(Pictures by Sr. Kilgore, text by both of us.)
(EB: On Friday the 13th we took a bus from Belgrade to Budapest, which was where we crossed back into the EU. The Hungarian border police are a curious lot.
They made a family (of color, with Mohamed on a sign on their dashboard) totally empty their car, down to unpacking grocery bags and unrolling bedding.
We walked through customs (without luggage) and waited. I watched one of the customs guards go for my bag. He seemed disappointed the silver metallic bag was coffee, and the tradition is that the bus driver has to repack passenger luggage, which ours did.)
Once in Budapest, we connected with our friend Maggie Hirsch. The next morning we headed out to the museum of Edgar Vasarely. He was born in Pest, HU but lived/worked in Franc as an adult. Utopian visions of color humanizing the built environment informed his work.
(EB: Also on Maggie’s suggestion we went to the Victor Vasarely Museum. Epic. I had seem some of his stuff back in the olden days, when OpArt was a thing, and was not particularly moved. Seeing the range of his actual work was something else: great commercial illustration as he was beginning his career. He took the graphics element and a kind of 
mathematical patterning (permutations and asymmetry) along with inspired color theory to make stunning paintings, that got bigger over time. Anybody know who else was painting with acrylic paint in the early 1950s?
Vasarely also patented some of what he was doing with plastic, partly a concept and partly a material. After touring his museum we all called it a day on any kind of museum.)
In Budapest I’m reminded of Hungary’s missing empire- parted out after WWI. 
Budapest built the world’s first subway and first electric railroad.
(EB: Since Maggie is a public transport devotee, we rode the rails and electric lines, including the oldest underground train in Europe, maintained and running beautifully.)
Budapest’s major public market was rebuilt in 1991.
Many sausages and other goods are inside.
We were sad to see that the basement floor that was a fish market in 2014 now houses Aldi- a European supermarket chain.
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Maggie’s friends Robi and Andi invited us to be flies on the wall at a Budapest Bar performance out in the country.
Budapest Bar is a musical collaboration organized by Robi and Andi. They perform music in a chanson style with a changing cast of about 12 singers, each of whom have won fame in Hungary’s rock scene.
Robi, on violin and guitar, leads the instrumental back up with a band of 4 other virtuoso Romani musicians on drums, bass, accordion, keyboards and timbale.
The show was in a tent on a cold night but the village crowd was captivated.
(EB: Fortune smiled upon us in Budapest, because we got to see a Budapest Bar concert. (Friends of Maggie’s. A band with GREAT Roma musicians (drums, accordion, violin, guitar, cimballi at least) who are joined by various pop/rock (star) musicians and play in a kind of cabaret form.
Robi, the violinist and band organizer, drove the three of us south of Budapest, to the town of Rácalás, where it was Advent holiday night. In a big semi-heated canvas tent, pretty much the whole town turned out to bob-along (with some singing along). Thank you Budapest Bar.)
In the days we had left, we wandered through town enjoying architecture, 
people watching and
sampling delicious Marzipan.
(EB: Not enough time to walk all the city’s bridges, but we did at least stroll along the Danube. Sometimes fog, sometimes sunlight, sometimes city lights in the dark.
A memorial on the banks of the river: bronze shoes, maybe forty pairs, facing the river. Commemorating (documenting? blocking forgetting?) the Jews ho were lined up here, shot en mass, and dumped into the Danube. Right across from the beautiful churches, right in front of the regal Austrio-Hungarian apartment buildings; a block or two from Parliament.)
In the prior three weeks each of us had caught colds with me being the last in line. We sought relief and delight in two afternoons at Budapest’s thermal baths-
one at the Gelmont Hotelvand the other at The Szecheyi Furdo.
Many people bobbing around in steamy pools.
(EB: We wrapped up this visit with our second bath (caught Kiraly early on). Szecheyi Furdo, the epic BATH. Cold enough the outdoor pools were steaming. Something like six or seven mineral baths, of which we took in maybe three, and Doug ventured into a steam bath to ditch the last of his cold.)