Szentendre?? "My goodness, where does one find that!?" I hear you screaming in a British accent at your computer screen. It's in the central European country of Hungary near the capital, Budapest. "Szentendre" is actually the Hungarian way of writing "Saint Andre", isn't that the craziest?
What's not crazy is how gorgeous this town is - it's like the village of my dreams come to life... and that's saying something since I dream about villages A LOT.
The narrow streets prove to be the perfect protection against an obese invasion from the west while the yellow walls are a deceptive faux-McDonalds trap. I constantly had the urge to go up to those windows which looks like drive-thru windows and ask for a McOz but that would have been stupid... they don't sell McOzs in Hungary... plus NO ONE orders the McOz even in Australia.
You can be weaving around narrow streets getting joyfully lost in Szentendre. The background track is the pleasant village clicking titter of hump-laiden women putting up washing and bare-footed children frollicking gayly. Here we find two village people in the main square, these aren't like the Village People we know for their famous hits. Instead, they're Hungarian Village People, known for slurred speech and seven toes on each hand.
Back to the narrow streets, some of them are tiny as proved by this portly Czech tourist's puzzle-piece perfection size slotting so neatly in this entrance.
Good thing he only had one serve of vepřová pečeně s knedlíky a se zelím this morning, am I right?
These villages love their fountains everywhere.
though this one was missing something...
My heart bleeds for you
The only water you give now
are tears
salty ones
of my salty SOUL
forbidden?
The Hungarian language is in a language family all on its own. Its closest relative is Finnish... though they're still not that similar. It's a crazy difficult language to know but if you're fluent, then you're legally allowed to make "hungry Hungarian" jokes - so it's worth it.
So either this says "Watch Out For The Dog" or the Hungarian elections are in full swing, no idea. While meandering around the village, some well-fed Szentendre woman asked if I had seen her lost dog. It was the perfect quaint village moment.
TRUTH: One Hungarian village tradition is that on the wedding night, the girl - who's a virgin - will bleed after sex. Then the man takes the soiled bedsheet and parades the streets waving it around to show everyone while the bystanders, young and old, gleam and applaud the genital emission.
Bloody good tradition? Bloody bad tradition? Add a comment..
Labels: hungary, paris, soiled bedsheet, sydney, sydneyspy, szentendre, travel