Bodor Ferenc: Coffee-Houses - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1992)

Béke (peace)

On the walls, old, faded posters urge the Vasas football team. A building on the corner of Béke tér and Lehel út bearing traces of neobaroque houses the Béke café. At ten o’clock in the morning a dense local trade swarms over the red chairs before the counter. Reference numbers —of appeals and provisions of law—fly about in the air. The town council is close by. On the counter, the customary, tarnished Casino espresso machine. An arched doorway leads into the back rooms—into a genuine, classical coffee-house interior with appropriate furnishings. Its authenticity is elusive—perhaps it is due to the hexagonal counter built around a pillar; perhaps the forlorn plants hung upon the walls are of some significance. The neon coffee-cup in the window and the new, socialist housing estate gleaming in through the glass pane behind which orders for cakes are booked, are also worth mentioning.

12 BÉKE TÉR, XIII.

BÉKE of Angyalföld, enciting you to order fancy cakes

4*

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