“I used to get a lot of sunsets like this back home but this one is special. You see, I’ve never experienced winter in my life. We have a lot of rain and often floods that devastate many of our lives. But winter is another thing. I don’t think anyone is ever ready to face winter, of any kind, even the people who have lived it all their lives. That day was the day we got our resident visas, after days of uncertainty over not being accepted one because of strange challenges (Balsors) that have left us on edge since we moved in to this flat.
In Hungary there’s this thing called Balsors. Our Hungarian Identity professor described it as “bad fate” while www.wordhippo.com described it as “adversity, calamity, misfortune”. So when awful things happen and they fall under the category of “out of our hands”– it’s usually Balsors and there’s nothing left to do but to accept it.
On the way home, Anna and I saw the sunset. Since we moved here I have never seen the sky like this here so we stopped for a while to wonder in it. I told her how excited I was for spring. Winter paints a different picture of places and people, often requiring seeing things in a different way. For people who have lived with the sun all their lives, living in the colour grey here for a month gave us the best introduction to Budapest.”
I wrote this a little over a month ago. Now, outside the sun is shining and probably, the sun has been setting like this for the past three days. This photo is not as special today as it was. But at that time, it was magic.
VENICE DE CASTRO ATIENZA 