It’s late. Hardly anyone on the street. And it’s fucking cold out, so we’re walking extra fast, heads down. We’re talking the way we always talk. Meaning, I’m doing most of the talking because I’m eloquent that way. “Here’s a perfect idea. Where can tourists go to get real authentic Magyar?” This is what I ask Csaba, my best Hungarian friend since we were ten. Csaba only wipes his nose with the sleeve of his coat, so I keep going. “In the summer, Budapest is crawling with tourists, right? Thousands, maybe a million even. And what do they see? Just the usual turista shit—Vaci Utca, the market, Castle Hegy, whatever. Churches. Maybe they buy a painting of the Duna. Maybe they eat cake in a superior Budapest café. But they don’t see the real Budapest because what they see is fake. They get nothing truly Hungarian. No authentic Magyar.” “Tourists don’t get authentic nothing,”
