Kocsis Irma: A tour of our Locals. (A very quick one) - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1993)
1 have been wandering around Budapest for about twenty years now, and always with a camera over my shoulder. The strap has worn a patch on the shoulder of every one of the second-hand corduroy jackets I’ve ever owned. I wrote a book about my wanderings— worked on it for thirteen years. 1 called it The Holiday. I have written things since then, but when the Szépirodalmi Publishing House collapsed two of my manuscripts were buried under the rubble. One of them was a six-hundred pages mammoth of a manuscript entitled A Quick One (A tour of our locals). 1 went to a lot of trouble over it but my companions, preferring to continue drinking unperturbed, left me high and dry. There are a lot of pubs in Budapest. In the meanwhile, A Quick One blurred into a mournful memory. The regime gave up, the Chinese came, and so did Big Mac. Someone heard about my book. And volunteered to publish it, provided it was cut down to forty pages. After such an introduction, 1 hasten to add that A Very Quick One is in no way a doleful dirge. True, it has absolutely nothing to do with A Quick One, which is crammed with fishmongers, boozy butchers, bashful chimney-sweeps, the story of the man with the stitched- up ear and the crossword-addict from the Partizán who had three pairs of glasses. The shorter version is no more than a handy list: incomplete but practical, for it will introduce you to a lot of places worth visiting. But you had better hurry, because we live in a fast changing world! Good hunting, then, and Cheers! Irma Kocsis author and a table wine from Izsák (t = This establishment has changed hands, or no longer exists) 5
