I brought a box of books back from Hungary, and it contained a few of my old diaries. Not the full series, just a selection from age 8 to about 22. They are probably of interest only to me; I have spent the last couple of nights alternately giggling and horrified at the things I have written down over the course of my life. I have just pulled out the few phrases that might be fit for public consumption:

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Sue made onion soup last night. Reproduced without her permission, she describes the recipe as:

Oh, it’s nothing fancy, one of those oh-put-some-onions in it sort of recipes I got from Han’s mother. The only different part of it is that she sautés the raw onions briefly in butter then adds a few spoonfuls of flour to the butter/onion mix, plops that all back in beef stock and you end up with a slightly thickened soup. I blush to admit that she also adds a dash of cream at the end.

I’m thinking that I would add a little red wine to the stock, and then grate some cheese into it before serving. In Hungary, this would be served up in a hollowed-out bread roll.

I too made soup last night, but mine was carrot and coriander. It went something like this:

2 large carrots, diced Half a tin of tomatoes Half a red onion, chopped 2 pints vegetable stock 2 heaped teaspoons coriander paste

Soften the onions in olive oil, then add the carrots and the coriander paste. After a few minutes, pour in the tomatoes and the stock, and simmer until the carrots are soft. Whizz in a blender and serve. What’s so wrong with a dash of cream, anyway?

We have now established that, as a tourist, I love Hungary. I have spent a week there actually enjoying myself. In fact, I have spent a week having the best holiday I can remember for a long long time.

My only worry is that the next time we travel somewhere, Pete will find me a far less useful tourguide; there isn’t a city in the world that I know as well as I know Budapest.

Still, we started off staying far from my ‘hood, in the glamorous but hot-water-free zone that is the Marriott Hotel, which meant that on arriving some time after midnight, I was at a loss to know where to take Pete for his first Hungarian beer. His first Hungarian beer turned out to be Dutch Amstel, in some sort of music club, where we sat happily until around 4am.

The Marriott didn’t offer us breakfast, which I consider to be a good thing, because instead we were able to try out the coffee and chocolate croissants in various cafes, our favourite being Cafe Europa on the Pest side of the river. Subsequently the holiday turned into something of a gastro-tour, because I only had a week in which to show Pete all my favourite restaurants, all the interesting soups, and how different a Bloody Mary can be from one side of town to the other.

We weren’t that lucky with the weather; it was a case of 30 degrees last week and 30 degrees next week, but mostly rain during our stay. This, sadly, prevented us from doing anything too energetic, and contributed to the whole drinking-and-eating theme, because it was at least warm enough to sit outside a bar and watch the passers-by.

We did all the things that one really must do in order to say that they have truly experienced Hungary: admired the view of the Danube from Margit Bridge; took photographs of Heroes’ Square; ate goulash, bought shoes, visited Lake Balaton.

Balaton was a particularly good source of drunken giggling, featuring such incidents as Pete shouting uborka across the lake, late at night; a german with a dog named Kevin; and me managing to pour a glass of water over my head whilst attempting to throw it off the balcony of our room. But the best giggle of the holiday was the I steal your wife incident, which Pete will have to tell you himself. Oh yes, he met Ken.

When we returned from Balaton, we stayed in a hotel near the city park, which is the far end of my ‘hood. The sun came out, we walked around a lot, and started research into iced coffee across the city.

I seem to have managed to delete most of my bad memories of the country. I also seem to be able to speak reasonably good hungarian, after all this time.

I’d like to thank the Marriott Hotel for its fantastic view of the Danube, especially at 6am; the Balazs Villa in Balatonfured for upgrading us to a suite; and the Liget Hotel for having hot water.

I’d also like to thank the Soul Cafe for the best meal of the holiday; Articsoka for the best coffee; Iguana for two litres of frozen margarita; Ket Szerecsen and Pompei between them for the friendliest service [not an acknowledgement I thought I would ever be able to make about a hungarian restaurant]; Cafe Vian for the best cocktails; and the For Sale Pub for all the monkey nuts.