Life, with the garden
Location: Budapest, Hungary • • • Visit: July 2013
I’m sitting in the train bound for Budapest. A guy across the isle from me is reading “Game of Thrones”. A couple of Austrian teenagers are mixing drinks in empty soda bottles, and spraying soda all over their table, laughing loudly. And I just finished a very long and nice conversation with UC, an Indonesian engineer who lives in Los Angeles and is now traveling with his wife, daughters and mother across Europe. He’s been to Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague and Vienna.
And UC said that we seem to be so independent and brave, us European young women. I am the third that he’s met who’s traveling by herself. And I guess, in a sense, maybe we are. Independent, at least. Bravery requires things you’re afraid of doing, but you do them anyway. Riding on a train in a European Union country just doesn’t scare me, not the tiniest little bit.
History is heavy in the walls in Budapest. In the synagogue, memorial plaques of lost heroes, statues. Strolling by, in, with, put me in a slow, contemplative mood.
Once I reached the Danube, with the slight breeze and the evening sun on its way down behind the hills on the other side of the river, the air was perfect. I sat down, watching the water flow by, listening to a radio documentary about Bosnia, 17 years after the signing of the Dayton Agreement. It is not an uplifting story, about how the division of the power into three, to give the Bosniaks, the Croats and the Serbs equal voice, has made most political decisions impossible to make and has consolidated the segregation, rather than beat the religious tensions. I sat there, by the Danube, thinking that soon I would be in Sarajevo and the sun was warm and my feet were aching but that was OK, because I was in the middle of it all. I was in the middle of Europe, this continent heavy with history, all kinds of history – and I was there. A group of young people were practicing the bongo drums just a short way off and thanks to the construction work and the long detour that required one to make to get to this particular part of the path by the river, there weren’t that many people who bothered to come here. I could have stayed there, to see the sun disappear behind the hills – but I was hungry, and I wasn’t sure how to find my way back to the hostel, and I felt I had to start heading back before it got dark.
But right there, sitting by the monument of the shoes by the river, listening to the documentary about Bosnia and the young Hungarians playing the bongos, I felt like I was part of it all. A citizen of Europe.
In the middle of the Danube, in the middle of Budapest, an island has been left unbuilt, green, with trees and walking trails. The Margit Island, a large park. Nice, with shadow and people strolling around.
There was this big, amazing fountain at the southern tip of the island. It shot water into the air, in spirals and showers, ever-changing.
But the best thing was the shallow and narrow pool encircling the big fountain, meant for people to wet their feet. The water was freezing – and so extremely nice for my tired and worn feet. Such a sympathetic thing to do, when constructing this boasty fountain. To think of the tired tourists in need of a rest for their feet.
I met a hedgehog. And then he met a bunch of kids. After the first bout of shyness, he couldn’t get away fast enough.
Katja Malmborg 