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“Ah-tishoo!” I was woken by my own sneeze and realised, with horror, that I had the flu. I looked out of the window. It was early morning. My train - “Pannonia Express” - was stationary. A sign with a frightening word “Szekesfehervar” was in front of me. A station name like that could exist only in one country - Hungary.

With an effort, I remembered how the night before we were drinking with Igor in Palffy House; how I was then dashing around Prague Central Station in search of a pharmacy (I could feel a cold approaching) and failed to find it; how the unending passport controls kept me from sleeping during the night as the train was crawling across the brand-new East European borders - from the Czech Republic into Slovakia and then - into Hungary.

I recalled how at 3 a.m. a Slovakian border-guard - a slim young woman in baggy uniform and with a gun dangling from her belt - asked me in Russian to translate to a visa-less Australian in the next carriage that he had to pay the fine. I enquired whether I would be eligible for the Meciar Cross, Slovakia’s highest award (invented by me) for that and advised her to shoot the recalcitrant Aussie straight from her lovely hip (I didn’t remember whether I had actually said the last five words out loud).

Later, the Australian, who had eventually agreed to cough up, came to my compartment to complain (and woke me up again). He was red-eyed, dishevelled and had a peculiar disgruntled look of a man who had just been mugged. I tried to comfort him by saying that he was lucky not to have been shot, according to my advice…

“Ah-tishoo!” My nose was blocked. An uninterrupted buzzing noise from the headphones, which I wasn’t wearing, resounded in my clogged ears. A didgeridoo was playing inside my brick-heavy head. I felt dizzy, queasy and uneasy. My drinking supervisor Evgeny Bulavin used to like having colds, because, as he asserted, they made him feel as if he was drunk. I might have enjoyed my cold, too, had it not been for several days of intensive wine-tasting which lay ahead of me. In this condition, I couldn’t tell a Bordeaux from a “Bormotukha” (to be honest, I was not sure whether I could have done that even if completely healthy).

I asked an attendant for some Panadol pills. He was Hungarian and didn’t understand: the word for “Panadol” was probably not dissimilar to “Szekesfehervar” in Hungarian - the mind-boggling Finno-Ugric language, in which “ugly” meant “galoshes”.

At Keleti - the main station of Budapest - I was greeted by a lanky young man in a baseball cap - a driver from the Tourism Bureau.

“A-ah-tishoo!” he sneezed shaking my hand.

“Ah-tishoo!” I replied.

“My name is Attila,” he said.

“What-what?” I asked thinking that he had sneezed again.

“Attila,” he repeated. “Like Attila the Hun… Ah-tishoo!.. Sorry, I have a cold…”

“It makes two of us. At least, we won’t infect each other. Let’s sneeze ‘Bruderschaft’,” I suggested.

We decided to go to one of Europe’s most famous cafés - Budapest’s Café New York - for a welcome-to-Hungary drink. Having squeezed ourselves into Attila’s battered Suzuki, we drove off, all three of us (including the Suzuki) constantly sneezing.

Like his distant ancestor and name-sake, the legendary Hunnish king, nicknamed “The Scourge of God” by his contemporaries, Attila was a bit of a dare-devil. If Attila the Hun was notorious for his belligerence, grim disposition and reckless horse-riding, Attila the Hungarian was the wildest car-driver I had ever come across.

“I am taking you along the same road that our president normally travels,” he told me proudly in his amazingly good American English (he had spent a year in the USA) swerving his jalopy to the right and nearly hitting a traffic policeman. I was sincerely hoping that the incumbent Hungarian President Arpad Goncz was not travelling along his favourite road at the same time as we did: all wine-tastings were likely to be cancelled if Hungary was suddenly thrown into several days of national mourning.

Attila’s driving was such that, for the first time in years, I rejoiced in having grey hair: had it not been grey already, it would have certainly gone snow-white after a ride in his Suzuki. He took shortcuts across parks, street pavements and shopping malls. He zig-zagged through narrow pedestrian lanes of Buda - the old town. He would stop in the middle of a busy thoroughfare for a chat with his “university mate”. Besides which he kept talking non-stop on his mobile phone, letting go of the wheel and gesticulating wildly with both hands.

“To drive in Budapest, you need fast reaction and smartness,” he told me, chasing an old lady with shopping bags along the pavement. The lady was waddling away from his balmy Suzuki with the speed of hurricane El Nino.

“Honk! Why don’t you honk at her?!” I screamed.

“I never beep at pedestrians. Police do not allow beeping in the city,” he replied calmly.

“But they obviously don’t mind running over old ladies,” I thought.

When we stopped near a pharmacy to buy us some Panadol (I noted with fiendish satisfaction that the word for pharmacy in Hungarian was “gyogyszertar”), Attila triple-parked his car in such a way that it was blocking three lanes of moving traffic, which came to a halt and became honking traffic for all the ten minutes we spent at the pharmacy. Attila listened to the honking with unhidden delight, as if it was the famous symphony “Faust” by the great Hungarian composer Ferenc List.

“In Budapest, you can park anywhere. I normally park on the pavement,” he explained. Indeed, all the places on the pavement near the pharmacy had already been taken by the mechanical stallions, driven by other wild descendants of the lugubrious king of the Huns.

When we were crossing the impressive Erzebet Bridge, I looked down and was upset to see that the water in “the blue Danube” was actually not blue, but brown. “They add paint to the water to make it blue during festivals and national celebrations,” Attila reassured me, narrowly avoiding a head-on collision with a tram.

The dreary Soviet-style facades and formerly grand fin-de-siecle boulevards of Pest, Budapest’s newer area, which - surprisingly - was much more run-down than its older part, Buda, were - like the Danube - in need of repainting. They were somewhat animated by the newly erected advertising cylinders, covered with ads of Marlboro and Pepsi.

“Hungary is the only country in the world where the sales of Pepsi are almost as high as those of Coca-Cola, and their competition is fierce,” said Attila. According to him, Pepsi targeted Budapest trams and covered them with its logo. In retaliation, Coca Cola had set its sights on the historic graffiti-ridden Chain Bridge, having offered to scrub it clean and replace graffiti with … Coca Cola ads and decorations.

“Can it be that an explanation for the brown waters of the “blue Danube” lies in this unscrupulous rivalry?” I thought, remembering that blue was the “official” Pepsi colour. I wouldn’t have been particularly surprised to learn that it was indeed Coca-Cola that - in an advertising frenzy - had repainted the great European river brown. If so, Pepsi manufacturers could console themselves with the fact that when Coke first went on sale in China under the name Ke-kou-ke-la, it turned out that in some Chinese dialects this meant “female horse stuffed with wax”.

I was a bit wary of Budapest restaurants and cafes. My fears were triggered by the multiple stories in London newspapers about large-scale fleecing of foreign visitors by charging them thousands of dollars for more than modest meals and drinks. Four Danish tourists were, reportedly, presented with a bill of one million forints (£3,400) - enough to buy a nice new car in Hungary (which was probably their waiter’s dream) - for a humble non-alcoholic dinner at a Budapest restaurant. “These are our night prices. We charge what the market will bear,” the restaurant manager explained. Even if the market could bear it, the determined cold-blooded Danes could not. Their complaint led to an investigation, the subsequent closure of several dozen “guilty” restaurants and the official warning by the US Embassy in Budapest urging Americans “to beware cafes and night-clubs where bills can require a second mortgage…” (As to non-Americans, the Embassy did not seem to mind them being robbed.) A useful tip from the Union of Hungarian Restaurateurs was that “a good meal in a Budapest restaurant should not cost more than £5 (about 1,600 forints)”. What exactly they meant by “a good meal” remained a mystery. What if the meal was “very good”, or (improbably) “excellent”? Clearly, Hungarians were taking the words “free market” at their face value. Or, maybe, in accordance with an old Hungarian saying “We are poor but we live well”, they were all desperate to get themselves new cars?

The other sign of the emerging Hungarian qualms-free market was the introduction of the package dental tours of Budapest which had received a lot of publicity in Britain. Prices started at £175 for three nights including flights, hotel, a consultation with a dentist and examination. If the dentist thought that treatment was necessary (it was highly unlikely that he would determine otherwise), a tourist had to cough up further £280 for dentures and a mere £22 to have a tooth extracted. In between filling and drilling sessions, guided tours of Budapest were offered to the travellers (or rather to the patients) - for an additional price of course. In short, anyone subscribing to these package holidays, sinisterly advertised as “dental breaks”, was facing a cheerful prospect of returning to his home country not only broke, but also toothless.

It was 11 a.m., and Café New York in Andrassy Street was half-empty: breakfast patrons had already left and early lunchers had not turned up yet. The belle époque interior of the place was grand: mirrors, columns, chandeliers, furniture of polished mahogany. It reminded me of the famous Casino of Monte Carlo. I hoped that the resemblance stopped there and having a drink at Café New York wouldn’t be much of a gamble: unlike some wealthy Americans I couldn’t afford a second mortgage. To be honest, I couldn’t afford the first one either…

We sat down at a heavy dark-wood table and swallowed a couple of Panadols each before reaching for the menus.

“Czechs have beer in their veins, Austrians - coffee, and Hungarians - wine!” Attila chanted nasally (his nose was as firmly blocked as mine).

He was probably right, for even the weather forecast in one of Budapest’s English-language weeklies, which I had read on the train, contained the following advice: “Sunday will be partly cloudy again with occasional showers. We’d recommend warming some wine…”

But the thought of what Attila’s driving could be like when he was drunk was so terrifying that it defied contemplation.

“I would rather you be an Austrian just for now,” I muttered.

A tuxedo-clad waiter-buy, who was 15 (we had asked him) but looked 11, brought us coffee and bread, but no butter.

“We don’t serve butter before dinner,” he explained.

The coffee was excellent and fully corresponded to the Hungarian proverb: “Coffee should be black like the devil, hot like hell, and sweet like a kiss”. A group of chain-smoking young girls sat in the corner - a living proof of the fact that Hungary was the eighth heaviest smoking nation in the world, and every statistical Hungarian smoked 3177 cigarettes a year, slightly fewer than an average resident of the United Arab Emirates (3218), but more than a happy citizen of the world’s wealthiest state of Brunei (3158). In front of our eyes, the girls were quickly approaching their annual smoking quotas.

At the turn of the century, The New York was the liveliest of Budapest’s 400 cafes and one of the best in the whole of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. On its opening day, a group of satisfied customers threw its key into the Danube for it to stay open day and night. In 1910-1930 it became the favourite haunt of Budapest literati. Struggling Budapest writers were scribbling away on the free paper provided by the café. A special (and fairly frugal) “writer’s platter”, consisting of cold meat, cheese and bread, was the most popular item on the menu. Here, the aspiring authors could also catch up on the latest news, for the cafe proudly stocked “all the dailies and arts journals of the world.” Writers were followed by journalists (after all, as one of my Moscow friends used to say, a writer is a journalist who can’t get his copy into print), and some of Budapest’s best-known newspapers and magazines were edited in the café’s first-floor gallery.

Among the café’s old-timers was Ferenc Molnar, the renowned Hungarian playwright of Jewish origin. In The New York, he had his favourite chair, in which he would sit for hours, drink coffee and write. After the 1938 ‘Anschluss’, when neighbouring Austria was annexed by Germany and got fully incorporated into Hitler’s Reich, a friend asked Molnar, who was sitting in his beloved café New York chair: “Ferenc, aren’t you afraid? Why don’t you save yourself by emigrating to America?” “It is easy to emigrate to America,” replied Molnar, “but it is difficult to get up from this chair.”

After World War II, The New York became a shoe shop before re-opening as a café in 1954 - two years prior to the Soviet military invasion, as a result of which real writers disappeared from the café (and from Hungary in general) for many years to come. The New York survived the 32-years-long epoch of Janos Kadar’s rule, popularly known as “goulash communism”, when certain economic freedoms, unheard of in other Soviet block states, were preserved by the cunning Communist leader. Nowadays, some of the writers have returned to The New York. And although the “literary waiters” of the 20s and the 30s, who used to know all their clients by first names and read all their works, had vanished for good, the café still boasted a “literary toilet attendant” - a well-read elderly lady, who did not charge her favourite writers for the use of her vital facility. She did charge me, but that was probably because she didn’t know English and hence hadn’t had a chance to read any of my books.

In the ante-room of the café’s grand literary toilet, I picked up a promotional leaflet saying: “Welcome to Budapest. Congratulations! You are in the right place at the wrong time - but that’s our job!” This reminded me not just of the peculiar Hungarian sense of humour, but also of another place that I wanted to see in Budapest - the place which was closely connected with the caustic and self-deprecating Hungarian wit.

A couple of months before my trip to Hungary, several London newspapers ran a story about a certain Ferenc Kovacs, who had opened the world’s first and only joke shop in Budapest. The shop was aimed at relieving the famous Hungarian depression and pessimism. According to the papers, the entrepreneurial Kovacs charged 3 forints (1.5 pence) for making a customer smile, 7 forints - for provoking a grin, 9 - for a chuckle, and 12 (plus VAT) - for making one laugh one’s pants off.

There was even an example of a 9-forint joke: “A policeman is shaving in the bathroom, when his wife comes in. ‘You have cut yourself, darling,’ she says. ‘I know,’ replies the policeman. ‘I did it deliberately when you came in, just so I know where to start again when you leave…”

The joke shop (reportedly) sold musical condoms with the choice of two tunes - an old Communist song “Arise, You Red Proletarian” and “You Sweet Little Dumbbell” - played as the condom was unrolled.

“What does a joke shop, with all these singing condoms, have in common with exploring Hungarian wines?”, you might ask. The connection is both simple and logical. Hungarian Panadol didn’t seem to work, and since the next day I had to be ready for the wine tasting in Tokaji region, I had to get rid of my cold by hook or by crook. And nothing cures a cold as efficiently as a good laugh.

Unfortunately, the papers did not give the address of the joke shop, and the street-wise Attila expressed total ignorance not just as to its whereabouts, but as to its very existence, too. He dialed several of his friends at the Tourism Bureau on his mobile, but none of them had ever heard about either Ferenc Kovacs, or his joke shop, which only increased my desire to find it.

In Attila’s faithful Suzuki we combed the whole of central Budapest. Several times we whooshed past the newly reopened Great Synagogue - Europe’s largest - in Dohany Street. Every two minutes, Attila would jump out of the car and start questioning passers-by about the joke shop and “Kovacs Ferenc”. The pedestrians only shook their shoulders, and one of them remarked in a truly Hungarian fashion: “You can pay me - and I’ll tell you a joke!”

Having quadruple-parked the car in the middle of a pedestrian crossing, we began door-knocking, but the result was the same: the residents of Budapest had never heard of Ferenc Kovacs, sorry “Kovacs Ferenc”, and/or his joke shop.

After a couple of hours, it suddenly dawned on me that the joke shop had never existed, and the whole idea, fed to the gullible and news-hungry British journalists, who had spread it all over the UK without checking, was but a product of the elusive Kovacs Ferenc’s fantasy and his typically Hungarian sense of humour. At this point, I burst out laughing. Soon I was joined by Attila. We were laughing our pants off until we both stopped abruptly, having realised that we had just earned Kovacs Ferenc 24 forints plus VAT!

Late in the afternoon, Attila dropped me at Honved Hotel in Pest. He was to come back tomorrow morning to give me a lift back to Keleti station, from where I was to take a train to Tokaji.

My room was filthy, and the bathroom sink was blocked. “Our Hotel is taking care on [sic] environment,” said a sign on one of the dirty fly-stained walls with peeling wallpaper. “Not on its own environment though,” I thought ruefully. The hotel restaurant was closed, which was probably for the better.

“There is a good restaurant near-by,” said the receptionist. “It is called The Gold Fish.”

The area around the hotel was unkempt and run-down. The familiar Ikarus buses (we had plenty of them in the Soviet Union) were rattling past me nonchalantly as I trudged along the rugged pavement trying to spot any place that would distantly resemble the restaurant called “The Gold Fish”. It was hopeless. For a good ten minutes I stood in front of a sign saying: “Kerjuka Kaput Belsukni”, trying to guess what on earth it could mean.

The only readable sign in the vicinity was above a chocolate shop. “Bon Bon Hemingway,” it said in English. I thought that Hemingway himself would not have been pleased to see a shop selling chocolates, not booze, named after him.

I finally located “The Gold Fish” restaurant, having spotted a picture of a fish in its window (how very clever!). You will never guess what its name sounded like in Hungarian. “Aranigal Vendeglo”!

Sitting in the cosy small restaurant surrounded by the locals whose language remained a total enigma for me, I was slurping a hot and spicy fish soup (good for my sore throat). Everything was fine until I asked the waiter for a bottle of mineral water. To be on the safe linguistic side, I said it in four languages: “mineral water” - in English, “mineralnaya voda” - in Russian, “l’eau minerale” - in French, and even - God knows why - “aqua minerale” - in Italian. The waiter nodded and promptly brought me … a Hungarian newspaper, which I couldn’t read, let alone drink.

I slept badly during the night. Cockroaches rustled matter-of-factly behind the peeling wallpaper. The blocked bathroom sink stank. At about 3 o’clock a.m. I was woken up by the sound of bursting fire-works from behind the window. Next morning, the receptionist told me that those were Michael Jackson’s fans celebrating after his concert at Budapest’s Nepstadion - the same music-loving fans who later in the day would smash the windows of a record store, where the king of pop would be shopping. The Great Friend of Children (especially boys) did not want to leave me alone on my East European journeys. Could it be that he had somehow come to fancy me and was following me around?

I got up at 6 a.m.. My cold did not get better. In fact, it got worse. My nose, which was firmly, almost bathroom-sink-like, blocked the day before, was now - unlike the sink - running (God knows where to) and flooding me with snot.

And ten minutes later Attila rang up to say that he was not coming, because - surprise, surprise - he had a car accident the night before. He was calling from a hospital, but assured me that he was OK - a broken leg and a couple of bruises, that was all. From the way he sounded, it was plain that his cold had not improved either.

“Get well soon! Ah-tishoo!..” I said.

“Ah-tishoo!” echoed he before hanging up.

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