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

Egri Gödör Hole of Eger

XI. Villányi út 4

A tough cellar pub on Villányi út where bodybuilders test their strength, brows streaming, veins bulging, muscled forearms gleaming, at tiny, wobbly tables. We try to hold the table still. They do not seem grateful. Along this part of Villányi út people don’t really go any place else. If someone walks this way the odds are that he is in some way associated with the Gödör.

Aranyhal Kisvendéglő Goldfish Restaurant

XI. Kopaszi gát

If you walk along Hengermalom utca, you come to the ship cemetery of Lágymányos. Rusty barges, the half- submerged Szundi, a streak of white oil paint above the water-line of a rusty ship, and white letters:

CSILLA, MI A PÁLYA?

(WHAT’S THE SCORE, CSILLA?)

Circling the creek you reach the Kopaszi dike. This is a narrow strip of land, with the Aranyhal approximately at the centre. From the garden you can walk down to the riverside. There are galvanized iron tables, a little house built of bricks, and SZENT JÜPÁT inscribed on the tables, for what reason I haven’t yet been able to discover. A spine-chilling shriek sounds from behind me. 1 turn. The Holy Family is approaching on donkey- back. I shake my head, but the apparition has not disappeared. There is a man in front, a woman behind him, on a donkey’s back. Now only the donkey’s tail can be seen, swishing to and fro. And then a second donkey appears. A reserve Holy Family? I drink my beer. It turns out that I was not hallucinating, Barna Mihók keeps two donkeys, Balthasar and Sarah, in a gutted building nearby. Recently someone told me that Sarah had foaled. So I went foal-visiting. 1 found him very gentle, his name is Nózi. Someone else told me that the Kopaszi dike was going to be razed to the ground, Aranyhal Restaurant and all, because of the World Exhibition.

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