Kocsis Irma: A tour of our Locals. (A very quick one) - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1993)

of old inscriptions and plaques have accumulated over the years. Coffee is still served in the old Durit glassware of the Coca-Cola bottle design that my mother used when 1 was a child-and out of which I still prefer to drink my coffee.

In keeping with the style, turquoise, mauve and salmon pink aluminium spoons come with the glasses. I won’t divulge any more details, it is a pub that simply must be seen with your own eyes. Walking from Moszkva tér towards Széna tér, it is on the first corner.

Dékán utcai 272-es Number 272 in Dékán Street

II. Dékán utca 3

A shabby wine-cellar with a wine-barrel entrance in the short narrow street beside Moszkva tér, right in front of the bus stop. It is always teeming with people, the kind of place where you drop in for a drink, not the kind where you can sit around nursing a pint.

Retek utcai Tabdi Tabdi of Retek utca

II. Retek utca 36

A fit of nonchalance once caused an old man to grind out his cigarette stub against Ilona Biro’s buxom plastic charms, but the result mars the overall effect on the embossment only slightly. So it still retains its place of honour. My first encounter with this type of plastic bas- relief was a map of the moon with the Ocean of Tranquillity on its surface. In the back, behind the counter of the “Retek cellar" there are old tobacco-yellow posters of bull-fights with the names of both matadors and bulls. If you see nothing but blackness when you look behind the counter to your right, you can go in, switch on the single weak light-bulb, muse over life and shoot yourself in the head.

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