Rod's notes » Budapest

Cigarettes and alcohol

RamblingMan — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 18:43:08 +0000

Well, living in two places, you start to get a handle on what’s cheap where (though I struggle to think of anything that can actually be described as cheap in London).

Anyway, I decided to compare the price of a few basic items, that you’d probably find in a shop in pretty much any country in Europe. Of course, if you were buying Hungarian peppers they’d be cheap in Hungary and non-existent in England. Similarly (sort of) you can’t really find packets of 10 cigarettes sold outside England. So anyway, below are the results, which tell us a few things. Firstly the price of basic food items isn’t wildly different, although I’m assuming salaries are (about double if you go by wikipedia). Stuff is generally a little cheaper in Budapest unless you want to have cornflakes for breakfast. So, mineral water, coca cola and bread is about half the price in Budapest. Butter and Milk are pretty much the same price.

Secondly though, and more obviously, you can see how what you really want to live on in Hungary compared to England is beer and cigarettes.

There’s always a song

RamblingMan — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 14:38:13 +0000

Over the new year I spent some time, with a friend, dipping into Second-Hand clothes shops, of which there are many (oddly often identified by Union Jack, and sometimes Dutch, flags). Anyway, in this one, the shopkeeper was singing sweetly to herself. With a little encouragement, she did us a favour and gave a little rendition to video. Here it is:

Sliding doors

RamblingMan — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 17:25:30 +0000

It’s a funny thing living it two cities, one week here, the next week there. As I walk to work in London I think ‘was I really living Budapest last week?’ and vice versa. This way of living engenders the feeling of a double-life. Almost as if when in once place, the other is a dream or past-memory. Am I two different people? (No, you idiot, you’re the same person living in two cities, though now you’re having a conversation with your/myself who knows?). Anyway, it’s the subtle similarities, which bring the difference home, like taking the metro or tube. Same activity, different experience. People look different, are dressed differently, and the stations even smell different (the presence of bakeries in Budapest metro stations give the dusty air a home-baked sweetness). It is standing on the Budapest metro that I feel like a Londoner, out-of-place, not tourist, not local. Otherwise with the passage of time the newness of Budapest fades, the flirting over, the wonder diminished, but replaced with the joys of familiarity and knowledge. There is always something unusual that crosses my day in Budapest and the puzzle of the language presents itself on shop-fronts and advertising boards like hieroglyphs. But now what surprises me is how normal it is to be here, how commonplace my walk home, that my brain begins to merge the two and I could be living in a fantasy part of London where they for some reason rounded up all the Hungarians.

And it’s a curious thing the transformation of place to home. For example, when talking about places in Hungary i.e. home, Hungarians use a certain ending to words. When talking about any other place in the world it’s a different ending. Basically its I’m ‘on’ hungary, ‘on’ Budapest, whilst I’m ‘in’ London, ‘in’ Paris etc. My Hungarian teacher told me about Hungarian emigrants living in the USA, who adapted this notion of home, so over time the ones who came from Boston would say they’re ‘on’ Boston, ‘on’ Pittsburgh, but ‘in’ for everywhere else. The magyarocentric view transplanted with new roots.

New = Good?

RamblingMan — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 17:23:53 +0000

When you live somewhere you get used to the order of things and the value you put on them. So, in a new place, it sticks out when something messes with the order. First there was the train. I arrive in Budapest and get my second-class ticket from the airport to town. I get on the very normal looking carriage. The ticket inspector tells me I’m in first class and to haul my bemused-tourist-face down to second class. So I leave the rows of badly-patterned seats and find second-class which consists of old-school private cabins with big comfortable crimson chairs, with soft head-rests, and more room. Err
ok. In my head this is first class. The only explanation is that the first-class carriage is more modern and air-conditioned. And I guess it’s one of those things where new is supposed to equal better, even though its less comfortable, is less pleasing to the eye, and has less soul.

Second there was McDonalds. I went in there once (just for glass of water – honest). And the prices of the items were as expensive, if not more, than London. Which is weird for several reasons but mainly because people earn on average a lot less money in Budapest. In London it’s a cheap bite, frequented mainly by teenagers, and on-the-way-home-drunk Friday-nighters. Its also enemy number one for the food ethicists. I started to wonder if McDonalds is perceived differently here, somehow having more status. I suppose this was once the case in England when the arrival of these places in the 80s from America seemed like a little slice of 50’s Americana. I do remember my Dad taking us kids as a treat (in those days there existed Ronald McDonald, this annoying and slightly sinister looking clown, as well as the lower profile Hamburglar who was in my opinion far cooler both in name and appearance).

So these things are strange, but then I’m from England where people don’t bat an eyelid at paying crazy amounts of money for beer and cigarettes.

Why?

RamblingMan — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 17:11:55 +0000

I came to Budapest to fall in love. Not with a girl (though it’s wise to keep your heart open to such things, and it happens to be the city where that last happened). Not with the city itself (though to me there is a a certain hazy magic about the place). No. I came to Budapest to fall in love with life’s new adventures. To do what I had always wanted to do, to experience living in a foreign city, to free up some time for myself, and use that freedom to explore the new and interesting (as well as face the challenge of the language). I’m writing this blog to record random observations and experiences, however trivial, to do my life here, and my part-time life back in London, the other city I live, work, and play in.

I’m conscious (should anyone actually be reading this) that many observations may sound critical so I hope any Hungarians don’t take (too much) offence. With anything like this, the strange or critical is always almost more interesting than simple praise. There are for example, many positive observations to make about this city but to record them would mean this blog consisted of things like: Buildings, georgeous! Food, tasty! Bars, cool! Girls beautiful! Etc. Which makes less interesting reading, I think. So apologies Magyars (and yes, it could be that I just don’t understand what it’s like to be one…).