June should be about getting used to summer, but this year it arrived in
Budapest insisting very much that it’s
all about scorching, hot summer, giant icy lemonades and cocktails, people
lounging in the shade and windows open to all the noises of the night. I always
felt there is a change in the texture of things as real summer arrives, the
outside world invades the inside, and there’s a very typical hot stillness,
best felt on Sunday mornings, when the city is almost deserted.
7 AM at the market becomes the peak period, as I learned last Saturday,
along with a detailed diatribe about the difference between two types of
peonies. For I made the honest mistake of calling some pink buds being insistently
hydrated by an elderly gentleman ’pünkösdi rózsa’, which as far as I am
concerned is the Hungarian for peony. As it turned out, these particular buds
were, however, ’bazsarózsa’.
Wikipedia and Google failed me, and came
up with the Latin Peonia officinalis for both. Looking at my buds, now turned
into full fledged flowers, they do seem a bit different from ones I purchased
before, they are less fluffy, more contained and quite insistently pink
bordering on purple. The whole naming drama is of course beyond the point, but in summer the
days are longer and I guess you have time for more non essential stuff as well.
Which is kind of cool.
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