1936 On the Continent

to an enormous luxury which had made the dining-room of the great of Hungary famous all over the world. In the course of time the Hungarian kitchen became influenced by the French, Italian, Turkish and Slavonic tastes, but its original and individual character has been preserved till this day. Not so very long ago the wonderful dishes for the famous banquets of King Edward VII were made by a Hungarian chef.
    Hungarian food is generally regarded as rich and heavy. This is a libel on the Hungarian kitchen, but since all libels contain a grain of truth, I must admit in all fairness that now even I myself would find my mother’s cooking a little too heavy. I shouldn’t advise you to go through all the courses of a real Hungarian dinner, if you are staying in a country house, as I am sure you won’t sleep that night. The principal meal in Hungary is still the midday dinner. It begins with a soup which is usually so rich that to the Westerner it is almost equal to a complete meal. In Budapest, however, you need not be afraid of such a surprise. In most restaurants you can have dietetic food, and the so-called “international menu” in Budapest has the great advantage of containing practically everything that is the best of the Hungarian kitchen and excludes all that the foreigner might find a little too heavy.A late Hungarian magnate who weighed over 18 stone used to say that turkeys are the most useless animals on earth as one is not enough for a meal and two is a little too much. So you can see that we can appreciate the good things of the world.
    Unfortunately, Hungary is not by the sea, and when I am at home I have to deny myself with a heavy heart the lovely things with which the sea enriches the kitchen. But, nevertheless, we have a little private sea of our own, the Lake Balaton. The
fogas
, the best Hungarian fish, is a produce of Lake Balaton. As a zoological specimen this fish is unique, as it cannot be found in any other water, and as food the
fogas
is the whitest of all fish and has the nicest flavour. In shape and size it resembles the Italian
barracuda
. Besides the
fogas
remains our
specialité de la maison
.
    Will you please show some signs of life in a few lines?
    Miss Glinton, however, remained enveloped in her mysterious silence. In the course of my meditations it came to my mind that she had perhaps met with sudden death. In two months’ time, however, the stubborn silence began to excite me beyond bounds, and I wrote to her again.
My Fifth Letter to Miss Glinton
    Dear Miss Glinton,—I must admit the failure of my attempt to bring you to Budapest. I am inevitably led to believe that you are not interested in the beauty of the Danube or the charm of the surrounding hills, the steaming mud of our thermal baths, the unique flavour of Hungarian wines, the enticement of the Hungarian kitchen and the magic of gipsy music. Maybe you are right. But since I have now taken a lot of trouble to coax you to come to Budapest, I am determined not to give up the fight. The venture had for me at least the advantage that I have at last made proper acquaintance with the town of which I am an inhabitant. And, what is more important, should pennies be tight—and God knows, in these days they are steadily becoming very tight—I shall make an application to the office of the Hungarian Tourist Bureau in the hope that my knowledge and literary style will enable me to obtain employment as a professional guide.
    But to return to the subject of my letter, I shall now take you round the Hungarian countryside and some of the provincial towns.
    First of all you must know that the Hungarian capital, on the Buda side, is surrounded by hills 1,500 to 2,000 feet high. Although not called so officially, these form the Hungarian National Park. Unfortunately, we have no bison or herds of deer living in it, nor have we waterfalls and such trees as I have marvelled at in California, but it has one enormous advantage over all other national parks, namely, that one can reach it from the heart of the town in fifteen or twenty minutes. Few capitals can boast such surroundings. In the long-distant past the hunting-grounds of the old Hungarian kings used to lie where now there are rows of new villas, mostly built in the modern
Bauhaus
style (of German-American origin), of which I am not an admirer. The forests in the far distance still manage to preserve something of their old primitive character. Just imagine that I who live in Buda, not