alisonboston.com

Well I did it. I went running today through the slums of the 8th district and along the litter ridden Duna to the decadent Palace of Arts…and back. I plugged my nose, and closed my eyes and turned away from the lusty stares as I bounced along.

On the plus side, I ran through, or past, no less than 7 construction zones, and the same number of new houses, and the same number of empty pits - so things are changing. There’s even a nice stretch of freshly laid cobblestone.

The most disturbing site was the gypsy family: a couple, either drunk or retarded - not sure which, perhaps both (and that is the saddest thing) the woman stopped on the side of street clutching her exposed, and bloated, stretch-marked belly moaning; the man holding her hand, his face wracked with anguish, begging her to keep moving. Coming behind, a healthy woman with a child, yelling ‘gyere, gyere’ (the Hungarian equivalent of the English ‘move it, move it’). As I ran past, the couple started to move, the woman with the exposed belly crying and moaning. I closed my ears and ran all the way home to the safety of my crystal-chandeliered flat on the street that used to be a red light district, on the edge of Budapest’s disappearing inner-city slum, on the border of the 8th district…and the moral of this story is, if you ever make a trip to Budapest, don’t rent a flat in the 8th district however sweet and charming the foreign landlord is unless you really want total immersion - which is what I wanted to experience, which is why I stayed for one year in this flat, on this street, with the gypsy family in the corner house…

Later: In response to that post, originally written as an email to a Hunagrian-American friend who lives here, who has gone into seclusion out of a combination of disgust with, and despair about his fellow countrymen, he wrote:

gyere

is spelled correctly…

ok… what is the story with the gypsies?
are they bothering you in any ways?
they are the musical souls of HU
they are the BLACKS of this place
and you have been fortunate
to be living in the HARLEM of Budapest…
a city often coined as Jewdapest

toodooloo

The story with the gypsy family is that last June they played the same disco song, non-stop for a week, at a mind-numbing volume. I felt assaulted.

They also stood under my bedroom window at 12:30 at night. The conversation went something like this:

(5 year old boy, at the top of his lungs): Apu, apu (Daddy, Daddy)
For anout 10 minutes….this as Daddy left to go God only knows where.

When I moved into this district - after 3 years of living 2 streets below the CASTLE, with a sunset view of the Buda Hills - people warned me about the gypsies. The owner even told me there is a gypsy family in the house on the corner.

I figured seeing as they were in the house on the corner, two houses away (and not over top of me - as they were in the first flat I lived in for two months - where the truant kids ran all day over my head - and the father held karate classes on Sundays starting at 10:00 am and finishing at 6:00 ) they wouldn’t bother me. Besides, I LIKE gypsy musicians, so…I shook my head and moved in.

I didn’t know they’d be into disco music.

I feel I need qualify the preceeding post. It is intended as a picture of life in Budapest, during this time of change, and is no way intended to be racist. As far as gypsies in Budapest go, they are a special group of people. They bring a wealth of culture to the city, but due to their history, they also bring problems - as my Hungarian-American friend so aptly calls them ‘the blacks of Hungary’.

I am sure if you read more of my blog, you will read a balanced view.

It’s all relative, eh?
The Slums of Mumbai