I have to admit to being an inveterate observer – not just of people, but of my surroundings. I have long enjoyed simply to stroll the streets of the city, noting such changes as have occurred since my last amble in that vicinity, and this reason alone explains my propensity for walking rather than riding, and for public transport over driving. But given a sunny day and sufficient free time, my greatest self-indulgence is to settle myself at a table at a street café, and simply to observe the eccentricities of the characters who populate this city, and who guarantee I never experience a moment’s boredom within its confines...
Some years ago, having a coffee in Pasaréti tér, my attention was attracted by an elderly woman approaching from around the corner – I was able to hear her before I could see her: she kept up a steady monologue to her equally invisible companion about the exhorbitant rise in her medication and the scandal of government subsidies being reduced on medicines. As she rounded the tree, becoming visible, I saw that her escort was neither her friend nor husband, but a somewhat portly dachshund. They continued past my vantage point, only to return some ten minutes later with the requisite medicaments, and with the elegantly-attired lady continuing her diatribe, pausing only to wish some acquaintance, “Good morning,” before disappearing once more from view.
Last summer, I was sitting lazily outside the Europa café in the sun, when my attention was drawn to an elderly man in tracksuit and trainers nearby. He stopped adjacent to a nearby lamp-post a mere few metres from my table, and, holding on to it, began to perform his constitutional exercises - much like a ballerina at the barre in a slow motion version of a silent movie. Paying not the slightest notice either to us or passers-by, he continued thus for some twenty minutes before shuffling on along up Szent István Körút.
Rushing to work in the rain just a week ago, I noticed an elegantly-dressed man in a suit some distance ahead of me who kept bending over as though to adjust his shoelaces. I soon caught up with him, stooping again over his shoes and oblivious to my stares as I saw him carefully remove a snail in danger of pedestrians’ feet, and put it safely to one side on the grass verge….
An ex-colleague visited recently from Basel where she now lives – her most frequent complaint with the city being its perfect organisation and lack of the ‘character’ she came to love in Budapest. We decided to eat out on the terrace of Két Szerecsen, where we caught up with the eighteen months since our last meeting. While we waited for our wine, we noticed a man crossing the road towards us, carrying two buckets. He stopped just the other side of the wooden trellis separating us from the pavement, and started digging up the soil in the large, concrete box there, in perfect view of several diners and any passer-by. He methodically filled both buckets with fresh earth – perhaps put in readiness for flowers to be planted the following day – and then returned from whence he had come, no questions asked.
Yet the most incongruous spectacle I still remember with great fondness, happened one June about ten years ago. It was almost seven o’clock on a sunny summer’s morning as I drove around Hősök tere, taking my children to school. As we turned onto the grand avenue that is Andrássy út, its wonderful villas bathed in dappled sunlight, its footpaths lined with flowers, I had to slow down dramatically in order to confirm what I thought I had seen, but could not believe: walking alongside the neatly trimmed bushes that border the flower beds, was a man leading a large white goat on a lead, waiting patiently while it nibbled the fresh greenery available for its breakfast!
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