A Saturday in the Market

“There is the first McDonalds built behind the Iron Curtain on the Pest side of the Danube. That Rick Steve’s knows his stuff.”  Ben said flipping through the guidebook Kara had thrown in the car for our Saturday excursion to the Ecseri Flea Market. 

“People would line up and wait...” He continued almost shaking his head, “for McDonalds.”

I thought of Vicky, from East Germany speaking to my class in Greene, New York in 2006 of her childhood during the Cold War. 

“We waited in line for oranges,” she said.  There were also waiting lists for the Trabant, the small car that gives such an air of quaintness driving down the streets of Budapest now. 

It is different here: the pulse, attitude, and energy.  Whether it is just me and my preconceived notions or something more tangible, I am unsure. But, I saw something today that I could at least put my finger on; resting within the glass cases and thrown on velvet lined trays in random booths, littered between silver plated cups and Romanian pin up girl playing cards there were busts of Lenin, Stalin, the hammer and sickle donning metals and officers caps, even Hitler recessed into metal, an iron cross, the swastika in gold and ribbon or buttoned onto a soldier’s knife.  My fingers traced the metal, picked one of them up even.  Stared at the old woman selling them.  

It has not been long. 

It has not been long enough.

Yet here I am, an American, living free in this territory

And that says something too.