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Postcard from Budapest

by Paul Coore

Of course Budapest is a great looking city – there is no getting away from the fact that some of the architecture is stunning and that it can be an easy place to live and work in. When I first came here five months ago Romanian friends would ask, ‘Is it better than Bucharest?’ ‘What are the people like?’ and say things like, ‘Hungary is not a Latin country and we are much friendlier people, aren't we?’
What are the people really like? ‘The Hungarians I have got to know through work are similar to the Romanians I got to know – they are young, intelligent, and ambitious and like to have a good time – but probably do not have as many all night parties as my Romanian friends! Maybe it is the case that they do not know me well enough yet to invite me along. Or it could be my non-existent Hungarian language skills which put them off!

It is the first time I have lived in a country where I cannot count to ten or tell the days of the week in the local language. Friends from Bucharest laugh when they hear the way I say ‘Da’ all the time instead of ‘Igen’ (eng. yes). I think Hungarians are genuinely proud of how difficult the language is – and how different it is from those of neighbouring countries. I have heard that it is somehow similar to Finnish – however the women who runs a coffee shop near our office is married to a Finnish guy – and explained that her husband thinks that, but for the similar grammar, the languages are poles apart.
Whatever its origins, my natural lack of language skills and laziness have prevented me from learning little more than ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’. This means of course that I am unable to arrange seemingly simple things like getting the phone connected or changing the cable package I inherited from the previous tenant.

On Hungarian television almost all programmes are dubbed into Magyar and it is amusing to watch and listen to such shows as Friends, Sex and The City and reruns of Columbo and E.R. for a few minutes at a time. The only programmes I have sat through in their entirety are episodes of the American version of Queer as Folk as they are at least good to look at. The English channels I get are CNN and Eurosport and I think sometimes they would both be better listening too in Magyar!

My cable package also has a porn channel – which magically replaces an existing channel at 11 each evening. As a gay man I have to be honest and say I find heterosexual porn obviously has a certain appeal as there are more often than not men involved. Having taken the opportunity to view the content I am surprised at two things – that the content does not include people using condoms during the encounters that take place. Why? Because I understand that safe sex is now obligatory in legal gay porn – and see a double standard here.

The second thing that surprised me is that the majority of the scenes include anal sex between at least one man and one woman. I would like my male heterosexual friends to explain to me why there is such a big market for this stuff. I gather this is the same sort of pornography that is shown in hotels across Europe to keep bored businessmen and women amused, which make me feel sorry for those people whose partners travel a lot on business.
Will I change the cable package? Of course, once I learn the language.