One last ride before the winter arrives

At this time of the year Hungarians apparently often look at the weather forecasts for Moscow: two weeks after snow hits Moscow the winter starts here. So when I saw that Moscow had had its first snow and that its temperature was around 0 deg,  I decided that last Sunday needed to be a day spent on a bicycle.

The 'Danube Bend' in Google Earth (looking west)

So on a beautiful, mild, sunny morning I set off and cycled up over the Pilis Hills to Esztergom. This had been the very first long bicycle ride my made last year, and had not repeated this trip since, so as I pedalled up to the pass I found myself reflecting on how it all now seemed so familiar and then it had seemed so different.

The five-mile descent from the top of the hills down to Esztergom was wonderful, and I then spent a little time sitting on a bench in the November sunshine eating my sandwiches and looking at the river. Then along the cycle path, pausing along the way to pick up and examine a very strange looking fruit, hundreds of which were lying along one stretch of the river bank.

An Osage Orange

 The next day I would discover that it is something called an Osage Orange, and that is very common in the central United States, and, it would seem, a 100 m stretch of the Danube.

I then took a small road inland, into the Duna-Ipoly National Park, and climbed for six or seven miles slowly up into the middle of the hills again, but this time on a narrow tarmac road closed to vehicles. This meant that the road surface was in good condition which made a big difference when I was able to start descending.

For about 15 miles I only saw four or five bicycles and a handful of walkers, and was able to enjoy some beautiful rides through tunnels of yellow and golden trees, and the occasional glorious view over the valleys running down to the river.

Duna-Ipoly National Park towards the river in the north

Perfect cycling country

By now the sun was starting to disappear, and I was keen to get back to Budapest before darkness came, so after the well-earned swoop down through the hills to the river I followed the river bank back into the city. 70 miles, the longest ride I did in 2010, and my legs and bum could confirm that.

Knowing your bal from your jobb

One of the curious idiosyncrasies about Hungarian theatres and cinemas is the seat numbering system.

Rows are simple enough, but in most places the individual seats are numbered starting from each end, so that if there are 30 seats in a row there will be a Left 1 through to 15 and a Right 1 through to 15, with the two 15s being beside each other.

Tricky enough, but of course Hungarian tickets are printed in Hungarian and most foreigners have no idea of the difference between 'bal' and 'jobb' (left and right).

So this evening when I went to the Toldi cinema to see a human rights documentary that attracted a lot of expatriates, the time before the film started was filled with people occupying seats, being challenged by other people about being in the wrong seat, people getting up, getting down, moving in and out, muttering darkly about bal and jobb and left and right.

Apart from the language problem, left and right depends on where you are looking from, and to be honest I have no idea how it works. All I am grateful for is that by chance I parked my bottom in the jobb Row 6, Seat 3. Or at least I think I did.

It has been a long time since I last posted something on the blog. Between April and October I was working on an Open University course, which seemed to swallow up all my spare time. But that has now finished, and I also am expecting to spend rather more time alone here in Budapest than I have been doing since the summer of last year, so blogging may feel like a way of communicating again.

Well, we are well into the autumn. The days are still bright and beautiful but cool and nights are getting chilly, down to a few degrees. But the last few mornings have reminded me why living in Budapest can be so uplifting. The moist air and cold mornings mean that there is a mist hanging over the river each morning, and the low sunlight shining through it creates an amazing beauty. So much so that I took a detour on my bicycle this morning to capture Parliament from Margaret Bridge.

This must be one of the most beautiful scenes in any city in the whole wide world.

Guantánamo Bay in Freedom Square

It's tough being the guardians of freedom and liberty around the world. For a start, you have to protect your embassies in foreign countries from people who cannot see all the good that you are doing. For this reason both the British and United States embassies in Budapest are surrounded by solid fortifications to make it impossible to drive any sort of vehicle bomb close enough to do serious damage.

However, as the United States works to higher standards of personal protection than the Brits, since last summer the corner of Szabadsag Ter where the United States Embassy sits has been a building site, where roads are being dug up, mysterious equipment is buried and enormous fences are erected.

So stepping outside our apartment is now like arriving at the gates of Guantánamo Bay, with a 10 foot high steel fence running the length of (formerly) charming Perczel Mor utca.

Perczel Mor's new street furniture

According to local websites many local residents are extremely unhappy at what is happening, fearing that the presence of this fortified site is going to affect property prices and make the area a lot less pleasant in which to live.

Certainly the steel fence and associated structures now going up around the Embassy do not really fit in with the Art Nouveau and neo-classical buildings that surround the city's most attractive open space. It has been suggested that an altogether more sensible approach would have been to relocate the Embassy to a more suburban area where security installations would have been less obtrusive, but apparently the US government pays the city council $1.8 million a year for the privilege of living where it does.

So the beauty of the city suffers but the money rolls in. In another situation it might be called prostitution.

It was written

One of the benefits of the Internet age for expatriates is being able to tune in to domestic radio stations from anywhere around the world, rather than having to rely on the vagaries of shortwave reception and local FM relays. So here in Budapest I start my working day with BBC Radio 4, "Farming Today" and "Today".

I can also catch other programmes, and occasionally listen to Melvyn Bragg's "In Our Time", always enjoying the experience but often ending up feeling that I have not really quite understood what the intellectuals he lines up have discussed. Such was the case with last week's 500th edition which dealt with free will. The discussion centred around the idea of determinism, that ever since the Big Bang everything that has happened has been determined by the laws of nature, and that we therefore do not make our own decisions at all but that they are made for us, and that free will is, in the words of the 80s disco classic, 'just an illusion'.

If I had known that I would have gone to work last Tuesday better prepared. At midday Helen rang me to say that she had fallen off her bicycle, and when I picked her up discovered that she had been knocked unconscious, needed stitches in her chin, had broken a tooth and a bone in her hand, which meant that instead of flying to India for a three-week yoga retreat she was to spend a week in Szent Janos Hospital here in Budapest.

Now, often the thought of having to stay in a hospital in a foreign country is something of a nightmare, and so it was for us. We had heard stories about the inadequacies of the local healthcare system and feared the worst. And at first sight Szent Janos seemed to meet the descriptions we had heard. Old buildings, run-down facilities, and a sense of slight edge of chaos.

However, once our initial shock at the incident had subsided and Helen had settled into her room, it all seemed much better. Once the staff had gotten over some initial fear of dealing with a foreigner and Helen had expanded her Hungarian vocabulary so that she could describe her feelings and ask for basic needs, things improved considerably. As the days went by it became apparent that the staff worked incredibly hard in very difficult surroundings, and that while the buildings might not be state of the art the staff were extremely competent and caring.

As with any hospital stay, we were glad when it was over, and she is now home recuperating.

Quite what the fates have in store for us next I don't know, but I hope it is something rather more pleasurable than they dealt out last week.

Spring springs up

On Thursday, March 10th, I hurried home, down jacket zipped up to my neck, scarf pulled tight and thermal Buff on my head and still arrived home cold. The nighttime temperature dropped to about zero, which is what it has been since the beginning of December.

On Saturday, March 12th, I went out for a early morning run on Margit Sziget in a T-shirt, and came home sweating. The little line of red alcohol in my landing thermometer showed about 16°.

Spring has come to Budapest, at long last.

Unlike the temperate maritime climate of Britain, where the temperature climbs slowly and hesitantly from about 5° to 20° over the course of many months, in Hungary's land-locked continental climate the temperature suddenly changes and winter gives way to spring almost instantaneously.

After the months of freezing cold and grey skies it feels like such a relief. To be able to go out and not think about thick coats and gloves but to walk along a street and feel the sun on your face is such a liberation.

There may be some chillier, damp weather forecast in the next few days, but we feel like spring has definitely arrived.

Clash of cultures weekend

Last weekend was a cross-cultural weekend.

Tired after a busy week, I fancied slumping in a pub with a few glasses of beer, but 'pubs' are few and far between in Budapest: it may have some great bars, but not many that are like my favourite British pubs. The bars here that target the expatriate market try to create a pub-like feel but usually fail dismally, and I'm also not that keen to seek out expatriate company.

However, the Caledonia in behind the opera house is a bit of an exception. The people running it have really managed to create a pub-like atmosphere and while it has quite a lot of British-type people as clients there are also quite a lot of Hungarians who seem to enjoy what it has to offer. So Helen and I hung out there for a couple of hours on Friday night, listening to the singers, covering David Gray-type songs, and having a few half-litres. And one feature that pubs could introduce, as far as I am concerned, is waiter service. No having to elbow your way through the regulars who consider it their right to block the bar to anyone who does not drink there several times a week would be a definite plus to the pub experience.

So Friday night was imported British culture, but Saturday night was Hungarian. We went to the Budapest Congress and World Trade Centre to see a performance by Ghymes. I had never actually heard any of their music before going, but had seen their CDs in shops, had read good things about them and they were playing in a large venue, so thought, let's go.

After their first two songs I thought I might have made a mistake. The lead singer looked like a poor man's Meat Loaf, and the music sounded like second rate rock, but then it changed into something much more interesting and beautiful. The band apparently has roots in Slovakian Hungarians, so has something of an external take on Hungarian culture. Sometimes it sounded like the Hungarian folk music I have heard elsewhere and sometimes it sounded as if it came from some indistinct point in Eastern Europe or Asia, particularly when their songs drew on the harshly tuned electric violin, saxophone or clarinet. My own favourite was "Tanc a hoban", "Dance in the snow", a duet which brought on stage a dramatically beautiful, tall, blonde female singer.

And the audience clearly loved them. It was a shame that it was a sit down venue, as I would have really liked to have been able to commune with the music in a freer way, but it was not to be. Three encores, and then we all spilled out into the freezing Buda night.

I often find it difficult to answer the question, "What music do you like?", as I just like anything with 'soul'. What that means, I don't know, but I do know Ghymes had it.