There was a place in the centre of the town called ’Ice Cream and More’. Whenever we had a chore in the centre like buying a textbook or sheet music for our studies we popped in there. There were fantastic cakes always freshly made like the famous ’kremes’ that was a cake consisiting of two crispy layers of pastry, and there was vanilla flavoured pudding in between. The surface was sprinkled with powdery sugar. There was a similar one where the creme was of strawberry flavour. The scent of the place was just great, unique.
Among the guests there were women from the country wearing pristinely clean folklorique costumes and the skirts were multiple making a very special appearance.
One of these women ordered the strawberry flavoured ’kremes’.
This obviously was the time of her life, a very special day.
For us teenagers, fans of the Beatles, they were rather special. We couldn’t keep our eyes off them, they were so weird.
One such woman got hold of the tiny fork and pushed it on the sugary crispy surface of the ’kremes’. She just pushed and pushed but the crispy sugary covered roof of the cake just didn’t give in. The plate tilted in the end and fell to the ground and smashed. On the way though the pudding splashed on the pristine clean dress.
The eyes of the poor woman filled with tears. This special day had a very sad ending. She was stunned, couldn’t move.
A cleaner hurried to clean the mess up.
I read the thoughts of the poor woman: why did I have to come here? What can Budapest give me at all?
I was the younger son of my parents. At the time we had been allowed to go to Western Europe my elder brother was already 16 and was in the age range when military duties kept him at home.
So I was the one able to accompany my parents to their Western European tours. We went to the lake of Garda on one occassion.
We could not afford to rent hotel rooms and so we went camping. I had been taught to swim by my grandfather and was rather good at it.
One day I went for a walk while my mother whom I called Lilly prepared lunch on a gas stove. At one point instead of walking back I decided to swim accross the bay. At the time I was in the middle of the bay I saw my father looking at me in a petrified way. He was a dodgy swimmer and probably didn’t have the guts to swim so far into the bay.
I was not able to grasp his fear though and swam to the shore in a happy mood.
It took hours till my parents were able to get over this fearful experience. We had our lunch in silence.
