Budapest, August 11, 2014

★★ The morning was bright on unfamiliarly lemon-yellow taxis and lime-green sharing bikes. A few clouds were now tempering the glare, making it eye-watering. Long bright green shoots curved up out of the darker topiary cylinders of the treetops running down the median. Indoors, in the music center, bodies overwhelmed the judicious European air conditioning. A low-grade sticky sweat, part humidity and part circadian confusion, rose and lingered. At break time, the light had grown clearer, the zenith open blue. Viewed from the roof deck, upthrust skinny poplar tops waved back and forth beside brown brick chimneys, against a stretch of blue and white. The next quarter, what must have been the west, was gray, with a dull metallic-looking sun lowering behind the clouds. Then the clouds alchemized to gold. The air was drier; a breeze pushed through the picturesque curves of the evening streets. At the open-air restaurant tables on the square outside the basilica, folded blankets sat unused on the chair backs, and the heater cords dangled unplugged. By the time the check came, though, there was almost a chill in the night.