2005-05-28 - 6:05 p.m.
The best meal I ever had was at Gundel in Budapest. Alithea and I went on vacation to Budapest in January 2001, shortly after I was diagnosed. A well-traveled friend of hers had said that Budapest was the most romantically beautiful city she�d ever seen and I think it was unbelievable. Indeed, until I realized I was converting prices wrong by a factor of 10, I wanted to buy an apartment there. (Of course when we got back, the friend said she�d actually never been to Budapest�)
The restaurant Gundel Etterem is really fancy and over 100 years old. I don�t really know how it got through the communist years. Party officials, maybe. Today, I suspect people propose there a lot. It could easily pimp out its reputation and become a tacky trap for free-spending tourists, but chef/owner George Lang keeps things pretty steady and avoids the cheese.
It was the most beautiful restaurant I�d ever been to. I remember it being set in a park, so even the approach to it was romantic. It�s a Second Empire building with a ridiculously elaborate interior. There were live musicians (over a dozen) playing waltzes. Dinner was not cheap, but you just can�t get that at any price in America. One of the best $100 I�ve ever spent.
I asked the musicians to play the Kaiser Waltz for Alithea (I can only find schmaltzy MIDI versions online). It�s her favorite waltz and not for the usual reasons. I�ve seen a lot of tributes to how �pleasant� it is, what a good waltz. Maybe it�s misinterpreted that way now. But as it was explained to me, it was originally written as sort of an ironic joke.
The Kaiser Waltz was composed in 1874, the very tail end of the age of waltzes. It is indeed pleasant, pleasant to the point of ridiculous and overwrought. It�s almost a parody of a waltz. The point seems to have been to remind contemporary listeners that, while this is a good version of a waltz, the waltz era is ending. While this is a sweet reminder of the good stuff, listeners who lived through the mid-nineteenth century know that life wasn�t always like that.
The past was never actually the way we remember. The good times stay in our memory, but a lot of things maybe weren�t so good and they usually get forgotten. This is of course as it should be. Dwelling on the bad is just distasteful brooding. We should all want to remember the best in our lives.
Before World War II started, a great many Hungarian Jews fled Europe and had their last meal at Gundel. They were leaving everything they knew to start a new life in America or somewhere. They had no idea what would happen. I�m sure fancy restaurants are not where they ate every day, but Gundel is what they wanted to take with them.
Now I was starting a new life. Although I didn�t understand how, I knew things would never again be the same for me with MS. I�d be moving to a different country, a new world. A fancy dinner with someone I loved. What could be more perfect? Of course life hadn�t always been like that, but it was like that in that moment. What I wanted to take with me was the memory of the very best thing.
Much to my surprise, there has been a lot of happiness and beauty in my life since. But I still remember that very fondly, my last meal before going to America. While the best things aren�t the norm by definition, it�s good to know how life can be sometimes.
� 2005 Geoff Gladstone
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