Still on Our Honeymoon... Epilogue

After any experience of duration and interest, the mind seems to have this natural tendency to begin comparing one part to the other – beginning to end, before to after, best to worst. Taken to the extreme, this type of analysis can fragment a single experience into so many pieces that it may never be put back together again, but at the same time this discrimination of the mind is also what allows us to learn, to tell stories, and to play with our reality in a way that prevents us from becoming utterly powerless to the ever-changing world around us.

But this is beside the point.

(Or, at the very least, far too heavy for 9am on a Sunday morning.)

The point is that, almost a month after returning from Europe, whenever I think of our trip I can't help but still feel a special place for Budapest. Pressed to explain this, I find words elusive. It's not as beautiful as Prague, nor as sophisticated as Vienna, but there's something about it that still won't let go of my imagination.

Maybe it was our morning ritual of pointing and grunting at pastries at the neighborhood bakery:

Or perhaps the appreciation for the sensuality of garbanzo beans:

Maybe it was the city's quirky graffiti and street art, which sometimes seemed totally familiar:

And other times made no sense whatsoever:

Don't throw away babies?

The use of English was as concrete as it was creative:

And the city has an appreciation for pink pay phones like no other:

Going to the post office, for instance, becomes an adventure unto itself because even the simple act of pushing a button and taking a number in line takes on epic proportions:

Hmmm....

There are abstract sculptures throughout the city:

Understated memorials to the victims of the Revolution of 1956:

And echoes of communism still reverberating on the rails of the subway:

Where people quietly wait for the next stop as if it were 1977:

And do not eat hamburgers or smoke or snatch purses.

Mustaches, however, are a whole other story.

There is yarn bombing:

And padlock art:

That tells a special kind of history when subjected to closer examination:

Sometimes urinals have advertisements for baby chickens:

And even the airport conspired to frame things differently.

But most of all I remember that language, that beautiful impossible language:

That sounds like this, no matter what was actually said: