It had never occurred to me before. As a child, my parents and English teachers would always stress the importance of learning the Shakespeare language saying it would “open all the doors to you”. Not the ones in Budapest, though. It was in my first day in the city that I actually learned the meaning of being a foreigner.

Not that I haven’t travelled around or ever felt misplaced. Actually the ladder has been my mood for a very long time, specially since I read the distressing novel by Albert Camus, L’Étranger. But I had never before felt so strange to a place, to a language, to a culture.

It all began when we stepped out the bus at night. Buszmegálló, said the first sign we saw. It might have meant something related to bus but I wasn’t really sure. The only open store as the station showed an even stranger sign: sonkás-sajtos szendvicset, 3,000 HUF. I couldn’t relate it to any word or sound I had ever listened to before. Actually I couldn’t even think on how to pronounce that. Hadn’t people in this place learned that vowels and consonants must work together to produce sound? No, surely they hadn’t. Looking at the sign again carefully, I wouldn’t know what they were selling but it definitely seemed to expensive for such a modest shop. Three thousand something is a lot of anything.

• 

Pest would be the side of the city we would call home for those days. Another bus to get there. A squared, simple bus arrived at a stop marked by another sign and nothing else. We jumped in and heard it for the first sound. The sound of Hungarian. They might not have many vowels but they could definitely pronounce everything – and beautifully. The Hungarians had nothing to do with Brazilians or English people. They were all caucasian, with somehow similar traces. They were actually prettier than my prejudiced mind had picture. In the following day, I would find out that it all was.

We woke up to a foggy, slightly snowy Budapest. Our cellphones showed -1 degree. We walked through the streets and followed google signs down the tram station. It would have been impossible to follow anything else. We stepped in the old beautifully modest tram and could not have been ready to what we saw when it emerged from the underground. The city was breath-taking. To the left, the fog revealed small traces of Buda, its immaculately preserved historic buildings margining the calm and blueish Danube River that stood between us. Bridges, small boats and hills topped with a slight snowy coating completed the scenary, where one could easily believe to have been transported to a snow globe.

In the right margin, where our tram was slowing riding, we could see some parks, side by side with imposing grey buildings, in a style that mixed European big cities architecture and saracenic features. The city had absolutely taken me. As we walked during the whole day, I would fall in love with the buildings, the complex history emerging from places and the colorful secrets behind the streets.

But the greatest Budapest surprises came at night. A pub constructed in ruins in the old Jewish neighborhood or a traditional restaurant serving Hungarian goulash while a jazz band plays Bossa Nova? Yes, you could find that. The city seemed to hide in every corner a special experience one had never heard of before – specially not in Hungarian.

After all, it wasn’t so bad to feel as a foreigner. In a few days the foggy, old built street start to embrace you whenever you let yourself immerse in the city. It’s a two way relationship: allow yourself to get lost in the many similar utcas and they will surprise you with squares, corners, buildings and marvelous smells of pastries and spices. Until it is finally time to go, as I did. Apart from my backpack and thousands of warm clothes, I left that yellowish city with something else. I left with fairytale sights in my mind, tiny snow drops in my coat and the warm taste of paprika in my heart. Szeretettel – with love. Much love for you, Budapest.