A Timid Tongue in Budapest

Came back from a trip with the University's History department to Budapest on May 27th and wrote this 3 days later in response. The lemonades were possibly the best I'd ever had, the currency is in those ridiculously huge notations, and I am still surprised so many places speak English.

Feels like an ordinary city,
a flight that goes for ninety minutes 
lands you on common ground.
In the darkness,
one street to the next is familiar,
a Tesco glaring its beacon of homely light
in what you must keep telling yourself
is a foreign night.
And soon, buildings rise up,
rustic and molded,
unchanging in the morning sun,
so you come to realise you are in fact
'somewhere else'.
Tables spill out onto pavements,
tongues spill out the language of goulash -
but also more fish and chips than you expected.
There is a clear market for your
hard-earned ridiculous currency
in eating with the locals,
from a menu labeling the Hungarian specialties 
which you never manage to try,
sold by a waiter whose tongue is braver than yours.
There is a clear market for your
hard-earned ridiculous currency
in trinkets, resplendent with gem stones,
unpriced to build up attachment to what translates
to a twenty-quid bracelet -
this wrinkled vendor knows 
your girlfriend's expensive taste better than you.
Pretty soon you must abstain or starve.
Away you go, to the open plazas punctuated by
historical full stops on horseback,
and more Gothic facades than a nineteenth century estate agent.
There is no escaping the past here
in a city occupying a perilous position of reluctant modernity,
such that few buildings dwarf you to any great height
and drivers won't stop for a red light.
You wander in amazement,
knowing these walls didn't survive the war,
the aged lost to a gruesome recollection of the Holocaust
in a monochrome TV set.
Their hand touches your shoulder
as you sip fruit-laced artisan lemonades,
wishing they were this good back home -
even wishing this was home.
But your tongue is not brave enough,
even to catch your bilingual waiter's attention
so he can part you with more cash
and set you free into this isolated colourful war-zone.