Taken for a musical ride

Conrad Walters and his money are easily parted in Budapest.

Five shot glasses are raised in my honour, each filled with a crimson liquid that looks suspiciously like blood. I shift my gaze from the boisterous quintet of gypsy musicians to check my arteries for punctures, but the only thing that has been drained is my wallet. Again.

After four days in Hungary, I should have been used to this by now. I had been in Budapest only a matter of seconds – my feet had barely stepped from the train that brought me from Vienna – before falling for my first con.

I was lugging so many bags I might as well have worn a badge on my lapel like a weight-loss salesman: “Ask me about losing money.”

A taxi driver with a Merv Hughes moustache appeared from nowhere. My grammar-proof German was useless here, as was my wife’s French, but this kind fellow offered to rescue us

from the winter night and deliver us to warmth – in English, no less. “Only 3000 forints.”

About $20 seemed a lot to travel barely 15 blocks, but the driver assured me that Franz Liszt Terrace – and how fortunate we were to have accommodation in such a central location – was surrounded by one-way streets and dead ends.

Our guidebook virtually forbade us from getting a taxi inside the train station, but my wife had “a good feeling”. And how can intuition fail you in a country you’ve never before visited, where the language contains accent marks you can’t even describe and the ideal set of crockery has no two plates that match? Besides, an English-speaking woman on the train had estimated the fare: “You can expect to pay about 2500 forints.”

I bargained with the driver and congratulated myself when we settled on the cited price. Or rather the rate I’d been told to “expect”. Only later did I learn the correct fare, as shown on the meter of a licensed taxi, was 850 forints.

No matter. We were safely inside an apartment lent to us by Australian friends and, finally, we were warm. The next day, we ventured from our Pest bolthole to the frozen heights of Castle Hill in Buda, where snow dusted the fanciful turrets of Fishermen’s Bastion and the gothic spires of Matthias Church reflected in the narcissistic mirrors of a controversial Hilton Hotel.

I managed two days without being (knowingly) taken, even venturing beyond the city limits to Szentendre, known for its colony of artists and a Serbian church, although I found another site irresistibly tucked along the cobblestoned streets: the Marzipan Museum.

The building is devoted less to the science than to the art of coloured candy. The second storey comprises half dozen rooms packed with glass cabinets displaying the recipes for the artworks. One giant piece required 500 eggs. On a wall of portraits is a young Princess Diana in edible pinks surrounded by a delicious-looking frame.

Elsewhere, every Disney character has been converted into a still life and an entire cactus garden stands in permanent bloom.

The masterpiece, though, is a two-metre, 80-kilogram Michael Jackson made of chocolate – white chocolate, no less – and with a nose that looks better than the snout constructed by California’s priciest surgeons. But if there was any glee in knowing Wacko Jacko had been conned by medical science, my own comeuppance wasn’t far behind.

It arrived inside the Opera House, where I went begging for tickets to the Budapest Philharmonic. Yes, I was in luck. The ticket office could offer me two seats, though only on the side. At 3300 forints each, the cost was a pittance by Australian standards, but significantly higher than expected.

With a German couple and a Japanese man, we had a gilded box almost directly over the stage. And the experience was exquisite – not only was the sound superior, but also the concert was a visual masterpiece – I was humbled to be allowed such prized seats.

When the concert ended, we joined the synchronised applause – slow at first, then accelerating toward rapture – before we glided down the grand staircase like joyous extras from Russian Ark and set off into the night in search of food.

What we found in a back street was a seemingly nameless restaurant with only a wooden sign advertising “homecooked meals”. But it was our ears, not our stomachs, that propelled us toward a basement door.

I stooped and peered through a window to locate the source of frenetic gypsy music, and came eye to eye with the band leader. A cigarette dancing between his lips and his chin nestling against his violin, he nodded an irresistible invitation.

There was a table with two seats left. We sat down and absorbed what we’ve found. Could we be any luckier?

The light was dingy, the walls were exposed brick and the ceiling looked like the inside of a sewerage drain. But the music! Five suited men – three on violin, one on double bass and one on zither – were playing as if they would explode if the music wasn’t allowed to escape through their pores.

The band leader was lost in a blissful smile, and the only other people present were a group of students massed around the other tables. We ate, we drank, we listened until we were moulded into our seats. And only then did the band leader slide toward us.

“Where are you from? What can we play for you?”

“Play whatever you enjoy,” I defer.

They launched into a riotous tune, their leader hovering over our table, his eyes glazed in ecstasy. Then another song, mournful this time, and we realised he would not release us from his power until we offered some tangible thanks.

When the second song ended, I tried to slip a 1000-forint note into his pocket.

“No,” he protested, his hands raised like shields, as though I’d reduced his art into a mere commodity. He shrugged and searched for a way to help me through this awkward moment.

“You can buy us a drink instead.”

“Of course.” I quickly calculated what I’d just agreed to. Five beers was probably close to the 1000 forints. When their drinks arrived – the mysterious blood-coloured shots – I was relieved to have settled our debt and I returned the hearty toast they proposed. I did not fully understand their enthusiasm until I got the bill for 3000 forints.

Despite this magnificent swindle, I finished my beer in shame. For surely I owed much, much more.

Published in The Sydney Morning Herald, November 5, 2005.