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

Verpeléti

Many decades ago a bistro-restaurant-café was built on Verpeléti út, close to the University of Technology and the Tobacco Trust. Between its mosaic-covered pillars there is an iridescent Casino espresso machine like the nose of a ’58 Buick. Before it, in a copper bowl with a scalloped rim that looks like elastic webbing gone soft are coffeespoons gone blue with oxidation and twisted out of shape, like jack-straws. The dog strolling in sniffs everyone in turn and scrounges a lump of sugar from the woman behind the percolator. A couple of UFOs have stuck to the ceiling: overhead lighting, Russian constructivist space-formation. The Pinball Champ is out of order for the moment, there is music in the evenings, you can dance on the imitation-tile lino. Stuck on the shop-window is a long-extinct type of beer-glass brimming with froth; inside, the cold liquid is served in tooth-mugs of the kind hotels provide you with, but to the solitary factory girl it tastes just fine, and that’s the main thing.

30/32 KARINTHY FRIGYES ÚT, XI.

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