Now I want to share the drawings I did on this amazing trip. I only have a few as I don't like to sketch when I'm with someone especially someone I love. I only really drew when my husband was reading or napping, as on the train, or not sitting next to me as on the trolly, or away from the table at a meal. Ah, but a judicious few they are! This first one, I did in our first city, Berlin. I guess you can see that actually. On the left a lady sitting at the next table at breakfast on the first morning, and a man on the bench next to us in the famous Tiergarten a few mornings later. Just as in Montreal, I wonder if they look European.
I love trains and I especially loved the idea of traveling by train from one city to the next on this trip. On this trip from Berlin to Prague, we were in a compartment with four seats on each side facing each other. We had the two seats at the window, so I got to watch the countryside roll by. It was lovely sitting there, and lovely looking out, and daydreaming, reading and talking together. At first there was just one man across from me, he's the one on the left side of the drawing, but good fortune would have it that a family came in and sat down, so I had a good view of their 14-year-old daughter without being too obvious. She, being 14, was not involved in watching me, but more with her own diversions. We also happened, by the way, to have a nice conversation with the family as they spoke some English and were also going to Prague for the first time. The big celebration of the anniversary of the Reunification of Berlin was coming up in a couple of days and I think they were escaping the crowds, although from what they said, Prague was not a place to go to escape crowds.
The train trip from Berlin to Prague was about 5 hours, and the trip from Prague to Budapest was 7 hours. This time we had the compartment to ourselves for most of the trip, but for a short ride from one small city to the next, when two women came in. She, the one I drew, looked very tired. For me that made it easier to draw her as I think she was napping. She looked as if she had been having a very hard day, or week, or life.
I put this in because I liked the way she rested her cheek on her hand. I thought she had beautiful hands, with beautiful, graceful lines.
In Budapest, during one of our days on our own we stopped at a cafe in the downtown area, on a pedestrian walking street. It was called Cafe Subito which means quick or fast, but our lunch seemed to take forever to arrive. My husband finally went inside to see what was up with our food and I sketched this man sitting near us who was talking with his friend. In the intersection next to our cafe was a brass statue of a friendly looking policeman with his hat, stick and large stomach. Budapest really loves statues of all sorts, historical, literary and otherwise it seems.
On our last day in Budapest after our quite spectacular, personal, architectural tour we had a late lunch at the Spinoza (he had never actually been there) Cafe in the old Jewish area at 3:30! (well, that's late for me). It was one of those cafes that had all the reflections of the afternoon you could want through the windows, which cast a warm glow on everything. It seemed the perfect place to be on our last afternoon of the trip. There was a mirror right above me to my right through which I saw a man who was actually sitting next to the window I was facing, a couple of tables away. I was going to draw him because of that complicated reflection until I noticed he was also looking at me which made me decide to forget it. So, this woman was sitting at another window. It looks like she's crying but she wasn't.
This is the same woman, and now you have a better idea of the setting. And so,...Goodbye to Budapest!
