Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Surely It Ain't All Tibor Zakash?

We were sitting at a dirty wooden table in the middle of Budapest's drizzly Christmas market eating a richly peppered oniony goulash, when a lank-haired, poorly bearded Hungarian hobo, tired of queuing for a free glass of mulled wine, started a fight with an older man in a fake leather jacket.

All right it was a little bit handbags at fifty paces with most of the violence expressed in what must be one of the harsher languages in the world - but it was a little unsettling, this unscheduled, clumsy street theatre; this, un-coordinated slappy tug-fest of missed punches and sideline braying. I could have done without it.

We had after all only a matter of hours ago passed through the gates at Ferihegy Airport with our untidy hand cargo of bags and coats, been bundled into a taxi bus as if we were rounded up refugees, before being dropped unceremoniously at the Congress Flamenco for touristy processing. And already being hungry in Hungary, we had unconsciously unpacked are clothes with the twitchy speed of silent film stars before carrying the dehydrated heads and gassy empty bellys that Easyjet seems to give us, into the first city-centre-bound tram we found: a worn out, jerk-rolling wreck with an ushanka wearing, ear-mufflled, pinch-skinned driver and his freight of sallow-faced stare-cats.

And then on arrival, having dashed to the alfresco stall of the market that threw out the most alluring food smells for some early, authentic, Magyar fare, received the unexpected grandstand view of this impromptu display of eastern European fisticuffs, next to my table. Rather spoilt my goulash-appetite, this, pandering to my ghoulish-appetite.

I found myself wondering: "Had they waited for me to arrive before starting this angry little vignette? This spiteful, little sideshow? Had it been rehearsed, practised: timed to precision to co-incide with the randomness that placed me there, then?" Would it had happened if I hadn't been there? If I'd been thousands of miles away? How strange. How bizarre. What an odd start.

Comments:
I'm stopping reading this blog.
I started because one of your posts amused me, but I've come to reallise you're just a petty small minded indivdual.

Not paticularly this post, but the feel of all your posts irritates me.
 
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
 
Hmm, like I needed to know. Still, you'll have plenty of time now to put together a wonderful blog of your own. Better learn to spell first though.

It'll be tough, but I'll probably manage without your witty and charming comments. Oh! It was your first one. Umm, well, cheers dan. Bye
 
Well there goes un unfriendly chap!
I just read some of your other blog and realised it was a bit out of date.

You know if the fight had happened just the same when you were a thousand miles away...you'd never have known, never written this blog. But it would still have been happening away there all by itself.
Ooh think of all the things that might be happening right now.
Weird.
 
Thanks for the kind words mig. I was rather hoping I'd get a decent comment here. Funny how unfriendliness can momentarily throw you. My first response was going to be rather rude, hence the deletion.
 
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