This is a tale of two cities, not in some Dickensian sense but just a comparison that crossed my mind this past month when Wendy and I spent a few days in Budapest.

I had last been in the Hungarian capital in 1988, just a year before the Iron Curtain so dramatically fell. I was leading a group, and I when returned after a visit to the Heroes' Square I remarked that the government was obviously in trouble.

"Why?” someone asked.

"Because the money changers are doing their deals right under the nose of the police. When respect for authority is gone, the power of that authority is diminished.”

Wendy and I took a river cruise from Amsterdam to Budapest down the Rhine, through the Main River, the Danube Canal to the Danube and Budapest. It was a marvelous trip that we loved even though damn near all the boat passengers got sick, including me! This is a problem all cruise ships must face and many of them have hand washers in many parts of the vessel, which work well. The problem was that Viking has but one at where you exit, and that’s not enough.

Lesson learned

We started at the Grand Hotel Krasnapolski in Amsterdam where I had stayed back in 1964. Then, possessed by the sort of nit wit brain that poses as youth, I sampled the charms of a drink called jinever, which gave me the worst hangover I’ve ever had. I was told that one drank this with a beer chaser, but that two, maybe three were all I should ingest. I exceeded that sensible advice, substantially, and paid the price. I remember, barely, the wife of one of my evil companions taking me to the Rijksmuseum the next morning and my trying to appreciate Rembrandt and Hals while cannons regularly went off in my cranium. This time, I had only a couple of glasses of beer before bed; I learned and remembered the lesson even after 44 years.

Budapest is billed as the Paris of Eastern Europe, but to me it's a more beautiful city than Paris and the people are wonderful.

I love Paris, as the song goes, but the people, speaking in general terms of course, are the most bloody-minded in the world. If you try your schoolboy French on them, they just shrug like Trudeau used to do. It was Mark Twain who commented that when he was in Paris the "damned fools couldn't understand me even though I was speaking their own language!" Although 99 per cent speak English, they can't remember it, evidently, whenever one speaks English to them.

Bill mysteries

In a Parisian cafe, when you get your bill, the amount tendered bears little resemblance to what the menu promised -- in fact the waiter will keep doing the bill over and over until you holler stop!

The police don't give a damn if you're robbed, simply chalking it up to one of the charms of being molested in Gay Paree by a horde of children picking you clean as their parents look on.

The sidewalks are covered in dog shit. No self respecting Parisian would deign take with them a doggy bag -- it's just not French, it would seem, to worry about others stepping into your dog's droppings much less to be the slightest concerned with questions of public health.

Paris is a beautiful city, there's no denying that and even though they've allowed abominations to be built in their midst, such as the Eiffel Tour, Sacré Cœur and the Pompidou Centre, one cannot deny its beauty and its walkability. Napoleon III, the man who foolishly started and lost the War of 1870, did hire Baron Haussmann to clean out some buildings and he built some beautiful boulevards including the Champs-Élysées. Mind you, Paris proved that cowardice pays, declaring itself an open city when the Boche came in 1940. Where Churchill was saying that London, if fought street-by-street, could consume an entire army, and while he was pledging that Britain wouldn't surrender abjectly as, alas, others had done, Parisians put the beauty of their city ahead of fighting Hitler and his Nazi hordes. Paris, thus, was undamaged while Budapest suffered greatly, though it must be said that Hungary chose the wrong side.

Budaparis

Budapest and Paris have this in common: each has pedestrian crosswalks with zebra stripes to help the motorist get a proper bead on you.

Budapest, like Paris, is a river city, and to these eyes the Danube plays a bigger part of civic beauty in Budapest than the Seine does in Paris. The beautiful Green Danube (for those readers of a certain age, Spike Jones was right, it ain't blue!) divides the two cities of Buda and Pest, providing magnificent views of Pest from the hills of Buda and spectacular views back of Buda from Pest.

Budapest had buildings that match and exceed the beauty of Paris buildings. The parliament buildings in Budapest are, to my eyes, the best looking in the world.

The magnificent castle in Buda, especially at night, is a picture like few others I've seen; indeed, it's hard to match the castle seen at night from a sidewalk cafe in Pest. Speaking of sidewalk cafes, the cities are evenly matched except the waiters in Budapest aren’t surly.

But Budapest has another advantage over Paris -- the people. Without exception, we found them delighted to try English and even stick with sign language, if necessary, until our wishes were granted. I'm no gourmet, but I ate marvelously well in Budapest, and the hit on the Mastercard was much lighter than the usual thump in a Paris cafe.

Catching up

The difference between now and 1988 is very noticeable. There are actually cars, lots of them, in Budapest these days. It being summertime, naturally widespread roadway construction is going on but I'm told (by a waiter) that much catch-up is needed after 40 years of communism. In 1988, on Sundays, when the stores were closed, their windows displayed all the designer clothes in the world and at fantastically low prices -- the problem was that they weren't there, much less for sale, on Monday at any price, when the stores opened for business!

And there is a lightness in the step and a whistle from the lips that clearly demonstrates a happier people now the hated communists are gone.

Of course we'll go to Paris again. But having seen them both, Budapest is better, much better.

Related Tyee stories:

• Bagged in Paris
  How do you say, 'I'm not an idiot, I'm just tired'?
• Not a Very Nice Day
  The French port welcomes me with blood on the street.
• My Apology to Paris
  Love your city, not your museums.