Budapest, August 12, 2014

★★★★★ Breeze lifted the stars of the EU and Lithuania’s triple stripe on the face of some building, but failed to quite unfurl the folded and misaligned parts of the horse and knight of the Lithuanian presidential banner. A green apple lay on the sidewalk, fallen from an overladen tree. Water plashed quietly in a fountain set with an obelisk, beside the basilica. The office windows were tall and wide open, letting the fresh air blow through, past drooping tree branches. Bells tolled, wheels rattled on the paving stones. The ferris wheel out on the square by the hotel played an English language audio guid to the previous city in which it had been installed. The gondola cleared the rooftops — all the same low-medium height — and discovered the hills beyond. The Danube was green. By the third turn, the interior was getting stuffy. Back down in the park, a violinist played Beatles songs indifferently. The sun shone on the dark gray stone of a building and the blond stone of the same building, where half the facade had been scrubbed clean. Late in the day, an expanse of gray-and-white scales over blue moved slowly northeast along the sky. Behind it came different tones of gray, with occasional spots of bright gold flashing through. In the night, outside a ruin bar, a wide-chested bouncer ate an ice cream treat on a stick.