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The
Team: |
After breakfast I walked down to a
little mall with Rich and Don. We are staying in a fairly rich part of town. The mall was
only a year old and very nice. I bought a Musicus CD featuring Bartok recordings of
folksongs. We also talked to the salesgirl about the bombings. She said if it entered
Hungary she would probably go to Switzerland or New York where she had been before. We
dropped some photos at the one hour developer and picked them up after we wondered around
for awhile. Szidi rode a bus to the mall then called a cab to pick us up. We arrived at
Matav about noon. After the session Szidi took us downtown to the main shopping square. We took a taxi. Szidi had earlier recommended a recording of the Bartok quartets by the Takacs quartet. We found a record store that had it in stock. (I am listening to it right now.) Don and I wanted to have an espresso sitting out by the street amongst all of the people walking around. So we did. Szidi joined us while Rich shopped a little. After that we headed for the restaurant. We took a subway. Very interesting. My first time on a subway. And in Budapest of all places. The restaurant featured a live gypsy band that had been playing there for years David informed us. It was very interesting playing. Lots of improvisation. Almost sounded like a Dixieland band with everyone playing interesting lines around a general tune and chord structure. |
Very loose sound, but still in time. Instrumentation was 3 violins, cymbalon, clarinet,
bass, and a singer got up once in awhile. A lot of the vocal tunes started out slow and
gradually, sectionally, accelerated to a big climax. They also did show tunes, etc. For
dinner I had chicken with fruits and potatoes, and red wine of course. Very tasty!
After dinner we took another subway to David’s
car. We drove over to David’s moms place to pick up our stuff. I went with Szidi up
to his mom’s apartment. The apartment was very small and had a pungent food odor . I
met David’s father too. Kativin gave me a couple of cassettes with recordings of her
performance art. I have decided to put these on a CD as a gift for her. We then dropped
Szidi off and went back to our apartment. David sure is treating us well with fine
restaurants and transportation. The end of another extraordinary day in Budapest.
