“What a co-incidence,” I said, “That’s my name too.”
“I’ll just get your key.”

Off she hurried. I’m loath to use the world “bustled” because that conjours up images of a rotund B&B owner, wiping on her crisp apron the floury evidence of warm and crusty bread having just been popped into the oven while clucking around her guests like long lost friends. Ms R Water was nothing like that. Ash dripping from her top lip, she hurried through a western-style pub door behind the desk with poodles in tow. “He’s here,” I heard her announce to the gathered staff at the back. I’m sure I heard a celebratory “Whoop”. Dewy-eyed she returned with my key and instructions to follow her to my room.

The journey through the hotel backyard to my room was an adventure in itself. Stepping over dogs, rabbits and, I swear, a mongoose, I nodded sagely when my hostess gestured to a peacock or Guinea Fowl or something (fauna and flora have never been my strong point, so take that mongoose thing with a pinch of salt) and told me that they were likely to walk on my roof tonight and wake me up. As it turned out they didn’t. What did wake me up – repeatedly and relentlessly – was a rooster that decided to “cock a doodle doo” himself to a hoarse whisper on the half hour, every half hour from 2am, just outside my window. Walking to my car the next morning, grumpy from my interrupted sleep, I spied the smug rooster, well, let me call a cock a cock — I spied the smug cock under a nearby tree. Its night of hard work had worn it out, and so it now lay in a deep slumber of its own. I tiptoed over to it, leaned forward and positioned my mouth more or less where I imagined its ear to be. Or maybe it was its ass. Anyway, I leaned toward a tightened orifice. At the top of my lungs I yelled “BOKKE”. Nothing. No dramatic flurry of feathers or that useless panicky thing cocks do with their wings. Zilch. Unsatisfied by my experience with the cock, but quietly pleased at scoring a point over nature, I stood and turned toward my car to see a flutter of frilly curtain in the office window. I gave the spying receptionist a wave and a cheery smile, threw my room key at the mongoose and hopped into my car to start the dusty trek to Potch.

I was in the area as part of my ongoing attempt to get a handle on South African arts festivals. When a small town like Potch stages Aardklop, which tens of thousands of people flock to in the name of the arts, then it’s worth taking a look to see what they’re doing right and what I can learn from them for the benefit of my own employer.

Before arriving, a journalist told me of the outcry that ensued after he reported that Aardklop was like a giant “Kerk Bazaar”. That may be a little harsh, and a comparison that conveniently ignores the cultural passion that runs through the festival. But I can see how he arrived at that description. The massive “Fees Terrein” is basically a patch of lawn enclosed by several streets that have been shut down, giving way to marqueed and caravanned food and craft stalls. While impressive in its size, there’s not much by way of variety. It seems that sosaties are big in Potch. Lamb sosaties, beef sosaties and chicken sosaties. Sosaties on a bun and then, cunningly and to give the illusion of choice, two sosaties on a bun. Sosaties made and sold by a staggering number of NG Kerks and their derivative offshoots (Reformde, Gereformde, Hergereformde and so on). Others braaied on long rows of sizzling grids and sold by means of signs promising that, of all the sosaties in Potch, these are the best — until the next few steps, anyway. Now don’t get me wrong, I love sosaties as much as the next man. But a slice of Bovril toast would have been good in between. They could even sell it on a stick if it makes someone feel better.

And then there was “Mr Mushroom”. Now Mr M is a creative thinker. Obviously well aware of this crowd’s love of food on a stick, he wacked up not just one two or three, but four stalls selling what can only be described as a crumbed mushroom sosatie. Genius.
In case you’re wondering what has precipitated the national stick shortage, I can reassure you that, after Aardklop, supplies will return to normal.

So the food is all well and good, but what of the art? What indeed. I counted a healthy 98 productions on the Festival programme – a good mix between music, theatre, lectures and dance with a sprinkling of children’s theatre thrown in. And there were lots of recognisable names on the bill, such as Sharleen Surtee Richards, Lionel Newton, Frank Opperman, Zane Meas and Chris Chameleon. There’s also powerful, touching and tear-jerkingly beautiful work, like the Lara Bye directed Yellowman. But, and this is likely to be a contentious observation, as with the ABSA Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees in Oudtshoorn, it’s not these 98 productions that give the festival its identity. It’s the multitude of music stages that spring up around town like mushrooms (I told you Mr. M was good). It’s the devastating truth of many of these Festivals that the arts take a back seat. In the front are a procession of pretty boy Westlife wannabees, singing and strumming songs that, to my ear anyway, all blend into one. Now I love live music. I really, really love it. When it is performed by the real deal – non-plasticky South African artists with genuine talent. And it’s not a language thing. I count Karen Zoid, Koos Kombuis, Chris Chameleon and Valiant Swart among my all-time favourite acts, regardless of the language in which they sing. So there’s nothing more depressing to me than stepping out of a mind-blowing performance by Valiant Swart, who I saw playing to a paltry audience of about 20 people in Oudtshoorn earlier this year, and coming face to face with a 5 000 strong crowd weeping over the Cambells and that musical abomination Japie or Gawie or whatever his name is (you know, the one with the hair who massacres Bryan Adams’s songs. If you don’t know him, you certainly know the type). It’s just wrong.

Now I’m not suggesting that festivals should swim against the tsunami of populism. It is what it is. If the masses want to flock together to watch Kurt Darren and Ghapi (that’s the guy) then they must do that and they will be urged along by mindless television talent searches, which, by the way, I love. No-one said I had to be fair or consistent. Salivating big record companies will milk the opportunity and achieve stratospheric CD sales. Sponsors see all the commotion and pay a premium to put their brands in the heart of the experience. Everyone’s happy and that’s all fine. But when that’s the dominating feature of a gathering of people, then you’re not at an arts festival with some music. You’re at a music festival with some arts. So let’s call it that.

Some will argue that what happens on music stages counts as the arts. And they are probably right, especially if you apply a broad definition of the arts that covers anything that is an expression of self, be it on canvas, through song or words. But I’m not talking about philosophy here, I’m talking branding. If you’re staging an event, you should call it something that reflects either the prevailing impression that is created of what you are, or it should describe what you want to be. I think too many events in South Africa pass themselves off as “Arts Festivals” to loosen the purse strings of those who want to get behind the arts. But in staging the event, they tend to default to the crowd-pleasing (read “ticket selling”) shows that stretch the definition.

That said, I have the utmost respect for the men and women who run other festivals in this country. I’ve met a lot of them and they’re constantly under the terrifying triple-whip of funding, logistics and ticket sales. They tend to do it with aplomb and passion, which is why it works. And my hat goes off to the sponsors too who are under increasing pressure to get “bang for their buck” and find a way of moving money off massive sport budgets to the arts. Between them, the major festivals and their sponsors are responsible for tens of millions of rand finding its way into the pockets of our artists, writers, directors and producers and anyone who gets on a stage in front of an audience deserves a cut. Yes, if I’m being honest, even Ghapi. Maybe.

And while on the subject of honesty, a note to the owners of the Rapid Waters Hotel. May I suggest a name change? There was nothing rapid or watery about where I stayed. Let’s be honest, it wasn’t very hotel-ly either. Since we’re all on a learning curve, here’s a tip. In Grahamstown there’s a guesthouse called “The Cockhouse”. I’m sure they’ll let you use the name.

THE air was crisp, the ground soggy as I tumbled through the open doors of the rickety yellow bus, onto the muddy pavement.

I looked around. An empty warehouse behind me, some houses in the distance. No sign of human life. I was 9000km from home and about to walk among the nightmares of some of Hungary’s millions of Cold War survivors. Clutching my map I made for the giant brick wall that marked the entrance.

A few days earlier I’d thought about how stereotypically eastern Europe Budapest is. It’s almost as if the architects, residents, restaurateurs, border guards and hotels have all conspired to make sure that it is everything that your imagination expects it to be. If you feel like you’re stepping into the middle of a Bond film set in the Cold War, it’s because everyone wants you to.

Having said that, if you can forgive them the weather, the mafia-controlled taxi drivers and surly service staff, the country is very travelable.

There are plenty of trinkets to blow your euros on; the city is relatively safe for the late-night map-clutching tourist; and the public transport system is quick, cheap, clean and efficient once you get past the indecipherable station names and Romanian buskers resident in the subways.

But back to my trip out into the hills around the capital. All my maps had an intriguing arrow pointing west-ish of the city, labelled Szoborpark (Statue Park, for those who battle with Hungarian — and just about everyone except for the Hungarians does), the implication being that it was too far out of town to bother detailing the route. A bit more reading and I learned that the park was the Hungarian equivalent of the Apartheid Museum, a dumping ground for the sinister, overbearing statues favoured by the Soviet regime when the country was still on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain. By placing it on the outskirts of the city, the residents were making a clear statement about their past: it’s gone, but not forgotten.

On this day I was the only person in the park, the sense of creepiness intensified by tinny communist anthems echoing from old speakers. The entrance comprises a pair of dramatic gates flanked by a statue of an open-palmed Lenin and the park is laid out along a neat path lined by all the statues that used to preside over the streets and public avenues of Hungary.

And the communists did like their statues. There are dozens of them — all deathly serious and most with triumphant fists aloft. The fact that they have all been exiled to the outer edge of the city makes it a strangely comical sight — and one can’t help feeling slightly sorry for the subjects of the statues, as one might a former dictator toppled from his pedestal and made to mix once more with the people he oppressed (it is almost always a “he”.)

While its location is a clue to the horror these images hold for the average Hungarian, what I found most unsettling was that people had bought houses right on the edge of the park, with windows overlooking the collection of former dictators and calls to communist glory. What horror they must feel each morning when they step out to pick up the morning paper and bottle of milk. Perhaps they shrug it off as part of growing up and moving forward.

I found the whole experience slightly surreal, statues presiding stony-faced and humourless over an empty, muddy field, probably slightly bewildered at their fall from grace.

For a country that gave us Rubik’s Cube, the ballpoint pen and the helicopter, the Hungarians are surprisingly uncelebratory. It’s as if everything is just a bit too much trouble — and this is as true of the five-star hotels as it is of the restaurants and metro ticket offices. I stayed at the boutique Andrassy Hotel, a member of the Small Luxury Hotels of the World group, which has very classy rooms at a relatively reasonable rate. A hotel’s location is usually one of the most important factors when choosing where to stay and the Andrassy satisfies; it is on the Pest side of the river just a short stroll to the nearest metro station or a relaxing wander through tree-lined avenues which will get you to the heart of the city.

It was a comfortable base, and quite often a welcome relief from the cold and hardness of the city. The food in the hotel was disappointing, though — congealed scrambled eggs and hard-centred potatoes didn’t give me a reason to get out of bed in the morning.

Luckily my self-guided walking tour of Budapest gave me reason enough. Unquestionably it is by travelling on foot that one gets the best feel for a city, and this one is fascinating. Despite Statue Park’s best efforts at resettlement, there are still reminders of the country’s communist past with every step — the most obvious being its architecture, usually stern and full of foreboding. The austere and unrelenting Military Court of Justice gave me goosebumps as I walked past, and I found the Hungarian National Museum simply too intimidating to go near. More tranquil, but slightly sinister, is Margaret Island, a 2,5km-long island in the middle of the Danube. I had an eerily quiet walk along it, a stroll that took nearly an hour with just the occasional bicycle or bus rushing past.

Equally sedate but less chilling — in more than one sense — are the famous Hungarian baths. You will have seen, in most photos of eastern Europe, pictures of elderly men playing chess in a swimming pool. These pictures are usually taken at the Szechenyi baths housed in a stunning neo-Baroque building opened in 1913. The city was recovering from a snowstorm when I decided to go for a swim in the Baths, and I did question my sanity as I stepped out from the warmth of the Andrassy to trek down the icy main road.

After navigating the stern bureaucracy at Szechenyi’s entrance — a surly exchange of money for a grubby ticket and a shrugged answer to my questions about what to do next, I slipped on my hired swimming costume (at the time it seemed like a good idea), ventured outside and lowered myself into what is essentially a steaming swimming pool. It’s slightly bizarre sitting in a pool, surrounded by snow, watching someone play chess, but that’s what I did for an hour or two, together with a few dozen locals and Americans.

The most challenging part of a journey to Hungary has to be the language — it is notoriously difficult to learn, belonging to the Finno-Ugric language family, which includes Finnish and Estonian. Its closest relatives are several obscure languages spoken in Siberia. All of this makes travel in the country slightly exhausting, but when a waiter puts a bowl of steaming chicken in front of you on a snowy day, you’ll forgive him the last three meals of unspeakable innards and off-cuts you were served after pointing to something at random on the menu.

The language becomes largely irrelevant when, sitting in a restaurant called Fatal, you observe someone being served a giant bowl filled with Lung in Sour Sauce. Bill please!

Hungarians are generally unadventurous in their cuisine and it’s a case of paprika with everything. If you enjoy Gulyas — a peppery soup with sour cream, beef and potatoes — you’ll be fine. If you don’t, you’ll be hard-pressed to survive. Unless, of course, you clamber through the cowardly tourist’s escape hatches of Burger King, Pizza Hut and KFC.

Budapest is, in most respects, a fascinating city. It is relatively inexpensive and is one of those places you’ll never regret visiting. Unless you eat the lung. In which case you deserve whatever you get.