Cycling and serendipity

Every now and then when cycling around a city, obstacles such as the appearance of major highways or one way streets force you to take a diversion. Usually this just creates a hassle as you find yourself lost and possibly slightly anxious as the new surroundings seem somewhat threatening. However, occasionally the detour enables you to make an interesting or delightful discovery. Today's's detour was definitely serendipitous.

The day had started with Helen and I cycling across the Margit Bridge at 8 in the morning to a yoga studio, where Helen had the second day of a weekend workshop. I had decided to use the early start as the justification for a ride south, following the banks of the Danube for about 15 miles until I could cross over to Csepel, a large island in the river. The route took me through an unfamiliar and interesting part of the city, old abandoned factories, riverside wharves reclaimed as parks, high embankments protecting the city against flooding and a No 7 bus to Richmond-on-Thames.



After crossing Csepel I headed north again back into the city, but as I hit the outskirts my road became extremely large and busy and I decided to try to follow a parallel, quieter route and found myself going into an area of obviously municipal housing but with a definite sense of space and green, and where the houses seemed to be designed in a different style of architecture. Eventually my wandering took me into a large square, completely different to anything I had seen anywhere else in the city, with rather striking foreign looking buildings surrounding it.



Bemused I cycled on until I came to a wooden post at a crossroads. At first I thought it was one of those signposts that points to other places in the world but then I realised that the arms were not pointing and that they listed some strange places such as Hampstead, Welwyn and Port Sunlight. What I had so serendipitously discovered was Wekerletelep, Budapest's very own 'Garden City'.

This was a term that I only understood very vaguely, so on returning home I looked up Wekerletelep in Wikipedia and found out more about the Garden City movement of the early 20th century. In Budapest rapid urbanisation had led to the building of large areas of really poor quality housing for the new city dwellers and Sandor Wekerle, the Prime Minister of the time, decided to build a new area following on from the principles being applied in these English (and other country's) towns (including the Flower Estate in Sheffield).

Budapest continues to help my education.

An insight into complexity

I'm still struggling with the basic vocabulary of Hungarian, but last week my French teacher, who speaks good Hungarian, gave me an insight into one reason why Hungarians speakers are so proud of their language.

In linguistic terms Hungarian is agglutinative, which means that words for complex ideas are built up by stringing together words for simple ideas that describe the whole. It does mean that the language is full of some extremely long words but even with my extremely limited vocabulary I can sometimes see familiar words inside long words that give me some idea about what the word is.

Anyway, my teacher said how he had been in a conversation with a Hungarian and had wanted to describe something for which he did not know the correct Hungarian word. So he thought about what the object was and strung together three small words to form a completely new Hungarian word and his listener understood it perfectly without needing any explanation.

I read a while ago that Hungary has produced more science Nobel prizewinners per head of population than any other country in the world, and one explanation given for this is that the language encourages analytical thought. I didn't really understand this at the time, but my teacher's little story gave me the insight that I needed.

To me that is a good teacher (even if it wasn't about French!)

The city gets on its bikes

Last Monday was a public holiday for Pentecost. And as the cold wet weather had faded away to be replaced by warm days with the occasional intense thunderstorm we decided we had the opportunity to take a small day trip up the river to Szentendre.

Helen had bought a bicycle on Saturday so this would give us a good chance to take it out for a ride. Szentendre had been the first place outside Budapest that I cycled to back in the winter, and on that day there had been hardly any other bicycles going along the river, but now, with warm weather upon us and a public holiday the paths and roads up to Szentendre were absolutely packed with bicycles. I was both astonished and delighted, as it made it all feel very jolly, groups of old people, young people, families, all pedalling along on a wide variety of bicycles in the spring sunshine.

Just north of the city centre is an area called Romaifurdo, where the river bank is packed with outdoor cafes and restaurants, all of which seemed to have pretty much the same menu, combinations of fried fish and beer. Simple, but the cafes were full of people sitting, laughing, talking and generally enjoying the holiday.



The ride up the river is very pretty and very easy, and the main problem was avoiding all the other bicycles. However, the flooded river meant that the path was under water at one point so we had to make a detour through the woods.



Szentendre was as pretty as it had been in February but much busier, and the tourist-oriented cafes and restaurants had their tables and chairs out in the streets, so of course we sat and enjoyed a sun-warmed cold beer, and later I had a beetroot ice cream, which was truly delicious if a little unusual.

Helen decided that her bottom could manage the return journey, so we set off back. The fried fish and beer cafes were still doing a good trade at 6 p.m. as we passed through.

We finally made it back home by about 7, to collapse, enjoy a little red wine and watch as the day's thunderstorm rolled over us, dropping its torrents of rain.

Entertaining

Last weekend was a significant one here as it was the first time we had had visitors staying with us. Lucy and Paul arrived in Budapest on the Thursday morning on the sleeper from Berlin and stayed until the following Monday evening when they took the sleeper to Bucharest and Thessaloniki.



It was great having them here but they unfortunately arrived just as the Hungarian spring took a turn for the worse and we had wild rain and wind for three days without a break. Actually Hungary got off lightly, as Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic had even worse weather and had extensive flooding. We are now seeing the results of this rain, as the Danube has risen considerably and muddy, log-strewn water is rushing through the city. Apparently it does flood occasionally here, but I think it might have peaked. I hope so anyway.

The rain put paid to plans to show them sights, and most days we just trudged around locally in the howling wet wind. But on Saturday evening we put on our sou’westers and went to a nearby Italian restaurant to celebrate my birthday – a delicious meal and good atmosphere. From there we walked to a local club to see a ‘spaghetti balkan’ band, Il Figli di Madre Ignota. They were a whole lot of fun, frenetic horn section, and played for 90 minutes to leave us exhausted.

Then on Sunday our cultural tourism took another turn and we went to the opera for an 11 a.m. performance of The Magic Flute. It was packed – they love their opera here.

The rest of Sunday passed with us at home taking turns to snooze and then drink Laphroaig until late into the evening.

I had to work on Monday, but Helen took Lucy and Paul to the wonderful Szechenyi Baths, open air hot water, where the continuing wind and rain were irrelevant.
We went with them to Keleti station that evening to see them off, and enjoyed waiting around for their train to arrive. We stood near the notice board, watching the huddles of men playing and watching games of chess on top of the walls at the end of the platforms. They seemed to be local people who had established this as a spot for games with anyone who turned up. A great custom, and one I’d love to see at St Pancras.

We were also fascinated by the parade of sleeper trains setting off for other parts of continental Europe. Apart from Lucy and Paul’s train, there were also trains setting off for Moscow, Zagreb and Berlin – we fantasised about doing it ourself and setting off for Istanbul. One day.

Bachelor days over

At last Helen joins me. She arrived on Friday 7th to start her new life here in Budapest, not a little apprehensive about the changes in her life ahead. Not having to get off to a job every day, no personal income, plenty of time to practice yoga, an incomprehensible language, and lots more positive and negative factors!

Our first task has been to find somewhere new to live. My current apartment is very comfortable but we really want an extra room to accommodate the visitors we hope to have. So during the first week Helen went off with several different estate agents to see what they had to offer. Funnily enough, however much you have to spend, the place you want is always that bit more expensive than you can afford. Never understood that one.

We saw living in Budapest as a chance to enjoy some new cultural experiences and it’s not been bad so far.

A local listings magazine organises fortnightly screenings of significant Hungarian films with English subtitles, and we went to see one of the, The Czukor Show, last week. It’s about a daytime TV show like Jerry Springer that seeks to ‘throw light’ on human relationships, and was very good. I was interested to hear that about 4 million Hungarians watch these shows. A phenomenon I have never come to terms with personally.

Then we had an office party to attend. My staff association had rented out a boat on the Danube for the evening, so we went along not quite knowing what it would be like. Anyway, it had a bar and a dancefloor, and by 8 it was jumping. With us being an international organisation there are lots of people who like talking and dancing so throughout the evening the floor was packed, dancing to African, Latin, Motown, R&B, pop and random other sounds.

We wobbled up the gangway at midnight with light heads and sore knees from over-enthusiastically dancing the Twist, amongst other tunes. Personally, I think that's a pretty good outcome for an office party.

What’s on this week? Well, some experimental theatre about King Arthur one evening, a collaboration between a chamber orchestra and a klezmer band another evening and Zap Mama on another. Phew.

And during the day Helen will doubtless be whizzing around on her new bike. We bought one yesterday and today enjoyed exploring possible apartment locations in the warm sunshine. Buda is like Sheffield, full of hills, but Pest is flat, flat, flat. We cruised around all over and ended up enjoying several beers in Szabadsag Square, watching the people around us walking, talking and schmoozing. Pretty cool.

Spring comes for the weekend

The last weekend in April has seen the first really beautiful weather of the spring, with clear blue skies and temperatures in the mid-20s.

That worked very well, as there were two outdoor events that I wanted to go to.

The first was one of Budapest's Critical Mass events. For anyone who doesn't know what a Critical Mass is, it is where cyclists assemble in a city centre and ride around. Exactly how planned they are varies, but the one in Budapest is carefully organised and very well-run, so that the city authorities co-operate in closing certain parts of the city to allow the cyclists to circulate.



The riders assemble next to the river, cross backwards and forwards over two of the bridges and then cycle along the embankment before heading into the city centre to end up at the People's Park. Reports suggest that 35,000 people took part, which is truly amazing.

The atmosphere in the Park at the end resembled a festival, and the beautiful weather meant that people could lie on the grass in the sun and enjoy the relaxed vibe. Various announcements and short speeches were made, but what they said I have no idea! The event culminates with the bicycle lift, where everyone (who can, at least) lifts their bicycles over their head. It's actually pretty impressive, looking out over thousands of people all holding their bicycles up to the sky.




Since the event was first held here in 2004 it has helped to put pressure on the city authorities to provide more facilities for cycling, and this has probably helped to increase the numbers of people riding around. Certainly now that the nice weather has arrived there are plenty of people pootling around the city centre on bicycles.

When that ended I rode on home, where the traders in my street (which is known as Budapest's 'antiques' street) had laid on a street festival. So all the shops were open until late into the evening, a stage was erected for music and the various restaurants and bars had tables and chairs out in the (closed off) street. The warm evening helped it to be what seemed to me to be a wonderful event with a very jolly atmosphere.

I enjoyed going into some of the antique shops and having a look at what they offered. They had previously looked a little intimidating to me, so I enjoyed being able to look around anonymously. What amazed me with several shops was that they occupied cellars that extended for what seemed like huge distances underground, packed full with all sorts of things. I guess the most common style represented was Art Nouveau, being the style most associated with Budapest.

Perhaps the biggest surprise I had was discovering that on the opposite side of the street to my front door is a bar. I normally discover bars fairly quickly, so wondered why I had never noticed this one. I had a beer and enjoyed its cosy atmosphere, and then saw that it only opened from 10 AM until 5 PM, and not at all at weekends. Now, I may not have been to all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, but I have never before come across a bar that only opens during working hours. Weird.

Stuck inside of Buda with the Sheffield blues again

Things have been quiet on the blogging front for a number of weeks. Essentially my creative abilities deserted me.

When I lived in the Sudan and the Gambia long, long ago I came to realise that how much one enjoys life in a foreign place does not depend on how interesting/glamorous/exotic/warm/etc the place is but on the quality of everyday life, as determined by work and personal relationships.

When coming to a place like Budapest, which actually ranks fairly well on those criteria, I wondered whether that early lesson would come back to prove to be true. And it has done.

The last six weeks at work have proved pretty challenging. What I was recruited to do was effectively to make a fairly significant culture change in the way things work, and implementing this has proved difficult. Then, at the end of each day, rather than coming home to a partner and a social life where I could talk about things and keep it all in perspective, I have been coming home to an empty apartment. Skype and phone calls help a bit, but they don't make it easier to go out and do something different. I guess I've become a bit tired of my own company and going out to restaurants or bars alone no longer appeals: although there are some interesting places, having sampled some I am looking for more to an evening than observing other people's behaviour.

So life has been come rather introspective.

However, after what seems like an eternity this first stage in Budapest life is coming to an end. Helen will be coming out in May to join me, and I'm really looking forward to getting back to exploring the city with a fresh pair of eyes alongside me. I'll also be able to grumble and groan about work and have her great wisdom to connect me with reality again.

I may even be able to start writing again.