I found a paperclip at Mücsarnok, on Saturday. I’d tell you the full story, but that would start a month ago and although a lot has happened in that time, you probably don’t want to (and don’t need to) read about all that.
Two weeks ago a good friend from Maastricht, Nina, visited me. We began the sightseeing tour immediately after I picked her up, and we started at my favorite Internet Café. – Yes, internet café. It’s a cozy little place off Deak Ferenc ter that we occupy not for the internet-cause but for sheer culinary pleasure. A plastic folder, stuffed with pages and pages with one-liner descriptions of all sorts of dishes – Hungarian, Italian, snacks, soups, drinks, coffees, just a lot of dishes – all neatly accompanied by a 10x15 photograph. However, Nina and I did the whole tour: the Gellert Mountain, the Basilica, Szechenyi Bath, practically the whole 101 of Budapest’s tourism, plus the parties in the evening.
By the time she’d left and two days later another friend from Maastricht (Christian) arrived, I was so over tourism. Thankfully, Christian had planned to discover bars and cafés over the Lonely Planet version of the city, so we didn’t do too much of the walking at daytime, but at night. Except Saturday, when we slept barely long enough (due to my very light-hearing apartment and my housemate’s mother who came to clean everything that she felt we didn’t clean often enough – thanks anyways…), we did a cultural program.
After a short detour to the outskirts of the city (not even…it just feels this way when you never leave the 4,6 tram circle), where we bought a bus ticket for my visitor, we lunched on the fabulously small, cozy and fragrant Christmas market on Vörösmarty Ter. In fact, we had sausage with meat and cabbage with meat, any carnivore’s feast.
With the just-as fabulously small Metro 1 we took off to the Hero Square where the Budapest Art:Fair was held at the Mücsarnok. Admittedly, once you’ve seen the TEFAF at Maastricht, any art fair can only look like a nice try, but the Art:Fair was really that: a very, very nice fair with works from mainly eastern European artists in both classical and modern styles. This is where I found the paperclip. For the sake of it: yes, it looks like a normal paperclip, just that it’s huge and made from wood and both Christian and Claudia (who joined us for the event) doubted whether “art” is the right word for it – but they did that for almost all of the works exhibited in the modern art category… But the thing next to it IS a carved pencil. Not kidding. (See picture below)
By Sunday, when my last visitor for this year left, I was so tired and wrecked from all that had happened: Mumus, one of my favorite bars had closed down (I got an empty Palinka bottle of theirs during their farewell party), I found one or two new cool spots in Budapest, we had the first snow (blizzard, I dare say), snowball fights, temperatures below zero and still so much fun, a lack of sleep, too much food, and I might end up studying here next year after all…
Two weeks ago a good friend from Maastricht, Nina, visited me. We began the sightseeing tour immediately after I picked her up, and we started at my favorite Internet Café. – Yes, internet café. It’s a cozy little place off Deak Ferenc ter that we occupy not for the internet-cause but for sheer culinary pleasure. A plastic folder, stuffed with pages and pages with one-liner descriptions of all sorts of dishes – Hungarian, Italian, snacks, soups, drinks, coffees, just a lot of dishes – all neatly accompanied by a 10x15 photograph. However, Nina and I did the whole tour: the Gellert Mountain, the Basilica, Szechenyi Bath, practically the whole 101 of Budapest’s tourism, plus the parties in the evening.
By the time she’d left and two days later another friend from Maastricht (Christian) arrived, I was so over tourism. Thankfully, Christian had planned to discover bars and cafés over the Lonely Planet version of the city, so we didn’t do too much of the walking at daytime, but at night. Except Saturday, when we slept barely long enough (due to my very light-hearing apartment and my housemate’s mother who came to clean everything that she felt we didn’t clean often enough – thanks anyways…), we did a cultural program.
After a short detour to the outskirts of the city (not even…it just feels this way when you never leave the 4,6 tram circle), where we bought a bus ticket for my visitor, we lunched on the fabulously small, cozy and fragrant Christmas market on Vörösmarty Ter. In fact, we had sausage with meat and cabbage with meat, any carnivore’s feast.
With the just-as fabulously small Metro 1 we took off to the Hero Square where the Budapest Art:Fair was held at the Mücsarnok. Admittedly, once you’ve seen the TEFAF at Maastricht, any art fair can only look like a nice try, but the Art:Fair was really that: a very, very nice fair with works from mainly eastern European artists in both classical and modern styles. This is where I found the paperclip. For the sake of it: yes, it looks like a normal paperclip, just that it’s huge and made from wood and both Christian and Claudia (who joined us for the event) doubted whether “art” is the right word for it – but they did that for almost all of the works exhibited in the modern art category… But the thing next to it IS a carved pencil. Not kidding. (See picture below)
By Sunday, when my last visitor for this year left, I was so tired and wrecked from all that had happened: Mumus, one of my favorite bars had closed down (I got an empty Palinka bottle of theirs during their farewell party), I found one or two new cool spots in Budapest, we had the first snow (blizzard, I dare say), snowball fights, temperatures below zero and still so much fun, a lack of sleep, too much food, and I might end up studying here next year after all…
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