Bunch of things, today! Most varying of sort.
It seems that the roving film crew, which earlier had turned Andrassy Boulevard's Operahouse into a Parisian L'Opera, including French bistro across the road; the VI district's sidestreets into Little Italy, complete with giant Fellini film posters and Italian-language 1970's feminist pamphlets on the wall; and Kiraly Utca into a British street with new streetsigns and a British phonebooth, has now improbably settled on the rather seedy streetcorner of Kertesz and Dob utca, just two blocks down from me in the wrong direction. Its a place with downtown's largest concentration of homeless people, but also a once-reputed, now slightly vague artists' club. No cameras yet but three buses with equipment.
On our way to Andrassy I stopped to get some fruit at the store, the TV was on, and it showed the first Hungarian hip-hop video clip I've seen. It was hilarious. It was pretty much the standard fare - tracksuited fatso grunting braggodocio, with lots of shots of him & his crew, him in a big limousin, and above all him & lots of scarcely dressed smiling bimbos chilling. Just all in Hungarian (he's got this grovelly voice), and the backdrop they were swishing past was a bit different: the Alagut, the Heroes Square ... ;-)
I was on my way to Andrassy boulevard because it was the Automentes Nap manifestation - the real Automentes nap is on Thursday, but today they had the party. Thats "Car-Free Day" for you all. Do away with the cars! Bicycle instead! The whole concept was delightfully 1970s/1980s, somehow (hey, I remember learning a political ditty by heart as a kid that went, "Choose for the bike / For safety's sake / Throw all your forces into the struggle / Dont let yourself be bamboozled / By those auto maniacs!" - and yes, that rhymes in Dutch).
Anyway, its an odd kind of event here, but its cute. Somehow city-sponsored (hey, its the
European Car Free Day, EU-flag included), with warnful real-life car wrecks / accident scenes by the safety board and a contest by the bus company; but it was also all family entertainment, with clowns shaping balloons and clumsy theatre on stilts that nevertheless elated the kids and huge inflated castles for them to bounce around in; but it was also all very, like - 1980s neighbourhood party in a Green-ish district in Berlin or Amsterdam or something. Stands with cute artisan cups and candleholders interchanged with ones of an environmental group or a byciclists group. A stage with an endearingly amateuristic ska-pop band (that sounded a lot like Auktyon, weirdly). And somewhere, of course, an unclear-by-whom stand with Underworld and Goa-trance blasting out where a handful of twenty-somethings tried to have a streetrave and a girl with bright red dreads taught two guys how to twirl those sticks that if youre good enough you can use to juggle with fire (I wanna learn that, even if T. told me that in Croatia its only girls who do that and these kids here made me feel ancient just looking at them).
All of the above was reassuringly cute especially because I didnt even know any of this kind of scene
existed here, Budapest generally being the ultimate post-eighties vibrantly capitalist city, where confident materialism comes as self-evidently as flirty charm.
The children of course made me smile especially, for example the young father dancing indefatigably to the ska-pop with his baby on his arm and his four-year old running around him and posing like a pro for the friend's digital camera. (I wanna have kids, I'm the age too.)
And I bought three cups that are fairy-tale like cute. Two will be presents (I was looking for one). Girl who sold them was nice too.
Finally, once I tore myself away (cold, started a soft drizzle), I headed for the Internet cafe and clicked in to find the Yahoo headline on
the outcome of the German elections <big grin>
_
