My Beloved City?

I am sitting in Abi’s room, wrapped in blankets and sipping hot coffee. The sky is a typical grey. This icy Saturday morning Abi is on her road to England. And so, until my plane departs for Denmark in a few days, I have taken up temporary residence in her cozy little room.

It is on mornings like these when I wish I lived in times when we used quill pens and wrote letters out long-hand. I would pour my heart out on the scroll, scribbling as quickly as I could, trying in my eagerness not to pour out the ink on the parchment as well. I feel there is so much I have felt and thought and imagined these last weeks, so that the jumping off place might be hard to find. So I will just begin somewhere, though the tap-tapping of these keys are less satisfying than I would imagine a quill’s brisk scritch-scratching might be.

Last night I skated home. The ground was a sheet of ice, and in some places I could literally skate across the pavement on my boots. There is something satisfying and soul-quieting about walking home at night in this harsh winter weather. Somehow I feel that I am beating the elements. Tonight I am sharing in some deep secret of this city.

It is at night when I can think most clearly, and imagine most vividly. On this night, I take my time. I meander along the streets lit in Christmas lights, past the bus depot. I breeze past fancy hotels decked out for the season and make my way through the main square of downtown Pest. Vorosmarty Square is the center of holiday happenings this time of year. But at this late hour, it is quiet. It is so quiet. I imagine I can hear the heartbeat of the city as it sleeps. A few northern European tourists wander by, umbrellas in hand. I hear one man comment in German about the rain -“dieses schlechtes Wetter!” But I am too entranced by the moment to care what this foreigner has to say about my beloved city. Yes, at that moment it was my beloved city.

I have often wondered how people can take on a city as their own. I have heard that a person can fall in love with a city. Somehow a spell is cast, and its power edges a place into the heart. So on this night I ask myself, “Is this happening to me?”

Somehow, despite my own irritations and disappointments with life in this unique Central European city, I have loved it from the beginning. I am the first to admit that there is so much to hate about this city, as with any city, if you choose to make them your stopping point. So many tourists come seeking the majesty of a former Europe. They expect (especially North Americans, I dare say, but then many other westerners have similar expectation) to be catered to, and that its inhabitants will bow down and welcome them on red carpet. I must concede that I have gone back and forth and all over the spectrum in my opinion of this paradoxical city. There is graffiti on every unguarded wall. Neon signs tempt the lonely into strip bars. Dog owners are less than mindful of cleaning up after their pets, and walking down some sidewalks in the dark is like dodging landmines. (Abi and I have dubbed one such vociferous street “Pee Alley”. I think we are generous leaving it at that!) The trams are overcrowded and in the summer months stink to high heaven. Strangers on the street seem cold and apathetic. Shop owners act bothered by my patronage, and many, though they know English, refuse to use it. I have been shoved out of line by old ladies and yelled at by a McDonald’s employee for putting my tray in the wrong place. I have been glared at for speaking English too loud, and ignored by those whose job it is to help. I have stepped in dog poop and been smoked out in small cafes whose owners’ idea of a non-smoking section is one table shoved in a dark corner.

So, what is it that keeps my interest, which causes me on these late evenings to pause and marvel at my surroundings? The only answer I can offer is that there is something deeper, beneath the surface, which goes unnoticed if you come for only a few days of pleasure and luxury. As I stroll along on this December night, my gaze moves up the towering buildings and the dirt of the day disappears before my eyes. Suddenly, my gaze is met by some god or mythical creature with a long beard. Back arched and arms overhead, he strains, trying desperately to hold up this building. It has been all but forgotten. He stares down from his lofty position above, daring me to ignore him. I meet his gaze. I want him to know that I understand. I want to assure him that he has nothing to fear and that his majestic building will always stand, that Hungary will not forget him. But I walk on, realizing that I cannot give him this assurance. I let my eyes discover the masterful detail along the wall, the arches and twists and turns, the scallops and loops and crowns, until I meet the end of the street. As I round to the front, I am met with accusing stares of more men and women of ancient days. High above my head they proudly stand, guarding silently. Some wield tools of trade. One woman is garbed in long linens, a basket perched on her head. They are beacons of the past. They guide us back when we have lost our way.

I think this city has seen too much. Tourists come and see filth, crumbling structures whose beauty is lost to us now. They are ghosts, just waiting to come to their final fate, to be replaced by enormous malls that suck in your money and destroy the soul of the city. This city has seen too much that the tourist or expatriate cannot fully grasp. Too much war, too much hardship, too much disappointment. Perhaps its soul truly is dying. If the past is not preserved, how will the Hungarian people go on, let alone remember where they have come from? I am haunted by the past of this land.

Whenever I become discontent with Budapest today, I need to just look up, and I am drawn into a place where beauty still lives, where myths and and legends larger than ourselves still exist, still reminding us of the past. Faces etched into stone call me into their world. I believe that people once valued things of beauty here, and thought about ideas beyond the here and now. But, the malls and underground tell another story of materialism, fast-paced hard business, all symptoms of a “use it and throw it away” society. The homeless people could tell a similar story. Many of them have been shoved aside by the greedy and the newly powerful. If the statues on the buildings could talk, I believe their voices would raise in a plea to those who still believe that the beauty of the past is as important, if not more important than the present. Like the statues that hold up the buildings of this city, they could keep the romance alive. If they would but choose.

I continue my journey home, five miles outside this city. The lights of Castle Hill illuminate the river below, and I am left in awe.