i asked catherine about whether she'd been to hungary on one of her trips
over that way to see her boyfriend. yasuyuki was posted to bulgaria ona
type of nip equivalent of the peace corps. they met ironically becasue he
wanted to improve his english before going, and a mutual friend put him in
contact with her...then he left for three years. at first it was two, but
he liked it so much, he stayed another year.
yes , she said the first time i went i only stayed in bulgaria, but the
second time, we went through rumania and up to budapest and stayed there a
week then we went up to estragon (or something). after that we took a
ferry up the river to vienna.
so what ws it like, is it really so primitive over there, like do they
have cars and things? oh yeah, she said. in bulgaria though they make
sure they aare dirty, they never wash them, stops them from getting
stolen, or at least that's what i was told. and thigs improved as we went
further away from bulgaria - i mean, in bulgaria there were only two types
of cheese - the shop had cheese or it didn't. in roumania, there were
shops with lots of choice, and then in hungary, wow, delicatessens with
heaps of the most delicious wonderful foods. Wow, yes, I really liked
Budapest, she added without prompting.
iasked her whether it was very modern, and she says yes, it was a lot like
vienna to her, both had atmosphere of a type that made her feel at ease
and excited. how about the country, i asked, did you go there.
well estragon was in a small village, but the monastery is so big and
wonderful that the place is more or less set up for tourists...but it was
pretty nice. i wanted to stay there much longer.
did you go to yugoslavia at all?
no, i wanted to, but yasu's passport was a special diplomatic type thing.
he wasn't allowed to go into certain territories or it would become
invalid.
actually, she says after a bit, hungary reminded me of japan in some ways,
the contrast, you know, like it's all twentieth century, but then you get
these women and guys in monpe(traditional style trousers here) and see
people planting rice by hand and those drying ricks and the thatched roofs
up north, you know, the old sorta clashes with the new...
yeah, it always had this air of brazil about it.
huh? oh, the movie, yeah.
L.
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