Park and Literature

Saturday was a busy and diverse day.

The market is closed on Sunday so we decided to go early and stock up. I think I mentioned the fridge in the flat is dorm room size so storage is limited. We bought fruit and vegetables as well as more beautiful cheese, the vendors are quick to offer samples and we tasted several before buying. The wheels are huge and they cut as big a chunk as you want. We returned to the building and visited, she speaks no English and we no Hungarian, with a neighbor and met her grandson, see pic, he had a case of hiccups, she was letting/making him suck on a lemon, I guess a Hungarian Mothers trick.

We stored our purchases and headed on the tram to Octogon, a giant intersection at he half way point of the Andrassy Utca, pronounced utza, the Andrassy Utca is considered to be the 5th Avenue of Budapest. At the end of Andrassy Utca is City Park, a park that reminded me of Forest Park in St Louis, filled with Museums, restaurants, lakes, and Hero's Square. There are old Churches in the park, see pic, as well as a giant swimming pool that was in the final stages of preparation for opening day, there were hundreds of workmen painting, laying new asphalt sidewalks, seining the slime from the pool. We saw several wedding parties posing for photographs.

The pool is actually a giant concrete lake, probably 5 acres, with sculpture and plants. There is a gala opening next weekend with an international art exhibit I'm sure we will attend because there is no baseball on TV. Cards are back in 1st.

We saw several wedding parties posing for photographs. The park was the place to be in Budapest on a Saturday afternoon.

After a stroll thru the park we made our first descent into the subway to head back to Octogon and then a walk back to the flat. The subway was very impressive, clean, efficient and fast. See pic.

We were attending a reading of prose and poetry by Fulbright students in the evening but wanted to check out a street art fair on Raday Utca. The center of the fair was our friends Stefan and Andrea's restaurant. There we met a woman from Serbia who owns a gallery there, she is interested in doing exchanges with art galleries in the US so we gave her Jay Nelson's contact info, Jay's is the gallery that handles my Fathers work. We were chatting and suddenly a Hungarian literature "event" started right where we were sitting. It was really funny as none of us, the Serbians or Lisa and I had any idea what was going on, lots of emotional reading, we smiled and shook our heads in agreement and looked for a way to escape.

I know this is rambling...we had to attend the Fulbright reading at 7 so we looked at our watches shrugged our shoulders in disappointment that we wouldn't be able to stay and rushed off.

The Fulbright event was very entertaining, poetry, prose and a short story, all inspired by the students stay in Hungary. We had invited Andrea Karpati to join us and she enjoyed listening to the American interpretations of Hungarian writers.

Andrea treated us to dinner at Central Kavehaze where we listened to a combo play Frank Sinatra favorites.

The standard dining out phrase is "leave room for dessert."

They are truly works of art.

Sunday is going to be laundry and rest up for a busy week.

Later