Hungary: A difficult start.

Typical of a short city break, the moment our aircraft touched down we didn't want to waste a minute. From the airport to the hotel and out again the scene might have resembled a 'skip the exposition' film montage. After dropping our bags in our hotel room and deciding, very roughly, which clothes needed to be hung immediately and which ones could survive in various states of contrived neatness on the bed, we took our dehydrated heads and gassy-empty Easy-Jet bellies into the first city centre-bound tram we found. As this was eastern Europe the first one to arrive was a jerk-rolling wreck of a thing with an ushanka wearing, ear-muffled, pinch-skinned driver who was in the process of pulling a freight of sallow-faced, muffled up pensioners. We bundled on hopefully, two funny foreigners making haste towards the not so famous Christmas Market in Budapest's Vorosmarty Square.

We were on the tram for next to no time -  finding out the hard way that the centre was actually walking distance, but, it was starting to rain; grey eastern European December rain with those gun barrel grey skies that fit so perfectly with the bleak backdrop of old soviet style buildings with their complement of minimalist windows and prison gate solid, 19th century doors. The tram ride, turned out to be a good call. 

At the allotted stop - with the flight, never mind the tram trip still thrumming in our ears, we took a a breathless, puddle spattered, coat huddled speed-march across the Chain bridge, completely forgetting to look at the statues of tongueless lions that lying in guard at either end, and fell blindly into the market square and the Christmas Market Hungary style. 

There wasn't much colour or a lot of festive jollity - just a few shacks with poorly constructed awnings spilling out lines of people getting wet, and if not fed, certainly fed up. It became apparent that they were waiting for free mulled wine to be served to them in traditional grubby white Styrofoam cups, something of a Christmas tradition in Hungary - a kind of nod to the feeding of the the poor and goodwill to all men.

The queues for the food weren't quite as long as the ones for the free wine  - though the the food queue customers looked distinctly in need of real food rather than experimental morsels and gruesome tidbits they were scrutinizing as they collected their fare. We, in our own, rather privileged way, so joined a small line of paying customers who for just a few Forints were being ladled hugely plopped-out gouts of steaming goulash into the inevitable Styrofoam trays - flat egg boxes without the compartments, or the eggs.    

With numbing fingers and damp collars we sat down at a moldy wooden table in the drizzle, trying to eat this peppery goulash, trying to keep our noses from running  and with salty steam and rain smarting eyes, surveyed silently from our dank vantage point what appeared to be a disappointingly drear Christmas market. 

I looked harder at the people in the food queues and concluded that they looked... or at least appeared to look, very Hungarian. At some point I'd noticed an agitated man in one of the free lines, even more poorly dressed than everyone else. He had lank, unwashed looking hair a Catweazel style beard and a coat that was gave the impression that its life as a comforter to a human being was nearing its end.   He appeared to be half in half out of the the queue, as if having difficulty with the concept of waiting his turn. His behaviour seemed fitful, challenging, unsettling to those around him.

Pretty soon there was one of those odd commotions where the normality of peacefulness and expectant behaviour appeared to be breaking down. As the shapes before us began to make sense I noticed that the man I'd seen earlier, for no seeming apparent reason, appeared to have started a fight with a another much older man. a proper fist fight - not a stand-off staring match and a few accusations that amount to nothing - but with blows exchanged straightaway without recourse to any of the usual preliminaries. Pretty soon others joined in - it was impossible to make sense of who was supporting whom - it was developing into a free for all - Styrofoam cups and plates were caught in the wind and blown around like stage rubble. One person ended up failing against an awning and collapsed the table from where the goulash was being dispensed - the ladle fell clanging to the ground before someone dived on it and proceeded to swirl it round like an Olympic hammer making everyone within ten meters duck for cover.  
     
We'd only just arrived in Hungary, and knew next to nothing about the country - its traditions, (this was all very pre-wiki travel and it's invaluable stay safe paragraph which I always go straight to these days)  - other than what we had gleaned from the tatty, in-flight brochures and somehow felt that whatever was going on here was none our business. This wasn't the start of the mini break we had been hoping for. Only hours before we had passed through the gates at Ferihegy Airport with our untidy hand cargo of bags and coats full of that joyous traveller expectation; suddenly we were somewhere bearing witness to something that made us feel that staying home would almost certainly be on the agenda for the following Christmas.

We continued sitting uneasily in our chairs trying to look, and yet not look - silently trying to wish the whole episode away. Who could possible know where it would all end.  Would we be dragged unwillingly into the dispute and end up battered and robbed . Or would we find ourselves hauled into the state version of events - whisked away to make statements, then casually questioned about our reason for being in the country - then it all going wrong somehow and finding ourselves manhandled into some God forsaken cold war style holding area - like something out of the film 'Midnight Express'. We had only just arrived. The hardest thing I'd encountered in the last hour was the Telegraph crossword on the flight over, I didn't expect to feel as if I'd just parachuted into the middle of some kind of turf war with the Christmas Market in Vorosmarty Square apparently the chosen venue. Not great timing. 

And then it ended. As suddenly as it had begun things went back to normal, the combatants melting into the crowds. The Christmas cheery music volume was pumped from tinny and sporadic to full volume jollity, and the pigeons, like feathered stewards, descended to peck up all the wasted goulash.  Almost on cue the clouds broke and the sun started to shine - and in the distance the Danube started to shimmer like crystal blue. If only we hadn't rushed to get here quite so soon. How different my initial thoughts would be.  How different an account on trip adviser might look.