HUNGARY

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Budapest | Fono and the Dance Houses | The Ball | Getting Lost | Eger | The Danube Bend

BUDAPEST
Like Los Angeles but with less silicone, Budapest unfolds slowly, its treasures below the surface. Its graffiti-covered walls are not clean and modern, nor impressively ancient. Its language is impossible (I can mispronounce "Thank you" and that is it), and its food is difficult to identify, even when not smothered in pink sauce. For this reason I now suggest the falafel stand two blocks from the Nyugati train station. I ate there three times per day several times in my four visits to Budapest (within two months). The guy behind the counter eventually assumed I was an ethnomusicologist living in Budapest. He'd ask where I was when I had not seen him in 10 days. I was thinking "Vienna... Serbia... Croatia..." The city does have more than a few notable sites -- the majestic Hero's Square, which reminded me a bit of the larger Place de la Concorde in Paris; Vaci Utca, a luxurious area swarming with tourists and impressive architecture; Statue Park, a Communist theme park of imposing statues and a common thing in Eastern Europe; and a river view that rivals any in Europe.

If you ever make it there, pick a slab of concrete across from the Buda castle. FYI, Buda and Pest were two different cities and were divided by the Danube until the Chain Bridge connected them. Buda is the old-fashioned, castle side, and Pest is more modern. In any case, sit yourself down on either side (the view of the Parliament bulding from Buda is also nice), eat some phenomenal gelato and watch the sky trade the sun's glow for that of the flickering lights on the far edge of the river. Slowly, the Chain Bridge's steel cables become lit garlands, and the castle takes on a warm amber hue. It can take three hours, so bring a book or an interesting stranger. One may approach you -- I found Hungarians to be even more helpful and friendly than people I met elsewhere. I kept this date at least five or six times during my four trips to Hungary (Five, if you count the time I accidentally went all the way, diagonally, through Hungary and out the other side to Vienna. But Vienna is in Western Europe, so I don't have to cough up that story.) Budapest comes alive at night, with cafes, bars and dance clubs and herds of kids stumbling onto the crowded night buses until sunrise. Beware those rowdy 2 am buses. I disembarked one time to find that someone coming out behind me had vomited on my back. No one batted a lash.

FONO and the DANCE HOUSES
The reason I returned many times to Hungary -- Budapest, the Danube bend, the elegant Baroque town of Eger -- was the vibrant folk music scene that surpassed anything else I discovered during my travels. Though my first trip sputtered out with blistered feet and a failure to find any folk dancing, the next time I returned I found Fono, the scene's epicenter. Fono is a record label, performance space, dance house, production studio, bar and restaurant. A few inches south off the average Budapest map, Fono hosts events several times a week, many free, others a whopping $1.50 (these include some of the best artists in the area). There are few English speakers some nights, but there are dance houses a few nights a week, even if only in the 15' x 15' area adjacent to the restaurant and CD racks. A fabulous live band, often two, set up their double bass, accordion and cimbalom in a corner and play for a few hours while a circle of guests stomps and runs, hand in hand, singing or yelping over the fiddles.

After sufficient amounts of Rakija (brandy), the men begin what appears to be some frenzied Amazonian mating sequence. No amount of Bulgarian whip snapping or gypsy hip swiveling can come close to the energy and bizarreness of this dance. Close your eyes and it sounds like someone is quickly clapping. Open them and you find that each slap is a hand hitting a heel, shin (with the leg straight out), thigh, or ankle. There are often no slow steps between these moves, so legs are rarely on the ground, and arms are flapping wildly. As the music winds tighter and faster, as it always does east of the Rhine, all one can see is a blur of hands and calves and beads of sweat. At first I thought there was a mad infestatation of mosquitoes and the guys were dead set on smearing the lot of them.

After listening to my field recordings of such business, I was disappointed to return to my CDs, as the rhythm of the stomps and shouts added a remarkable and much missed dimension to the music. The next afternoon I return to Fono for an informal cafe performance by two of the previous evening's musicians -- their band, Sondorgo, has Serb-named artists (with Hungarian spellings) and Yugoslavian sounds. One of the members present is also in a Bulgarian-style band, Rila, led by Bulgarian Roza Bancseva. This is a great example of the mix of cultures going on in Hungary. He plays the accordion, his friend plays the tarambuka drum (the hand-beaten one that fits under your arm or between your knees) and a small boy I assume was his son plays a flute.

My next random wandering into Fono is for an inspired evening of performance, then participation song and dance titled Dobrudzsa Festival. This is the show that makes me want to be a waitress at Fono (the food here is better) just to stay there forever. Dobrudja (the non-Hungarian term) is the area of Bulgaria that borders on Romania, and this show features several brightly costumed dance troupes from each country, plus phenomenal Bulgarian singers -- all of whom are backed by 10+ piece live bands. The teenagers make their own costumes and are not professionals, which makes the show much more lively and natural than it otherwise might have been. Women dance together, then men, then the two, then men with whips (Bulgarians) and giant sticks (Romanians). Romanian and Bulgarian syncopation is more complex than most, with time signatures not found in other countries (7/8, 11/8, and combinations of two or more). After the show, we all pour into the dance house area and the bands play for us to dance for hours, hand in hand. All for $1.50! Of course, I leave with the gypsy band and get home at 4 a.m.

I smile slyly a week after my last dance house visit when I knowingly attend an "Authentic Folklore Event!" for tourists. It has much of the dancing (albeit a bit stiff) and all manner of costume extravaganza, yet little of the loose energy of the local houses. Nothing makes me happier than to know that the best place to see Hungarian folklore is hidden within the craked walls of the living city itself. To the Hungarians there, it isn't folklore at all -- just a Wednesday night on the town. The most impressive part is the fact that it is not just Hungarian folk music -- each night of the week has its own thing going in one part or another -- Serbian and Bulgarian (Wednesday), Romanian (Saturday), Greek (Sunday), and so on. Cerbul de Aur, one of the Romanian troupes at the festival, often host the Saturday dance house. I run into a few of them some weeks after the festival at a dance house that appears to be in an abandoned building (more on that below). This one has maybe a dozen people, but still a marvelous band I caught on disc. As usual, I participate a bit and get lost a bit more. It is difficult enough to learn such folk dances with the instructions yelled out in English, let alone Hungarian. Such dances are found around Budapest and elsewhere in Hungary virtually every night of the week beginning in late September, when the opening dance house ball inaugurates the coming season. Tourists often miss this, as there is nothing going on in the summer.

Accommodations Note
For those wishing to stay in Budapest on a budget, the Marco Polo hostel is very nice but pricier and a bit snooty. Yellow Submarine is a dump but an absolute blast and in the heart of town. The nicer Hotel Buona Fortuna is a bit far on the southwest edge of the city, but that is where the dance houses are. Given that they end late, it is smart to stay nearby to visit the dance houses.

THE ANNUAL BALL
After one of my first forays to Fono, I have the fortune of taking a night bus with a teenager who mentions a larger dance house the next night. He puts an X on my ever-present map. I am there, recorder in hand (and camera, sadly, in hostel). Turns out, this is the opening ball -- hundreds of guests, bars, displays of food, two floors and a succession of bands that makes the night seem a two-day festival unto itself. I heard that it went until 5 or 6 am. Flyers everywhere for other dance house events, art shows and regular rock shows make it clear that this is just another aspect of the local nightlife. The steam-filled building, obviously an entertainment center that also houses organizations, is packed with young adults in Metallica t-shirts or or khakis and button downs (no costumes here) -- it is not a fancy affair. There are also several children and nimble grandmothers running through the halls, upstairs and downstairs, snagging a rare seat to watch the giant circle dances in the main room (make that circles -- several cocentric rings of girls, and a few separate ones of boys). Girls clasp each other's hands and shuffle in one direction, then the other, chanting and howling in rhythm. The male dancers, however, keep to their wild mosquito-slapping and "hep, hey!" or "opah!" cries. There are also male-female dances, which I catch upstairs. I spend a few hours in this large, humid room whose only ventilation is a crowded balcony billowing with cigarette smoke. A brash man and his plump companian, both in traditional regalia that seemed out of place, explain each dance before the band dives in. The crowd, shirts heavy and clinging with sweat, practice twirling and stomping at their leisure until his voice cuts through the din like a foghorn. I can still hear it. He and his partner begin a step, and suddenly the two are refined and charming, transformed by the music. I participate in a Turkish dance when bashfully asked, and later practice it several times alone in the hostels (I recorded it on disc) until I lost the mini-disc. I also record the yelping women, and I play it back one evening to two boys in Budapest -- while sitting in front of the Chain Bridge watching the lights come up, of course. They don't have the foggiest idea what the girls were chanting.

GETTING LOST
One thing about the dance houses -- they aren't exactly in Vaci Utca, so one needs to get a good map and go early. Granted I need a GPS system to find my car in the supermarket parking lot, but I spent hours lost on the streets of Budapest at 8 or 9 pm, looking for the dance houses. I even went in the afternoon a few times, to be sure I would find it that night (no help). One such night, the night of the Romanian dance house in the abandoned building, three teenagers actually had to call me a cab and wait with me after I had spent two unsuccessful hours searching for the address. It was not my fault -- the street began and ended many times, and the final destination was on the ghetto outskirts of the city (a place I would come to know far too well in the coming weeks). The cab driver, who took 10 minutes to arrive, did not even want to take me there. The dilapidated building did appear empty when he pulled away, but around back I found a lit stairwell. Inside, I met several locals, one of whom not only walked me back to civilization but also gave me the heads up on the dance house schedules. However, I would not recommend this type of transit gamble.

For this and other reasons, it is good to have an English-speaking cab driving company phone number with you at all times. And an international phone (which I did not have). Also beware the 11:45 pm trams. If you must take one in the wrong direction, be sure that it is not this one, as there will be none to take you back. They stop at midnight. It is quite embarrassing and unnerving to find yourself in some God-forsaken neighborhood, the only one on a run-down tram when its engine sighs its last for the night. The conductor peeks in and yells indignantly, and you walk out onto the tracks that either fade into black or run into the station house. This is when it is good to have an English-speaking cab company card. I walked 40 minutes, then hailed a cab. Fortunately it is difficult to translate Forints into dollars, so the true financial horror of the situation is never fully known. Finally, there was my last return to Budapest -- after I had landed in Prague. I spent two hours going up one side of the Danube, through three ghettoes, and down the other side, looking for the A38 boat. Slonovski Bal, a Yugoslavian / French brass band were playing there with Besh o Drom (Romani for "sit in the road," a rebellious suggestion). I finally draw a boat with "A38" inside it and start putting it on car windows. A cabbie (love em) points to a boat parked right across the water from the hostel I had left hours before. It was a 10 minute walk home.

EGER
This beautiful Baroque town is a destination on its own, something I did not realize as I boarded the train on a mere second-hand recommendation. "I heard there is some gypsy music there," a great friend I knew for all of six hours said to me. Needless to say, there was a cartoon cloud of dust behind me as I raced to the town for a few days in search of I'm not sure what. Fono had mentioned that Kerekes are the town's best band, so I hoped to find them in town to speak to them. As I stumbled onto the main square, a stage was being set -- Kerekes would play what became a 5+ hour set (I left near midnight and walked home in the rain. Still, they were playing when I fell asleep an hour later). The show attracts a crowd a few hundred strong, and before I can kick off my thongs to join in the circle, three guys from the Fono group (or so I heard) begin to teach us dances and chants to sing. Simple side-steps, complex ones it takes the entire 14-minute song to learn, and four-person dances akin to contradancing where everyone locks shoulders and spins until the two unlucky people support the other two, who let their legs fly out behind them. These three men then proceed to the middle of the massive ring of people, like a giant corona around the moon, and begin a round of mosquito-slapping, air-kicking Finno-Ungrian kung-fu that leaves the group speechless. All of them spinning around each other, missing each other by centimeters. After that the crowd broke down into several chaotic minimobs. Our circle consisted of a few dozen backpackers and a man at least 75 who was breakdancing and bringing out the 1920s moves in the circle's center for more than 10 minutes.

My next evening I am awakened by drunken bar-style singing over a sloppy but endearing accordion (is there any other kind?). I wake up, shower with my window open to the night air and crawl downstairs, microphones clamped to my bag. Where are they? I wind down the street toward town, back up and around, with no luck -- then silence. I am crushed. Drunk Europeans singing is one of my greatest pleasures. I plod back to the hotel and begin to mount the stairs. Suddenly, they start. I ask the manager where they are, and he opens the door out to the little back yard of the hotel. There, ten feet under my bathroom window, sit about 20 recent graduates from Slovakia. All boys. This is their celebratory field trip. I am immediately their sole subject of attention. I sit among them -- it was hard not to with their swarming, and they squeal with delight when they hear I am from Los Angeles. I am accosted with the lists of actors and American movies they have seen. Patrick, the pretty one the other put out there as bait, sits next to me and is introduced... about 9 times. Then he puts his hand on my knee. I must admit he is adorable, but they are only 21 and I am 30. Or so I thought. Turns out their graduation is from high school. Each of us thought the other was 22, but they are 17, making me nearly twice their age. Patrick's hand is removed from my knee. I also recorded them and will post it shortly to ensure that none of them are ever able to hold public office. "Would you like to go upstairs with Patrick?" "May I photo you?" "This is Paaaatrick, beautiful boy. Yes!"

THE DANUBE BEND
Far from the concrete and noise of Budapest and the surrounding areas, the Danube bend is a stretch of land along the slow curves of the river dotted with small towns I can't pronounce. Zebegegny, the one I visited, had the best ice cream I have ever tasted (Hungary's shining culinary achievement) and a long pebbled walk along the shallow, winding water. It is green, if not lush here, and the skies are Hawaiian blue with fluffs of white. As Budapest is somewhat lacking in greenery, it is a nice place to spend a day. I was hoping to get to the SE part of Hungary, where many of the musically inclined villages are, but they are more than a day's visit.

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