Black copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things…
We all have our list of favorite things. Pragati confessed that in all of Budapest, the shopping street - Vaci ut - was her favorite. I am yet to put down one place as my ‘favorite’. But without doubt, “raindrops” are one of my favorite things. And today, it rained like hell!
It was like being back in Bangalore. Not only because of the rains, but also due to the meetings that filled the first half of my day. The rains came out of nowhere. In the afternoon, we went up to the terrace of the building to enjoy a cup of coffee. The view was nothing as spectacular as the panorama that you get of Budapest from Gellert Hill, but it did give us a bird’s eye view of the Graphisoft campus, with a small glimpse of the Danube. “This place looks better than Salarpuria!” exclaimed Pragati.
There is a small museum next to our office – the Aquincum Museum – which houses the ruins of the old Roman settlement of Aquincum. Until today, I never realized that it was so close to our office and missed a golden opportunity to visit the same – of course, from the look of it; I did not see anybody else doing the same. “After all, it’s just a collection of stones” reminded my colleague, Gabor. As for Pragati, her response was as usual: “Are you mad?” Nevertheless, the place looks quaintly romantic.
In the morning, Frank suggested that we go out for drinks and dinner today – a suggestion readily accepted by us. Gabor suggested a place on the shores of the Danube in Aquincum. “It’s just 20 to 30 minutes of walk from here” he claimed. Pragati’s heart sank at the mention of the walk. We left at five o’clock and started walking towards the main road. “Are we seriously going to walk all the way?” questioned Pragati. I just smiled and shrugged my shoulders. “If that is the case, I’ll just head back to the hotel!” she exclaimed. Thankfully, we stopped at the bus stop and Gabor pointed out a name on the list of stops where we had to get down – it was just two stops down the road.
The bus however, seemed to take ages to reach the place – going round and round the place. After getting down, it was another 10 minute walk, making Frank wonder what exactly “20 minutes” meant over here. The beautiful restaurant was modeled on a boathouse. The river flowed by peacefully. There were quite a few boats anchored to the shores here and there. The steel trusses of the long railway bridge visible from the office sparkled in the evening sun. A few cruise ships and barges cut through the waters on their way up the river to new destinations. We were given a table under the sun, and ordered drinks. There was a wide variety of topics to discuss – Hungarian politics, world politics, beer gardens in Germany, driving to Las Vegas, and ironically, my fondness for rains. There were a few clouds in the distance and I remarked about how the sky becomes extremely dark when the monsoon arrives in India. True to my words, the sky darkened up in a few minutes. This was no ordinary shower. It was a thunderstorm.
Soon we had to scurry inside to take shelter from the forceful winds that lashed across the shores of the Danube. Quite a few of the hanging lights were broken. We somehow managed to find a table in the porch, well away from the torrential rain which had, by now, started pouring down. Fortunately, we had managed to finish the dinner by the time it had started. Our next worry was how to get back to the hotel. Frank and Gabor called for a taxi and were promptly informed that it would be there to pick us up in 20 minutes. Frank’s suspicions about the term “20 minutes” in Hungary seemed to be well-founded since it took the taxi driver ages to appear. They dropped us off on Deak Ferenc Ter from where we could get a train to the hotel, but not before I finally managed to get the glimpse of the beautifully lit Nyugati Railway Station. I pointed it out to Pragati. She seemed to be very impressed, for she immediately asked me: “Which hotel is it?”
Streaks of lightning still dominate the sky. As I write this in the hotel, it’s started raining again…
Quote of the Day: Pragati: “When I was young, I wanted to be a graffiti artist”. When I was young, I wanted to be a train driver (they are called “locomotive pilots” as I’ve already mentioned in one of my earlier diaries. But then, as a kid I never knew that)
Pic of the Day: Graffiti – perhaps one day it would be housed in famous museums
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