Budapest: The City of Romance & Resilience

The smell of cinnamon chimney cakes (kürtőskalács) and melted snow litter the air, as do the damp cigarettes on the sidewalk, during winter in Budapest. Doors are quickly shut to prevent Father Winter’s fast fingers from freeing the radiator’s heat. Boots crunch on the squeaky snow, and people take only one glove off while smoking. There’s no reason to sacrifice both hands to the cold. Budapest slips into her quiet slumber in winter along with the fauna and flora, only for ice rinks and Christmas markets to temporarily awaken the city from hibernation.

Maybe you’ve heard, maybe you haven’t, but Hungarians have a reputation for… unfriendliness (that’s what we can call it). But, if you start a conversation with your neighbor, or your bartender at a local pub (please, not when it’s very busy), you’ll find the soft underbelly of the Magyars. Yes, some Hungarians live in the scowls on the metro, the pushy line in the pharmacy. At the same time, they live in a pair of skinny jeans, an underground cellar echoing soft string strums, and homemade palinka in an old soda bottle. Harmony looks different in Budapest, but it sounds the same. Tears pool in the young Hungarian eyes, listening to poetry as black boots tap, tap, tap, catching each verse’s beginning. Budapest lives in the old friends walking out of the grocery store, just as they’ve done every Thursday for years, with cans of Dreher in hand.

Suddenly, it’s spring. It has arrived in the style of Hungarian kindness, swiftly and unexpectedly. Rows and rows of flowers on Andrássy Avenue are colored in bright hues of lavender and rose. It smells like the orange slice in an Aperol spritz and the pollen blown up by not-so-cool, not-so-warm winds. Winter coats and scarves are wrapped around bodies in the morning, only to be shrugged off by the afternoon sun and warm embraces outside cafes. A train sounds off in the distance, against the Eastertide soundtrack of singing birds, frisbees clattering on the ground, and scooters scraping the sidewalk. The smell of rosemary swirls in Budapest’s air, just like the purple and pink kites. A man bikes past me, carrying a bottle of champagne in his wicker basket to Városliget.

What else would you do on a sparklingly sunny spring day?

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