The Place That Affected Me The Most (MARXIM)

The place that affected me the most? There are so many places, so many cities, and so many countries that have affected me over the years as I met people here and there, learnt things new and reacquainted myself with what I already knew, wherever I would happen to be living at any given time. Nevertheless, there is one place on which the spotlight shines the brightest. There is one particular bar in Budapest, Hungary with a communist feel to it. Situated on a side street where many don’t wonder into without knowing what’s there, in an area that gives you the feeling that you just traveled back almost 2 decades to Communist Hungary. All the buildings look the same, the several factories in view seemingly abandoned years earlier, the buildings deteriorating from a long life of joy and suffering. The left side of the road is populated by several rundown factories that on first glance seem as if they’d crumble from touch like a house of cards. The numerous windows that mark all walls of the factories are like the teeth of a jagged-toothed creature that just crawled out of the desert. On the right side of the road are blocks of concrete said to house human beings. Out of the wall of one of these concrete slabs sticks out a lighted red star half the size of a human being. The same building has its bottom floor painted with what possibly might have a very dazzling shade of red a decade or so ago, the paint in many places long gone, having crumbled to fine dust, an end that may one day face the rest of the building and all his ill-fated neighbors. This urban wasteland has only one bright spot of color in the form of a park only recently erected in an attempt to revive the area sick with bleakness.

The bright five-armed star that overlooks the once-red floor of the building gives off a somewhat eerie glow, yet still brilliantly lighting up the area at night, calling to it those who see it, like a mosquito lamp calls its prey. Upon close inspection, you may not wish to enter through the doorway under the star and step down those few stairs to enter through another door. Yet, there is something about the place that calls your name, that draws your attention, inviting you inwards. Behind this second door lies a crowd of people, bunched up like animals on a farm. Once you step through this door, the heat fabricated by those already inside slaps you in the face with enough force to drive the feeble-minded retracing their steps back out the door. The ceiling is curtained by a thick fog of cigarette smoke, temporarily brushed to one side every time the door opens or when the air conditioning is up and running. Your ears are blasted with the cacophony created by the mixture of people laughing, crying and talking loudly and drunkenly, the television shouting out whatever sports event happens to be on, and the music singing its way through the room to run into your eardrums. The luscious aroma of pizza with all its add-ons crawls up your nose and down to your stomach to tickle your hunger in order to wake him up, just so you can devour one of the gastronomically orgasmic pizzas this place is famous for. Every wall is tattooed with communist slogans and paintings, with red being the predominant color to dress the establishment. The animals on this farm are shacked up into booths like cages, separated by chicken wire, on top of which lies a coiled up snake of barbed wire. Chickens and roosters are drinking their water in one booth, while cows and bulls drink their choice of beverages in another. To finish the job, a burlesque portrait of V.I. Lenin, here known as W.C. Lenin, kindly directs those who temporarily inhabit the watering hole to a place where they may relieve themselves.


This is the place that affected me the most. No other place I’ve been to has ever granted me with such an atmosphere of excitement, joy, drunkenness, and laughter, just to name a small portion of all the feelings and emotions that I experienced within those four walls. The look of the place, the attitude of the people there, the feeling of belonging, all reasons why I spent every possible moment of my free time there with my best friends. It is what became to known as home, for that was where we were all the time, up to and beyond a point where we could be found there every weekend. The place that affected me the most, this small, obscure bar in a desolate neighborhood is called Marxim’s.

[Written 17.09.2002]