Something in the langos ain't right

I took a couple of friends to one of the places in Budapest I'd been longing to go to but never quite managed to get to - the Escheri Flea Market.

I'd been looking forward to this excursion for some time now. Billed as the Best Flea Market in All of Central Eastern Europe, perhaps it was bound to disappoint. Just not in the ways I expected.

First thing to know is that it is way the fuck out of the city center. But located in such a spot to give one a real sense of how more Hungarians live than the ex pat life I am living. It's grim, desolate, communist era block flats mixed with dingy duplexes and lots of run down auto mechanic shops. It's the kind of down to earth urban reality that makes me so angry when I read articles like that in the recent Guardian weekend magazine on poverty chic. Poverty porn is bad enough, but no, um shabby chic decor and mix matched thrift store chairs does not bring one closer to 'the people'. Certainly not like a visit to Escehri does.

I happily enjoyed the chaos of the tat. The dusty stalls, the randomness of the objects. What I didn't enjoy was the copy of Mein Kampf for sale alongside a few other pieces of Nazi memorabilia. The items in question were on display along the main promenade, sitting alongside a reprint book by Lenin, hammer and sickle belt buckles and other communist kitsch being sold by a Chinese woman at this decidedly very Hungarian flea market. It was all just a bit too much. Given the location of the stall, it was as if Hitler himself was greeting us to the market, encouraging us to come in, have a looksee. Seriously, I felt like this stall was haunting me throughout my sojourn.

If that wasn't enough, it all just kind of fell together (or apart) when we hurriedly left (not because of Mein anything, but because some pervy busker creepily brushed himself against my friends' ample breasts whilst passing her in the cookery section), and found ourselves waiting for the bus along with some of the local yoots. The one in question was, on the surface, your run of the mill shaved head / bomber jacket 20 year old looking to bum a light. After my other friend helped in out, we both noticed his jacket sported the words "White Power". There is no mistaking the semiotics there. He was far more disturbing than Adolf's visage from a book jacket. We three just kind of looked at him after he walked off dumbfounded. In fact, I think if you look up the word 'dumbfounded' in a dictionary, there would be a picture of our faces (see also 'speechless' and 'what the fuck just happened').

Of course, when I tried to regale my story later to a Hungarian friend, something got lost in the translation and he kept asking me why would someone have on their jacket the words 'white powder'. After explaining to him that no, he was not in fact a distributor for Este Lauder, or a stagehand for a traveling French mime troupe, I decided that would be the new code word for, well, white powder.