In just a few short days, I leave for Budapest, Hungary to begin a semester’s worth of study and travel. With my month-and-a-half-long vacation coming to a merciful end (I say “merciful” because I contracted cabin fever about, I don’t know, 12 days in), I thought I’d reflect on what I’ve done to prepare for my journey. Mostly, I didn’t do anything. I would – and I’m writing with the benefit of hindsight here – advise against that. Packing, scheduling and re-scheduling flights, and, oh, making sure it’s legal for you to enter your desired destination aren’t things best left to the days leading up to departure. Just ask my mother. But because you, reader, probably don’t want to hear about such captivating pre-departure adventures as waiting in line for a visa, I figured I would talk about what I was doing instead of gearing up for Budapest: reading up on the place. Hear me out. I tried my very best to waste away the extended break, but a few paperbacks disrupted those plans. So, without further ado, my Budapest reading list:
Ballad of the Whiskey Robber by Julian Rubinstein
Julian Rubinstein’s book may read like a thriller, but Ballad of the Whiskey Robber tells a tale so improbable that it couldn’t have been made up. Rubinstein relates the saga of Attila Ambrus, a charismatic Transylvanian-born athlete-turned-smuggler-turned-gravedigger-turned-robber whose high-profile, alcohol-soaked bank jobs captured public imagination in post-communist Budapest. From 1993 to 1999, Ambrus pulled off 27 increasingly audacious yet mostly nonviolent heists, becoming a folk hero in the process. Ambrus is probably the most endearingly insane person I’ve never met (“insane” because, among other things, he spiced up his robberies by presenting female bank tellers with flowers), and his stranger-than-fiction exploits, coupled with Rubinstein’s playful prose, make for great entertainment. In all, Ballad of the Whiskey Robber likens Budapest in the 1990s to the Wild West – a city equal parts fun and off-kilter, populated by the most colorful of characters.
Prague by Arthur Phillips
If Ballad of the Whiskey Robber showcases the manic side of Budapest in the 1990s, Arthur Phillips’ Prague, also set in the heady years immediately following communism’s collapse, is an ode to the city’s more depressive qualities. Budapest was once hailed as “Paris of the East,” but as the North American expatriates who populate the city in this novel come to discover, the 1990s do not make for another belle époque. As they slog through their own angst, Phillips’ characters begin to suspect that the good life is being had in nearby Prague, hence the book’s tongue-in-cheek title. If this all sounds kind of tragicomic, that’s because it is. But Prague is more an indictment of expats and their worldly pretensions than it is of Budapest. The portrait Phillips paints of the city is actually quite tender – it’s just also painfully aware of the stultifying effect the twentieth century has had on Hungary’s capital.
The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer
The Invisible Bridge takes us away from the 1990s to the 1930s and ‘40s, which were not great decades for Hungary or for novelist Julie Orringer’s protagonist, Hungarian-Jewish student Andras Levi. The first half of the book is set in Paris, where Andras, an aspiring architect, begins to feel the winds of genocide and war. He is eventually called back to Budapest and conscripted into the national army, which is inconveniently in cahoots with Nazi Germany. It suffices to say that things start to go badly for Levi, his family, and his country. Orringer is an affecting and earnest writer, but The Invisible Bridge is looooong, such that it become hard to engage with the constant tension that stalks the novel. Still, it’s a worthwhile read, if only for its deep portrayal of this traumatic episode of Hungarian and Jewish history.
I’d recommend Ballad of the Whiskey Robber to anyone, Prague to anyone who wants to get sad, and The Invisible Bridge to anyone who wants to get sad and has a lot of patience. Next up for me is Under the Frog by Tibor Fischer, which, from what I’ve gathered, is about Hungarian basketball players who ride Budapest’s public transit in the nude. I’m looking forward to it, as well as the city it’s set in.
