Last Sunday was European Car-Free Day, in which several major boulevards in Budapest were closed to their normally hasty and impersonal types of traffic and opened instead to the slower, messier, and liberating foot traffic more favorable to civic interaction. (While street fairs and festivals are of course not unique to this city, my impression of life here is nevertheless shaped by the fairly frequent events like this one.)
We jostled through the crowds past blocks of booths for theater groups, environmental advocacy groups, art displays and stages. One stage had a cricket player batting bread rolls into the audience, which was showering them back at him en masse. Another stage too far to see had its audience laughing in sudden bursts.
Knowing little of the language written and spoken around you can lead to a state of bewildering magic, as when at one point we were followed by a group of meters(???). I later caught one of them captivated by a group of break-dancers that had drawn a crowd.
No comments:
Post a Comment