the hot grill.
Next to us was a
vending machine selling what appeared to be little soft-cover notebooks. I can
always use a notebook, right? And they were only 950 forints, so a little more
than three euro, so why not? It came out shrink-wrapped, so I decided to wait
till we got to our hotel to open it. I also found a stand selling locally handmade
vintage-style leather and clothbound journals, notebooks, and diaries—something
for me! These were fancy, and I was impressed with the quality and selection of
designs. These looked like the books that were produced in the 18th and
19th centuries—the traditional way. The prices were reasonable, too.
You’d pay more for a similar widely-available, commercially-produced “fancy” notebook
made in China! I bought two of these notebooks to use as future diaries since
the diary I’m currently writing in is running out.
Grilled meat and vegetables-Hungarian style!
A handicraft vendor
Finally, we’d had
enough of humanity and the cold and decided it was time to head to our
apartment hotel. Zuza booked our room online and it was called a “hopstel”
because the apartment hotel was part of a beer pub and brewery next door. What
a clever concept! What we’d anticipated would be a short 10-minute walk turned
into a nearly 20-minute affair from Déak Ferenc because we were tired, and the
snow was getting hard to walk in. Plus, with the snow still coming down in
huge, fluffy flakes, our phones becoming wet, rendering them virtually useless
as navigational tools. Eventually we arrived at our “hopstel” and checked in.
This basically meant the apartment owner had sent us a security code, which we
used to open a small lockbox at the entrance and retrieve our room key. Our
room was pretty “industrial” cool: there were old parquet wood floors and bits
and pieces of old telephones and radios were the décor. Old lockers served as a
wardrobe, while old metal kegs served as bedside tables. A heavy wood
swing-type chair hung suspended from the ceiling by chains.
We rested up for an
hour or two, changed clothes, then decided to go out to a restaurant we’d eaten
at a few times before. The Stex Ház – étterem (restaurant) is a bustling wait-to-be-seated
restaurant offering steaks, among other trendy cuisines, and a wide range of
beers on tap and fine wines. We were lucky to get even a small table next to
the pool table where a British couple had a serious game going on. We were
lucky not to have our eyeballs knocked out when they passed in front of our
table to take shots. Dinner was, for Zuza, rosemary-infused duck breast with
mashed potatoes, and for me, a ginger-marinated ribeye steak, something I
seldom treat myself to. After dinner, we sauntered through the snow back to our
room, and despite the raucous guests in the crowded pub next door, we managed
to relax until it was time for bed.
The next morning, Zuza awoke with a migraine, which prevented us from visiting the museum we’d planned to see. We checked out a bit later than we ought to have, but nobody dinged us for it. And the “notebook” I bought from the vending machine at Vörösmarty wasn’t a notebook at all! It turned out to be a pocket edition of a novel entitled “Utazás a koponyám körül”, or “I Travel Around in My Skull” by Hungarian writer Karinthy Frigyes. While Zuza slept off her headache, I went online and researched the book and the writer. It was first published in 1937 and then translated to English in 1939 by Vernon Duckworth Barker. I suppose I’ll be able to read this one day, or at least find the English translation. Who knew you could buy classic literature from a vending machine!
We left the apartment after twelve noon and
caught the 13:40 train back to Bratislava, where there was virtually no snow at
all. Three young, elegantly-dressed Slovak women asked to join us in our
compartment. Thanks to Zuza’s long morning with the headache, she was ready to
eat, so we headed for the dining car, which was fortuitous because the perfume
the women were wearing was so overpowering we had to escape the compartment or else pass out from the heavy fumes.
Ideally, I would have preferred to go back to Budapest and spend another day or
three in that winter wonderland.