Budapest in Snow
2/2/2010 3:48 AM
Written by Scott Savoie
A midwinter storm covered Budapest with snow over the weekend and it looked pretty good.
Until about noon on Saturday.
After that, the snow started to get shoveled away and covered with grit, making a muddy mess of everything. Snow piled up along the sides of the roads in filthy black berms. The snow melted into unfathomably deep puddles alongside the road. A poor way to determine the depth of one of these puddles, I discovered, would be to step into one.
Yes, sure, sometimes the depth might be just a few centimters, but other times the dirt slush could be maybe shin deep, let’s say. Deep enough to wet one’s pants legs and socks in freezing filthy water.
The buses are particulary bad this time of year, as homeless people tend to take up residence in them to avoid the weather, and all the szár and sár gets tracked into buses that only get cleaned once or twice a year at most.
No worries: Spring is just a month or two away.
In the meantime, Budapest in white looks like a whore in a tattered wedding dress that doesn’t fit properly.