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

Olga (Éva)

There is no café listed under the name of Olga in Budapest. So do not bother to look for it—of course it is quite possible that an establishment so named may be opened sometime, somewhere. But until then here is Olga, Queen of all the waitresses in Budapest. For the customer straying hither and thither among catering empires to be found at all the cardinal points, Olga is redemption itself. What carriage, what bearing! we are inspired to cry, but content ourselves with an appreciative click of the tongue instead. The way she pours orange juice into a glass on a warm night, leaning forward, indulging male customers. An inimitable, irreplaceable choreography in a world of limited, deficient gestures. Wherever Olga appeared in the course of her career she has always succeeded in throwing the males of the district into a fever. In smoky coffee-bars turned into space ships with all the slot-machines, among retired inside-rights, humouring East German tourists flourishing dinner vouchers, in the crossfire of dark glances in half-lit bars —Olga was always cheerful. She still is, flitting about in this place that reeks of oil, in front of the tarnished espresso machine — is cheerful for no special reason. Simply because the sun is shining, or perhaps because there is now a Hungarian edition of the fashion magazine Burda.

Let these pages serve as a message to posterity: there was once a waitress — at a time when cafés and coffee-houses were doomed and dying—who was an artist of movement, with the body of a lynx and an ever-ready smile, the good-humoured angel of boulevard coffee and unwatered booze.

41 ANDRÁSSY ÚT, VI.

OLGA, queen of waitresses

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