My last night in Budapest, it was raining, it was cold. I had been walking around all day. The next morning it was going to be the early train to Zagreb but, being my last day in Budapest, despite the rain I moved closer to the center.
I took the wrong path, then the wrong tram, then finally the right path again and after an hour I was still walking under the rain, freezing, my feet burning, still directed downtown.
I wanted the people, the bars, some animation, hear voices, see faces.

Then I started to talk with God in english, you know, those kind of things you do when you're alone. "It's my last night in the city. Aren't you gonna make me meet an hungarian woman tonight?"
You know, I didn't want to have sex or anything. I'm just imagining some talking, listening, unexpected meeting with unexpected people of the opposite sex. They say you make new friends when you travel alone, but it's not so true. At least not anymore. You do, if you pick them in the same category you are from (tourists meeting each other in the hotels). Otherwise there are certain barriers, and then everything seems to disappear from you hands as soon as you leave.

Half way downtown, the shape of St. Stephen cathedral appeared in the haze and it was unreal, fantastic in the frayed glowing of the streetlights under the rain. Nobody was around. All the places were closed. After a while, I talked with God again.
"Would you give me a dry bench instead?"
(pause)
"No! Forget what I just said! I'd still prefer the woman if possible!" This must have pissed God. I knew it, so I tried to haggle, making things worse.
"Let's say that if you give me the dry bench I'll know you are not going to give me the woman?"

Next thing I knew, at the bus stop of the 56 there was a dry bench. I sat on it, disconsolate. I rested my feet and resumed walking after a while, hoping that maybe God had decided to give me both the dry bench and the woman anyway. See, I am an optimist.
I also thought that probably real hobos have this sort of conversations all the time. They never get the company. Only sometimes, the dry bench.

Then, down along the riverfront, walking by all the big hotels, I finally had beautiful Hungarian women throwing themselves at me.
"Hey! where are you going?"
"Nowhere, just walking"
"Wouldn't you like some company?"
"What do you mean?" When my feet are burning, my mind is particularly slow.
"Where are you from?"
"Italy."
"Oh, Italy! How nice! Now, what about a nice hotel room and some company?"

You know, I never went with a prostitute in my life. I don't think I ever will, unless I get really desperate. That night, rebuffing prostitute calls all the way to the central bridge, I really thought God was making fun of me. "You read that thing on the blog about Hungarian women, did you?" I asked him.
But, you know, there are many who reads you but never publicly admit that they do, even if they get ideas from what you write. God is just one of them.

Finally I had reached the center, after all. It was all closed down except for the tourist-trap night clubs. I walked all the way back to the hotel and it never stopped raining. The next morning I was directed to Zagreb, on a train that left the bitter and sweet city of Budapest right on time.

-- p.s. thanks to you all who are commenting and sending emails to me these days. I'll answer you all as soon as i get back in Milan. Promise.

Places have to be different by the one you know already. Lacking of superior talents in seeing and understanding, the average tired tourist --like I am being here-- should be at least compelled to search for anything that is different from what is already known. The more different, the better. Because cities and cultures have many strategies to organize themselves, so why assuming that one is better than another?
I don't appreciate very much all the things that make a city like Budapest similar to a city like Milan. Turkish Kebaps, Pizzerias, traffic, supermarkets, fashion brands, cell phones, sedan taxicabs, FIAT cars, the mafia of the public pissoirs raising money from your peeing, etc.

But among the things that are different, the most sweet in Budapest is the language. The sound of Hungarian language is so particular it is hard to find anything similar to compare it with. At first it may sound similar to a Slavic idiom, but it is a completely different thing.
Some syllable, here and there, sounds even Italian. 'Italian' is 'olasz' in Hungarian, by the way. Don't ask me why. It may come from 'oil', you know, olives. I don't know.

My first day in Budapest I bought a Magyar-Olasz vocabulary. I always feel obliged to at least try to stammer some word in the local language, just to let them know I don't take it for granted that they speak English. I studied two or three of those words walking around looking for a hotel on my first day.

Now I can say "Jó napot" to say good morning, "Jó estét" to say good evening, and, most important, "köszönöm" to say "thank you" (see if this is similar to any language you know). "Goodbye" is still too difficult to pronounce for a simple dyslexic like me. 'Viszontlátásra' is beyond my reach.
Anyway, it's a pleasure to hear this language spoken, maybe by two women chatting at the tram stop. Very often they seem to have a tender and caring attitude one with the other, very affectionate. And their language is the better music possible to this.

** what I really wanted to talk about in this post was the round sweet profile of Hungarian women's hips that so perfectly complete their long legs as they elegantly walk by, chanting for you their mute song as you walk by, but, you know, I reckon I must be a little too much fixated here. All right, I want to be loved by some Hungarian woman, what do you want. I can't help it.

Budapest. Third day in the city. The city is actually wonderful.

I come out from the indoor market in Ráckóczi ter, where customers wait their turn in patient lines, vegetables in their hands personally picked from the large crates piled in the market. The clouds seem to be giving room for disbanded sun rays filtering through (it rained all morning). Near the large brownish river the wind comes along cooler and wet, shaking the top end of the small trees. People climb up and down the yellow trams that go across the river. I enter the folk music shop, where the manager gives me to listen a quarter of hour of amazing CDs I'll end up buying. The violin virtuoso, the traditional folk band, the recent folk band, the pop-folk-experimental ensemble of the seventies, the traditional gypsy music & dance ensemble. That sort of things. Folk music must be that kind of thing on which nobody can teach Hungarians a lesson.

( On the other hand, I went to the Buda castle musem yesterday, and it consisted in a gigantic boredom of Hungarian painters of all ages, imitating European schools all the way. There I fell asleep on a soft armchair on the top floor, where the contemporary Hungarian artists are. I closed my eyes, the buzzing of the museum faded away, and I dreamed I did find a word to define the feeling of impotence and shame that takes me when I don't do things, worried to fail. Like approaching the stunning girl I kept seeing around in the museum, for instance, instead of just looking at her like an idiot. Why there isn't a definition for such a precise feeling? )

Outside. I know I said I was not interested in architecture but the streets of Budapest, or at least the old bits of it, are quite superior to anything you can see, say in Prague or in Salzburg or cities like that. The reason is that not everything is renewed here, nor too much rich and well-kept, but it is used, so the streets, despite all the cars and the shops, seem to have a soul, I mean a character. Or at least a age. Renewal of old urban architectures may be good to make money, but it is also quite depressing.

The people here seem to be proud, reserved and yet easygoing. They seem to be smart but also understanding, as if they knew all the weight of the world. I probably am not understanding anything of it all.
I love to make eye contacts with Hungarian women, although the chatting hasn't brought me anywhere so far. I talked for a while with a woman at the folk fair (buying a long silk skirt and shirt with her help. You know, the fucking presents), and for few seconds with a very young girl at the Buda castle, at night, among all the kissing of lovers. That's about all the talking I had here, it was nice and nothing remains of it.

There are actually women for any taste around, the short, the fat, the giraffe, the Diane Keaton type, the Meryl Streep type, the supermodel, the spiritual, the impossible. I don't seem to be able to think at much apart of sex these days.

Wien doesn't want me today. After one night at the mediocre "clima hotel" I am kicked out. All hotels in town are overbooked, for some conference or congress. After the fourth overbooked hotel I walk in, it's time to get to the station. Without regrets I buy the ticket to Budapest and leave the city in the early afternoon, after a brief walk to the center and some resting on the large lawn near the museum of arts and the imperial palace. I am not attracted by Wien.
From the lawn I looked at the carriages for tourists, with horses in pairs, wondering how it comes that a former student of History of Arts can avoid museums and churches entirely.

There is something with rich European cities that is reassuring and disappointing at the same time: you can have no respect for them, because they are in too good a shape, to well-behaved and spoiled and cleaned. This can be relaxing as well as annoying.

The trip to Budapest from Wien takes four hours, during which the Austrian mountain scenery fades into the Hungarian uniform plains. The view from the window reminds me inevitably of the prairies I come from, in northern Italy, although the villages look older and poorer.

A silly music is aired as we pass the border, to welcome us in the Hungarian railways. The Hungarian policeman seems relieved to discover I am neither German, Austrian or American. In fact, there are many Americans on the train as, I will learn later, there are in the city. Almost every tourist you see around is north-American.
I wonder why. Maybe is there a Scientology Congress in Buda?
As we enter the station, I am finally glad I'm here. I only hope the city is not a tourist machine, despite all the Americans.