Sunday 21 June 2009

briefly budapest

in which there will be little in the way of punctuation by way of me discovering yet another qwerty variation.

we discover i have power over the weather. cancelling ireland to get some sun instead we bring the scottishness with us. a blazing thirty three on arrival halves to fifteen in the space of twelve hours. i rise out of the sweaty spot i"ve become but t isn"t happy as it means i can walk more.

the city has, without an architectural lexicon to describe it properly, a style somewhere amongst decaying post imperial baroque nouveau secession. there are some lovely buildings and others, and yes state tv i mean you, where whoever made them just didn"t know where to stop. but i kind of like the dilapidated feel. it feels lived in. and an obvious jewish presence. it"s unsettling to put a face on some of the more depressing history i know and i"m not comfortable with it. i see the first orthodox jewish man i"ve seen in europe anywhere.

and the cake score. so far we have experimented with baclava with, it has to be said, tasty but uninspiring results. but a clear winner tonight on the marzipan front with cakes so tasty t coudn"t finish them. astonishing. and i have some sort of chocolate fruit torte thing the like of which i"ve never had before.

off to zagreb. perhaps their computer keyboards will be simpler. exclamation mark. where is that apostrophe. question mark. question mark.

5 comments:

Niamh B said...

SO you've cancelled Ireland - not postponed, or deferred, simply cancelled?!?
Cold, so cold.
No wonder I've been feeling all invalid all day - the cakes sound nice - lookin 4ward to your next installment.

Anonymous said...

i'd like to hear more about that fruit thing!! mmm do you take pictures of your food? :-)

Marion McCready said...

I went to an orthodox Jewish service in budapest once, the afterservice with the singing around the meal was both a bizarre and amazing experience!

enjoying the updates!

Roxana said...

"i rise out of the sweaty spot i"ve become" hahahaha - this one is even better than the first one which made me burst into laughter, "we discover i have power over the weather" :-)
but hey, uninspiring baclava? how can that be? you need to go more east, ok, south-east, to get convinced of the impossibility of such a thing. baclava!

swiss said...

you're right, cancelled is harsh. definitely postponed!

and yes, we have pictures...

i did used to go drinking with some hasid guys years ago but even then they were too full on for me!

it's true baclava can't really be uninspiring but coming close to the source we were expecting an improvement on home fare. sadly no. but still good. and yes, further east looks the way to go. the black sea looks tantalisingly close!