Last day in office…traces of the fog still lingered on the river. Snag wanted a photograph on herself next to the graffiti-filled walls of the subway. I remember that last time around there were only a few portions covered with it, but now, there was not an inch of space left. “Get me one with the ghost in it!” she commanded pointing to a figure on the wall. I obliged.
For the first time, I had the Hortobagy Palacsinta for lunch. It is a pancake filled with meat, and served with paprika sauce. Snag liked the pasta-like dish with poppy seeds and vanilla sauce. “Why don’t you learnt the recipe and cook it for us?” I teased her. One of the colleagues took it seriously, and found the recipe for her on the internet.
“Do you guys speak to each other in English, or do you have a common language?” asked Gyula during our wrap-up session. “No, we speak different languages,” replied Snag, and we proceeded to give a demonstration of it, much to their amusement. Before the end of the session, they gave us parting gifts – the Turo Rudi, a chocolate filled with cheese, and a jar of our favorite “Paprika Chutney”.
No rain or fog interrupted the evening. We made our last trip back on the train from office. Snag kept staring at the plant shop, refusing to believe that the plants and flowers sold there were real. She had planned to buy the shop, thinking that the flowers were artificial. We headed out – for the umpteenth time – to the Szechenyi Lanchid. Snag had lost all her “real” photos of the bridge and wanted to shoot them again.
Eventually, it turned out to be my last walk along the Danube promenade. On the ramp to the bridge, a group of youngsters were setting up percussion instruments. “Probably they are from ISKCON and would sing bhajans,” I told Snag. “I hope not,” she retorted back, “those guys were very noisy,” referring to the group of ISKCON devotees, who, a couple of days back, were singing inside the Ferenciek Ter Metro station. “These guys are everywhere!” she had remarked.
There were too many people on the bridge today. Even after having so many photos, I couldn’t resist clicking more. After the usual argument of “her photos v my photos”, we headed for dinner. Snag was insistent that we have pizza. “It is safe, and I can be sure it is vegetarian”, she remarked, “I can never be sure of these Hungarian delicacies.” On the way, she stopped to click photos of Tropicana, the casino made famous by Pragati during my last trip.
The pizza, if it can be called so, was an anticlimax. We spent the (unsatisfactory) dinner time discussing politics.
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