Budapest, May 12, 2016
My dear D.,
From this, the great city of lights, which I first visited ten years ago and where I astonishingly had not promised myself to return, I write to you, my friend, with whom I can afford the luxury to get pen and paper, sit down to write a letter like in the 80’s, and talk about all and nothing at the same time.
It is Thursday and it is raining again. I arrived by train from Timișoara, in Romania, five days ago. I am staying in one of those typical post-war buildings that abound here in Pest: a huge building with a rancid-smelling common entrance that leads to a white and wide worn marbled block of stairs. It has a rectangular patio in the middle, bordered by the picturesque facades of the houses on the ground floor and the rusted railings that make up the interior perimeter of the four, five or six floors, each one inhabited by, at least, five or six families (and some tourists and travellers, of course).
The hostel is small and simple, and the warmth of the owners serves me as the best of homely affections: he, Favio, an Italian who has lived here for many years, and Sofia, his sweet Hungarian wife who dreams of opening her own restaurant some time in the future. From the moment they first saw me, I became “Marcello il ragazzo argentino,” and I suddenly saw they are that kind of people who, even if they have just met you, look at you directly in the eyes with no prejudices and have that blessed ability to always smile a sincere smile, as if they were in peace with most of what is below.
I am in my dorm room now, which I share with three Pakistani guys who won’t stop talking on their mobiles and shouting in Urdu. They told me yesterday that they are doing business here in Hungary and that they call their families in Pakistan at least twice a day. I’m intrigued and would like to know who they are speaking to with such exasperation. I would ask them but I do not speak Urdu, and they do not speak English well, and we could spend the whole afternoon trying to elucidate each other. Not that I do not enjoy those kinds of cultural interchanges; it’s just that today I prefer to remain in ignorance and talk in “criollo” to whom knows me best (you!).
Even though Budapest was not in my plans in this trip, I decided to surrender to its charm once again when I realized that I was only five hours away from it and that it was an almost unavoidable city to cross on my way back to the West. And because the unforeseeable was, in this trip, the wheel that drove all my movements, guiding me, with an almost disconcerting keenness, in every lucid moment, as to where to go next. (It’s funny: before, that unpredictability would have paralysed me in fear. Today, in some way it is evidence that I am moving within another element: the realm of desire and its aquatic uncertainty.) (Whoever said that desire resembles fire? Desires never consumed me, rather they make me flow, and expand me in high tides and decrease me in low ones, depending on the occasion, and they immerse me, little by little, into the best of my realities so I can swim and absorb them fully, from my head down to my toes).
Whatever the reason, I guess it is always good to come back to Budapest —or to any other city that has fascinated us. Returning, if possible in different periods of the year, not only can we dramatically enjoy different landscapes but we can also perceive more sharply how much we have changed ourselves and our perspective of things, if at all. For example, yesterday I stood under a drizzle at the same end of the same bridge in this same city, and I enlightened: “exactly a decade ago, this was for me the mythical Danube, and I contemplated it in ecstasy from any of its sides; today, it is a flow of water of a beautiful and inexplicable colour of blueish-brown, and I can feel its depths even as I stand here, still and far away.” And so, without meaning to compare myself against myself, nor force myself to change, I inhabited that instant of the present time more pleasantly.
I remember that, having arrived at my first Budapest, no one had warned me about the burning heat that descends over its streets in summer, and I was forced to learn, once and for all, to always take with me plenty of water so my wandering became lighter.
This time, the always welcomed and temperamental spring had gotten ahead my coming and someone had told me: “It always rains in Budapest.” That prediction inspired me and, during two mornings and a whole afternoon, my silhouette borrowed the consistency of water and, under unforeseeable rains, I slipped away into the most unnoticed, and some well-known, city corners, allowing my perception to distil new images and sensations over the retina of my eyes and the pores of my skin. And for the first time in my life, I learned that we, humans, can also rain sometimes, unaware of it.
I must go now, my dear D. The rain outside seems to give no truce. I think I will go for a walk and tomorrow, maybe, I will write to you again and tell you how much water I was this afternoon.
The biggest of hugs, W.
Must-do’s in Buda-Pesth:
- Spend a whole day in the popular thermal waters in Széchenyi
- Going up in cable railway to Gellért hill in Buda and enjoying one of the most memorable and breath-taking views every traveller wishes to carry in the backpack of their memories.
- Walking all day or all night on the Danube riverside and allowing yourself to be guided by the splendour of the Parliament.
- Visiting the underground caves in Buda. The Pálvölgy ones are said to be the biggest in the world.
- Crossing, once and again, alert enough, the Bridge of Markets (and, just in case, the remaining seven bridges that connect Buda and Pest), to at least catch a glimpse of the beggar-woman that embraced Alina Reyes in the short story by Cortázar (I saw her from a distance, under the profuse rain, the afternoon that I wandered around the city).
If you want to read about the first time I visited this city, click here.
The Ways of Infinity 