Feeling more full of life than usual, I climbed Gellert Hegy in time to see the sun set over Budapest. On the way up, I passed a dog park full of people just home from work or airing their dogs after a long day of retirement. I was able to witness a very small part of the universal Human Condition: a dog owner pleading with her disinterested pet to fetch. I think this experience brings us more together as a species.

At the top of the hill is perhaps the statue that is the unofficial emblem of Budapest. I forget her name, but she stands tall with flapping dress and raised olive branch, keeping watch over the city. Her resilience throughout time is much like that of the Hungarian people themselves -- she was a symbol of fascism, then communism, and while they both passed on, she has remained.

She is flanked by two, much smaller, "soc-réál"* statues. The first, I supposed, is intended to be a man sprinting forward with the torch of progress or some such. A flapping cloth was thoughtfully sculpted around his front so as to conceal his genitalia. However, he looks more like a blossoming youth from an ancient Greek wet dream, sprinting around the locker room trying to slap one of his burly comrades with a wet washcloth. Mischievous passers-by have plugged the crack between his buttocks with chewing gum.

The other statue is a burly man beating the shit out of a three-headed dragon.

On my way back down I noticed that our lampposts had been dressed as Christmas trees. Lacking Thanksgiving, Hungarians have no natural limit on how early one can decorate for Christmas. But I am cheery; it reminds me of good things yet to come.

*socialist-realist