Lost steps

I was quite skeptical about a holiday in Eastern Europe, but then I decided to put aside my prejudices and I chose a country to start from: Hungary.
Fortunately, my first impression was wrong: Budapest turned out to be one of my favourite European capitals.
Whenever I’m abroad, I try to visit as many places as I can, meet new people from all over the world, eat traditional dishes and drink local beer. But above all, I can’t help spending some time (and money) in bookshops.
It was the fourth day my holiday and I already thought I didn’t need a map anymore. Shame on me!
That afternoon I got lost looking for the metro station, and I ran into the Alexandra Bookstore on Andrassy Boulevard by chance. Thinking back, I guess I can actually say I found myself there, indeed.
I wandered for about twenty minutes here and there on the two floors dedicated to the bookshop.
I bought a couple of books by a Hungarian author and I thought I was the happiest person on Earth. It was then that I noticed the stairs that drove to the third floor.
When I got there I was astonished.
I couldn’t believe there was such an amazing café up there. It was a big bright salon with frescoes and ancient chandeliers on the ceiling, mirrors and golden decorations on the walls, dark elegant tables and a piano in the middle of the room.
There was a young man in a smart black suit playing the piano. It could be Chopin or maybe Debussy. I sat at a table with a strawberry cheesecake and I started reading one of the books I bought few minutes before and I completely lost the sense of time.
The background music of the piano, the smell of sweet cakes in the air, people chattering all around in lots of different languages: it was an unreal atmosphere. I felt like a French lady at the court of king Louis XIV. At some point I even thought to see one of the waiters with one of those white wigs that people used to wear in the seventeenth century.
Even now I don’t know how much time I sat there in that café looking at people and listening to the piano, but when the phone rang reminding me I had to meet my Hungarian friends in an hour I felt quite upset. I didn’t want to go back to reality, because there it felt like I was in the right place at the right moment.
I was miles away from home, but for a second I felt like belonging to that café. I’ve never had the same feeling nowhere else yet.
Wherever I travel, I hope to get lost and find another place like the Alexandra Bookstore café, but the search goes on.