The way you can most safely predict the first real summery weekend of May
in Budapest is by checking the date of the soup day held at the Finnish
embassy- the method has been working
wonderfully in the past four years, it worked just as splendidly this time, and
will hopefully stick to the trend in the future.
This year’s menu included the now classic (and classically excellent) salmon
soup alongside what was described as a Finnish apple-oat-dessert, a culinary
phenomenon which met with mixed reviews- I personally loved it and would
recommend it to anyone, but then again, I am a liquorice fiend, so my tastes
might not be the best indicator of how palatable Finnish food is to the wider
public.
Given the previous incidences of what Finns would call insufferably hot
weather, lemonade was also on offer, alongside karelian piirakka and coffee
from fekete. The latter two are of course welcome irrespective of weather.
It’s also noteworthy that, unlike many undertakings happening in the wild
East, the organizers of the event actually strive to improve every year: as the
number of people in attendance grows exponentially, this year the payment was
made separately at two counters, and you only needed to hand over your coupons
once you got in the food queue- which was nevertheless longish, but absolutely
bearable.
Other snippets of entertainment included a DJ, chalk drawing, treasure
fishing and mölkky (one of those throwing stuff at stuff games for which the
Finns quite naturally use small logs)- of these activities we cannot say much,
however, because they were either age inappropriate or deemed to be too tiring
after a serving of soup and dessert. I was however on the verge of buying an
Angry Birds booklet, but I decided that collecting Panini stickers has
exhausted my infantile quota for some time to come.
