Budapest is beginning to feel like home. Familiar faces greet us at every corner - the grumpy baker dispensing the latest dose of cherry-filled magic and a horde of friendly waiters at our favorite French restaurant asking us when we'll be back; a hurdy-gurdy player from Brasil who looks more like my family than my family (his family is from Eastern Europe); a riotous russo- klezmo-phile romashka-like band "Vodka v Glotku" (http://www.vodku.hu) and their audience identically clad in hipster-wear du jour, hips moving in the same MTV-generation confused way (that's Music TV, not Magyar TV).
There's a "Cafe Mozart" here, only more elegant, majestic, European. Mozart would come to this branch rather than the one in New York, I think.
Ljova found a gym. I found out where the local dry cleaner's is. My walk to school - through stately throngs of masterpieces of European architecture - is beginning to feel normal, and I forget to stop and revel in the beauty of the Basilica on the way. I even stopped taking pictures everywhere I go.
The city itself isn't quite in the state of normalcy, however. Walking down Andrassy to meet Ljova, I was confronted by a thousand-person long chain of motorcycles, waving Hungarian flags, chanting "Kossuth Ter" down the boulevard, streaming to Kossuth Ter for another night of ...?
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