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

Düna Poharazó Düna Püb

I. Fő utca 4

(Call it beer house, says Attila.)

DODI. White letters on a hand-cart. A lean, ageless man in the doorway between the Buda court of justice and the Ferenczy art circle. He looks at me, slowly reaches for the little hand-cart, pushes it through the doorway. 1 watch him from among the cacti and sanseverias placed on the window-sill of the Duna pub. Attila, Ernő, or Laci stands behind the bar counter. Gabika sits at a corner table. The old lady who sells the flowers by the ruins of the Lánchíd Presszó (Chain Bridge Espresso bar) drops in. Time and again, answering to an erratic rhythm, the atmosphere of the race-tracks of Europe takes over, possesses the place in the person of an individual in a vividly checked jacket and hat. I have never met anyone with more childlike eyes. These eyes are never still; as his gaze alights upon me he is already watching for something, awaiting voices, familiar voices from behind; he pivots and hugs the gray-haired, amiable drunkards. I turn and he is already far away, on the other side of the Tunnel. 1 follow him with my eyes as he moves off, a distant, colorful dot-to quote the poem: far off, the balloon-seller is a distant dot.

“Ilonka néni” (Vincellér Borozó)

“Aüntie Ilonka” (Vine-Dressers Tavern)

I. Fő utca 71

Opposite the Gestapo. When 1 was a child soldiers in arms paced from sentry-box to sentry-box. The “GYORSKOCSI C1TCA” Politicals. A massive woman of stone before the brick building. Auntie Ilonka?

“I lived in this street once”, smiles Elemér. “I had a small room here, self-contained, with all mod. cons. I was inside for a year.”

(Two of the pubs in Fő utca face the court of justice.)

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