Boots on the Ground

Day Zero

Got some sleep on the connecting flight, but made sure not to miss the free sandwich. It was on something called Volkorenbrood, which was amazaaing. So fresh! So wheaty. I was almost ashamed how much I loved it, siphoning up every crumb. KLM Dutch Airlines has some style, boy. Their water cups have little relief tulips, wooden shoes, and bicycles on them. The holy trinity of the Hollandverse.

The food on the big flight was good too. The next time I hear a comedian hassle plane food, he's getting heckled.

We busted through some clouds, I busted through five chapters of You Can't Win (Jack Black) and Budapest appeared. Airport isn't quite near the city, so my first view was rural villages and fields. Every roof was orange or red. Very pretty, and probably looks exactly as you imagine, reader.

Stuck on the plane for a bit, so I messed around with the guidebook. Hungary was all cavemen, and then the Roman fucking Empire was like, "I'll have me some of you, me lad." So, then it got all the benefits of that -- Christianity, pizza, literacy, hygiene. Then no lesser entity than Attila the fucking Hun came roaring in, and the Romans were like, "We do not have time for this mess. Just take it."

So, it was Hun Headquarters was a while (the guidebook was like, "do NOT think this is why it's called Hungary, there is NO connection." Seemed really sensitive about it), but Atilla died on top of a pile of slave girls, and then no more diminished mortal than Suleimon the Magnificent gave the place a good old Turkish snatching, and it was all his.

I loved all this, because it's not like it was: "a bunch of tribes got their shit together and made a country." It was massive names from history personally coming in to regulate. It was like Circus of the Conquering Stars.

Then the Turks were like, "this place is pretty awesome, let's take all of Europe," and Vienna was like, "how about you take none of Europe instead?", and beat the shit out of them. Slapped the whole Turkish army between two slices of Volkorenbrood, and shipped 'em back to the automat.

The Turks gobbled off all the way back to Turkey, and Hungary was its own place again. Don't know what happened next, because the hairy Magyars next to me finally got up, and I was able to exit the plane.

I was looking forward to taking a picture of my visa stamp, but there was no customs agent. No form to fill out either. It's tougher to get into Canada. Just grabbed my stuff and zipped over to the exit. I was met by an old woman holding a clipboard with my name on it. Her own name was Erzebet.

She and her husband drove me to my room in a mini-van. Awesome drive. Swirling images of domes and towers and columns and factories. Men practicing archery in a field, a man with his face in his hands leaning on a collapsed wall, a weird collection of ancient airplanes on display.

As we got closer, it was A CITY, streams of colorfully dressed people descending into subways and buying flowers and tripping on cobblestones. This place is NOT on a grid, so it was constant wending and warping around enormous, stone buildings, then shooting down narrow streets lined with cafes and shops.

The radio was on, and Erzebet wanted to sing, you could tell, but she thought it would bother me, so she was whispering the lyrics to all the songs.

There were roughly ten thousand things I wanted to photograph, and I tried to mark down some street names to come back, but the language is impenetrable. And, like, something I thought was the name of a street would just mean, "Laundromat" or something, so I'll never find it again.

The room I booked on airbnb flooded, so they upgraded me to a palace. Mr.and Mrs. Erzebet were paid and received a Five Euro tip for their pains. They dumped me off with the famous Gloria (which is the alias that she's been living under), and I was taken to Vaci utca.

Utca means "street", it's usually just abbreviated with a u. This particular street is apparently the Bourbon or Duval or 5th Avenue of Budapest. I think they were surprised when I hadn't heard of it. It's very pretty but also tourist central but also right on the shores of the Danube.

Here's the view from my window

That clock tower makes with the bing bong every hour.

Gloria was all legs and pink cellphone and registration book. She told me the wifi code, warned me not to bring escorts back to the room, said, "I hope you are to be happy with your choose," and was gone.

I am happy with my choice, Gloria. Thank you.

Journey over! Trip can officially start.

I had about an hour of light left, so I grabbed the camera and ran out. No plan, just figured I'd wander until it got dark. Zipped over to the Danube which is just... amazing bridges! Castles hewn into the cliffside shore!

Ran around like a bag of cashew nuts, and realized I was overdoing it. Exhausted, so I let one of the tourist places take me by the arm and feed me goulash (thin!) and a pork cutlet (breaded!) and went back up to my chambers.

Woke up with a caffeine headache that's crossing my eyes, so first thing today - Operation Find Where They Keep the Coffee in This Crazy 'Burg!