2 August 2009 – The beautiful and the shocking

Szilard and Sztella with little Bator and Congor put me on the Budapest bound train in Subotica. No need to hurry for Serbian trains. “Oh yes, it is the 1100 Ekspres” I was assured. Wrong question; you need to ask when it is due. Experienced travellers only started drifting into the station at 1130. We then lurched, after much coupling and decoupling of carriages and “dinging” of locomotive wheels, 50m over the notional border where we awaited the pleasure of polite customs police. Train travel in this part of Eastern Europe is slow and pastoral and rather companionable as our small compartment became an oft motionless window on the harvested fields and little salasi as we fanned ourselves and tried to prop the window open in a fierce afternoon heat.

Taking the train, or the bus, from Serbia to the West Country of England is really the only environmentally sound choice, that is if you insist on travelling at all. But you need time. It takes a day and a half involving 5 changes and 10 ticket checks, several new acquaintances and a feat of gymnastics if you happen to be on the top bunk. A couple of 4 hour waits in Budapest and Munchen allowed for hasty excursions into the centre like the other back-packers, but in my case unencumbered by unwieldy rucksacks. Travel light young travellers! Quite pleasing that railway stations are usually the last places to be modernised, unlike airports wrapped in air-conditioned anonymity. Keleti (East) in Budapest has a faded imperial beauty, water fountains from a pre-bottled-water era, prospecting taxi drivers, students doing vacation jobs with impeccable English, senior citizens playing chess, the strangeness of the Magyar language all around.

In early morning Munchen I found myself in the beautiful market square where the substantial tented fruit stalls were being set up with the care of art installations. Munchen memories of a tiny student garret high above the cobbled streets and the deep bells of the great Dom came crowding back amongst the early morning bustle. But what really struck me was the glamour and shine and the prices of the fruit stalls. My village market in Stara Moravica in Serbia's Vojvodina is full of mostly local fruit and vegetables. Magda, our neighbour, brings peppers and tomatoes at this time of year, and in the winter it will be zimnica or winter preserves of sour cabbage and paprika. Everything is fresh and unpolished and heaped up deliciousness. Munchen was a shock. After marvelling at the artistic splendour of it all, the carefully arranged heaps of fungus, bundles of onions, boxes of perfect fruit, I began to wonder where it had all come from. Perfect apples from Thailand, things exotic from China. Ah, cherries, they at least must be in season! And what a size, and so shiny deep red! But how on earth could they cost Euro24/kg?! Produce of the United States! Flown in of course, fresh and perfect for the show. But I did find a promising large pile of Bavarian cherries going for Euo1.98/kg. So why on earth would anyone buy 100gm of American cherries rather than a couple of kilos of fresh local cherries?

Food has become, always has been perhaps, a life-style and fashion commodity. Shopping for posh food is recreation for the well enough off. Little treats of giant cherries, those brilliantly yellow fungi to adorn a dish, the freshest most organic most healthy vegetables flown in especially. The contrast with my “home” market is stark. Here fresh fruit is expensive for those on very low incomes, but everything is priced in pennies; villagers, and people like us, for reasons of thrift and habit, wait for the season of cherries, over all too fast. We pick fruit from neglected trees in the street, we make jam and preserves, we gorge ourselves, we deliberate on the sour višnja versus the sweeter trešnja, we mourn the passing of the cherry season. But wait, suddenly the apricots are coming, then the greengages and plums and the early little pears, the apples are fattening up. I have a weakness for the beautiful and the shocking, but I rejoice in the faithful mellow goodness of fruit in its proper season.