Beethoven's Budapest

On Thursday, it was extremely cold. Schekeb and I had just left an Iranian kebabshop and were on our way home, when I found a paperclip. I found it and stopped, tangled in in-ear headphones and cables and picking it up from the cold ground. It was in Lónyay Utca, in the street where I live, pretty close to the new University building. After meeting the English Club at the Trapez and eating something there, we were still hungry and searching for a kind of fries-stand on Raday Utca that one of the English teachers at Trapez recommended. By the time we found it, they had closed their kitchen. So we ended up at the Iranian place, whose owner smoked a water pipe while we were eating our falafel and kebab surrounded by paintings of Arabian and Persian beauties and unibrowed belly dancers. When we finally walked home, Schekeb put on Beethoven’s Für Elise on his Ipod. It was odd and somehow magical, to walk down this dark, dirty and dusty cold street with the sound of piano in my head. Usually, there are construction noises, cars, people shouting, sirens. Now it was dark, and the silence was only crossed out by Beethoven’s song. And right that moment, I found the paperclip. We weren’t too far from the University and the dormitories, so it was no surprise to find one there. I smiled, Schekeb didn’t understand my excitement about the piece of metal and we walked home to drink a cup of tea. When I walked down Lónyay again yesterday, I heard the song again, playing in my mind. It suits this street oddly well.