The River of My Dreams

I have those moments of great weakness (usually at the very end of summer, right after having returned from some sunny Mediterranean island) when I start waxing lyrical about how I love the sea, even in the tragic circumstance of having been born spectacularly far from any such body of water, and being, if I am very very indulgent to myself, a most atrocious swimmer. Seas have always filled me with a terrible sense of indefinite longing- whatever they were to offer me stayed somewhat hazy, the point was always that somewhere out there a sea awaits. 

Which is of course everything a river is about- flowing incessantly towards that possible sea in faraway lands. Ever since a child, the Mureş was therefore the river of my dreams. At first it was just something great and possibly dangerous I glanced furtively when I was taken to the playground, then it also became a ribbon of blue unknown on the map. 

I carefully investigated the spot where it springs out from the mountains, alongside its southbound sister, the Olt, and then the other fateful spot, where it meets the Tisa, which will then take it to the Danube- and ultimately, to the sea. This odyssey of its waters was not just textbook geography to me, but also a geography of the heart. When I moved to Budapest, the thought that the Danube will at one point welcome the waters of the Mureş and then take them to the Black Sea made me feel much more connected to my home than the knowledge that highways and rails connect the two cities. The Mureş  was not always benevolent though, as befits any mythical being: I would always glance at the ramparts remembering how they were built during the great (and for a child, slightly biblical) flood that my grandparents would occasionally talk about. 

So whenever I am home, I try to make some time and check her out- I do know that both the Mureş and the Olt should be male as per Romanian folklore, but waters could never be anything but feminine to me. 

The banks of the Mureş were at one point, especially in the summer, the very centre of my life. I remember swinging on the screeching metal contraptions that would now be considered a death trap by law, under the watchful eyes of my grandfather- my one care being to go as high as possible without the swing tipping over- a technical impossibility, but childhood is of course outside the strict laws of physics and the real world.

Later we would gather here with friends, having the first sips of forbidden beer and assessing whether our pocket money would be enough to propel us into the paradise of the ‘ştrand’, the all purpose beach that was the main hub of Arad’s social life for a while.

And it was on the river banks that I first tried my German analogue point and shoot camera with the purpose of creating something beyond the usual birthday and anniversary snaps- I would probably need to do a better investigation of my film rolls, but if my  fickle memory doesn’t betray me, it must have been autumn that time as well. And nothing quite beats the vivid shades and fading lights of autumn on the banks of the Mureş.

October Random with Rain and Ramblings

There are up sides to utterly gloomy autumn days with non-stop rain, yes there are. It's like they simply take the pressure of you- no need to go out, plan several outdoorsy-basking-in-the-sunsy activities, decide which cute summer dress to wear, make sure not to miss any newly opened terraces and such.

You can either simply stay at home and binge watch whatever comes to your mind (I went for Tom Hardy movies, a safe bet if there ever was one) or put on an indefinitely coloured trench coat and quickly transition the curtain of rain to another indoor haven, like a cinema or an exhibition hall. Or a pub, where you can just sit like a grumpy pigeon sipping on a stout- or maybe a Pilsner Urquell disguised as a Staropramen- and discuss the harsh realities of life in the rain with your friends.

Like how, in the middle of Budapest's party district you can suddenly find yourself at a loss for places to go, because you kind of felt like food but strangely all the establishments coming your way are bars serving a meagre snack or too.(This issue is of course a non-issue: with a bit of patience you can find pretty much anything in Budapest these days.)

Due to a long stretch of such fine meteorological phenomena, I can even volunteer useful indoor activity tips, such as the Pop Art exhibition at the Ludwig Museum and the World Press Photo one at the Ethnological Museum.

The second is a strange pairing, frankly, I always get this odd feeling when visiting the yearly outing of the exhibition, a bit like when going to the Nyugati square McDonald's: something quite old and pretty over decorated meeting something new and almost minimalist. (It’s very pop art of me to compare a Big Mac menu to a press photo, I’d say.) This year’s edition closes on the 25th of October, so most probably it will be even more crowded this weekend than it was during the last.

In a way it’s encouraging to see people still going to an actual photo exhibition in the era of easy online access to anything. On the other hand, most of those who made my day a bit of a via crucis were there because, to get back to my majestic simile above, they do regard the World Press Photo exhibition as the McDonald's of photography: shots that should be easily made sense of even for those not overly familiar with the medium in general.

But amidst the pushing and shoving to get (Capa style…) as close to the image as possible while blocking out everyone else’s view, I hardly heard one remark that made any sense. Though some did open strange new overtures onto modern life: while quickly rushing through the series related to the downing of the Malaysian Airlines plane in the Ukraine, a young girl excitedly blurted out that, oh, she did hear about this crash, but she did not know it was real, she though it was a film. In a nice random touch, quite close to the plane crash series there was another one, about China’s booming film industry. You decide what’s real.

The Ludwig goes Pop! Exhibition sounds mercifully too abstract to most and can thus be visited relatively undisturbed. It’s also most definitely one of those things about which most people would indignantly postulate that they could have done that as well. Only they did not think about it, and that’s the hard part, isn’t it. As an added delight, there is strong focus on the contrast between pop art in the West and in the (communist) East.

There are many small epiphanies, such as the one about the strange attraction of Eastern Europeans to matchboxes, but the most striking element is probably how the West was bursting into vivid Technicolor shades while the East stayed, well, black and white, grey, and especially brown. Strangely enough, all my memories of communist Romania are indeed brown. In one particularly poignant set of memories, I remember seeing my mother’s brown robe on a chair, and rushing into a street of brown mud to listen to the distant rumble of shots being fired into the centre of our provincial town. Then the revolution came and my memories went Technicolor.

Omar Souleyman and Hercules and Love Affair @ Electronic Beats Festival

Budapest quite often gets to be the second best something- it's coffee is second best to London, it's the second best Central European destination after Prague, it's Italian restaurants are second best to generally anything in Italy, overall it's a second best Vienna and it's clubs are second best to Berlin.

It's this 'second best Berlin' wave that the organizers of the Electronic Beats festival tried to ride with their new endeavour of making the usual one evening/four act show a proper festival-y four days spread over different locations. The two main hubs were the city's arguably most popular indoor concert venues, A38 and Akvárium, with the bulk of the action in A38, to be then continued with late night to early morning shows in Akvárium. Which makes a lot of sense, since this is one of the essential night time routes for the party people of Budapest- A38 simply becomes too remote come the dead of night, with no proper places nearby to tank up on döners and pizza slices or to crash for a final cheap beer- or three. 

Now I must admit that I usually get stuck at the A38 part- clubbing has never been my cup of tea, partly because I am too fond of a proper pint of beer to risk any of the beverages being sold as lagers or something in clubs and partly because I find dancing to random beats quite boring after 10 minutes or so. So in tune with this preference, I chose the A38 evening with the more appealing acts, namely Omar Souleyman and Hercules and Love Affair. 

Before I launch into the thick of the action, I must confess, that yet again, to my shame, I paid little to no attention to the acts going on before the, so to speak, headliners of the evening, but I can safely say they did not seem electronic in the least. Which is something quite typical for Electronic Beats events: the definition of the genre is generously widened to include more exotic nuggets of entertainment. I informed myself in the meantime, and the act I was blissfully ignoring were Fatima and the Eglo Live Band- they seem a pretty safe background music option for a drink, but I am afraid nothing about the sounds seeping out from the stage area would want to make me take more interest in their undertakings. 

The bulk of the crowd was therefore rambling around quite liberally before 11 PM, with many revelers deciding that the relatively less frequented Nose Bar is a great choice for quick drink purchases. The situation changed with the arrival of Omar Souleyman- who is an absolute hipster magnet if there ever was one. The man hails from Syria and was a festival staple long before his country became a decidedly (un)cool topic of all Western press. He started off his career as a traditional wedding singer, but once his music was (excuse the horrible pun) married to the here oft mentioned electronic beats, the sky is the limit.

Taking into account the drastic reaction of our lazy co-photographer, who ditched the scene of the crime claiming this is random and soul crushing wedding music he'd oft hear in Turkey, and the suspicion that I might also recoil if certain sonic elements of Romanian weddings ever hit the mainstream under any form, I can conclude that Omar belongs to that typical category of things that are so superbly uncool that they either disappear into a black whole of oblivion, or go stratospheric with a certain crowd.

This particular audience also loved Omar and his deadpan Yasser Arafat meets Italian godfather look, plus, say what you want, he makes music one can dance to while also feeling somewhat intrigued by the exotic vibes and utter quirkiness of it all. 

The evening continued under the sign of quirky, with Hercules and Love Affair coming complete with an apparently Parisian singer, who undertook an exciting wardrobe change, from an orange garbageman onesie to a, well, insufficient swimsuit plus transparent cape with peace signs and faintly tropical patterns. And I do know it has nothing to do with the music, but I kind of love it when an act makes sartorial choices that are hard to describe- they at least ticked the box for visually interesting. The tunes themselves were not groundbreaking, pretty straightforward dance floor oriented electro, but the delivery was nothing if not energetic, and the crowd responded with the same measure.

Once the concert was over, it was time for final conclusions in the social hub that is the A38 wardrobe queue (autumn and winter offer such lovely opportunities, besides all their other joys of, erm, rain and reindeer themed sweaters) and then out we were into the bloodstream of late night pizza slice bars. Overall, it's a great idea to have Electronic Beats spread over several evenings and we look forward to what musical UFOs they will bring us next time. 

And while out in the wilderness of the night, we can also safely conclude, energized by oriental sounds and well fed with delicious Italian pizza, that by being so many second best somethings, Budapest might just slowly become the very best city which has a bit of top notch everything.