I write this on the streets of budapest

The city is old. ancient beauty, where sculptures cement themselves onto crumbling walls patched back together like modern art. And there are art shops and books stacked in their hundreds. The trees blend into the cobbled streets as though they grew right from it, and people are alive. It feels like New York. The closest thing to it. Shops with violins and teacups and old poems sit quietly in time behind workers that carry crates to open buildings from vans parked in the street. Old couples hold hands. They actually hold hands. Perhaps the romance of the city has kept them connected all this time. Perhaps the old stone starting to fray that tower over streets filled with new life, serve as a reminder that we can never truly still time. A man is cleaning his taxi stacked next to cars that you only see in old cities. People scramble like ants, moving their bodies in between ringing traffic and vans and walking sticks and seats laid out across the streets. Shop doors remain open, a subconscious invite in, and arches lead to exposed brick with the sound of building work within. A motorbike splutters in the background as though the city connects through its chaos. all you need is to put all of the pieces together. 

 

I can hear the birds circling in the trees. It doesn’t happen so much like this in cities in England anymore. Steel and brick tower up into an alien metropolis that even birds may not reach. I live, I lived in a glass tower and it was beautiful, but and no animals can come up here. no birds can sing up here. no sound except the quiet life of us. the tv as it hums in someones room. human chatter.  In some ways, these buildings can still be beautiful. Especially when lit amongst the dark sky. They beam up into the unknown and hundreds of lives live within them. Each life within, making dinner, dancing to music, crying, loving, living, doing nothing at all. There is romance to be had here. But sometimes I look at them, I live in them, and I feel inhuman. Here, I can touch a crumbling brick building and my hands still understand that it is made from the earth. And I don’t want to hide behind fresh ignorant eyes looking upon an old city. But I look at the sun kissed books through old windows, I look at the builders with paint sprayed on them and the old couples out on a Tuesday morning and I understand again what it is to be human. To truly be human. To have life splurged out onto the streets, and not tucked away using outside eyes to peer in.  And I needed this. I didn’t know how much so I needed this again. 

 

And as I write this, an old man stands still like a statue alone, like many here seem to do, removing his coat to reveal a waistband and shirt as he bathes in a stream of light. I see people carry fruit in see through bags bunched together, ready to pass through ancient doors and sit in the homes of families. A girl walks with a boy and I can just make out a singular flower emerge from her bag, like a tiny daisy chain of love. As I get to my door, I catch a woman getting ready for the day in her white nightgown and a mirror raised to the sky from the arches of her window. She sees me and I don’t know if she smiles, but I look away. God the people, watching the people here. After watching our zombie like young as we stare at our phones and limp through the glass washed structures of our home, I needed to see buildings like this. I needed to see the history and the present. And I am aware I am romanticising, but for a bit, please, let me. I needed to see people like this once again. To feel like I’m twenty and to roam a city that feels human. To be alive in a city that feels alive. To touch a wall and understand that it was made straight from the earth. I know I am looking with fresh, unburdened eyes, but for one moment, I needed to once again.