Day One - The City of Baths

Day One

This is an impossibly beautiful city architecturally. Because they've been conquered by so many major empires, they have the advantage of centuries of styles and artistic movements from everywhere. So, it's like someone mixed up LEGOs from Renaissance, Moorish, and Art Deco playsets and dumped the pail all over the city.

Everywhere you look it's crazy domes and leering gargoyles and soaring towers. Some are renovated, and some are giant, blistered, faded heaps. The eye is constantly drawn to detail. There's the urban decay I love, smoke-blasted caryatids, neon signs with letters hanging free, but also rewarding, preserved glory -- sudden glittering mosaics high up on a bright pink building in the middle of nowhere.

I took a quick shower (no shampoo provided!) and went out in search of coffee. I hit an ATM first. It looks like $100 is 22,000 forints. I've told all my friends my "forint currency" joke, but I'll tell you too. Can't get enough of it. So funny to me. I'm in a forint country. Hee haw, there I go again, up to the ceiling.

The symbol for the forint is HUF for "Hungarian Forint," so I've been calling them "hufflebucks."

Once before, in Iceland, I used an ATM, and I had no idea what the Krona was in relation to the dollar, so I just hit a button, and found out later I'd taken out $300 bucks. This time I knew to look for whatever was close to 22K. One of the options was 20, so I struck! Not a moment to lose! A single 20,000 bill came out. Was it going to be hard to cash? Probably!

I figured paying for coffee with the equivalent of a $100 bill would piss off even the happiest Magyar, so I looked for something to crack it on, which, here in the Beverly Hill of Budapest, was no problem. Place was swarming with touts hawking Hop On/Hop Off bus tours. I bought one, and my day was set. He was happy to make the sale.

I love "tout" as a noun.

The city is doing well. This is clearly the result of being "the new Prague" (see issue #1!). So, there are lots of construction projects. Cranes be swivelin' and tattoed giants be huckin' pavestones. One curly wolf pushing a wheelbarrow of bricks looked exactly like a "torturer" from central casting.

I love "torturer" as a noun

As a result, some of the streets are all tore up, so I had to take a little tunnel. At the end of the tunnel was a little coffee place. I had small bills and a headache. It was time to get rid of both of them.

In my mind, I wanted a hot cup of coffee to walk around with, but they don't do that here. You get a thimble full of espresso or you get a thumb full of "get lost." I took the espresso, and I ordered a random roll listed as "dios brios." That had to mean "today's bread" or "bread of the day" but I kept saying it to myself like an upset Spanish maid. Ay yi yi, dios brios, senior. The men on the horses, they are coming back!

It was some shitty raisin thing, but it looked good, and that's what was important. Thus fortified, I made my way past an elegant McDonalds and a beautiful statue of Hermes to a parky area called Erzabet ter. I liked thinking Hermes had run from Grand Central Station to here.

Erzabet means "Elizabeth" by the way. Common name around here! It's pronounced Urzh-uh-bet, but I've been saying it like, 'ere's a bit. Erzabet o' fun! I guess what's her blood, the one that bathed in all them virgins was Erzabet Bathory. 

There was a little park fair with ladies selling gingerbread shaped like witches, and men selling beautiful leather purses and bags. No man bags. Some of the gingerbread was shaped like leather purses as well. A bathroom was locked and had a sign on it that read "WC Okok" 

Okok must mean "out of order," but it's funny that it looked like ok, ok. I guess two ok's cancel each other out and mean "not ok"

Found the area where the Hop On Bus lived, and I hopped on, and the city laid itself bare to me. Endless, heartbreaking avenues of European glory. The decadence of Paris, the practicality of Berlin, the colors of St. Petersburg, the KFCs of Kentucky. 

It ain't total chaos, but it ain't the orderly layout of Manhattan. The bus route looks like someone dropped some tangled ear buds on a map, traced it and turned the ignition. This is the way we're going. But this is crazy. It's my bus and we'll go in whatever crazy way I want, so go sell tickets, ya tout.

First stop was an opera house dedicated to Franz Liszt. He apparently made people crazy. Like, he would come to town, and women would lose their minds. Before Elvis, before the Beatles, there was Lisztomania. I pictured his name in giant red letters.

I didn't get off. There sure was plenty to see, and you weren't allowed to stand up on the bus, so pictures were hard, but I figured the glamour of this bus plan would be to use it to scout out neighborhoods, hop off, then walk back, explore on foot, then hop right back on. Genius!  

So, we passed the House of Terror, which was a sad, haunted blue and gray building where the Nazi party used to party and where the Commie police had their headquarters when the city was red. So, it was a prison and a torture house, and an all around shitty place to be. It's a museum now, and you can see all the terrible things people do to people. Not interested. 

Like, the United States has a horrible history. The whole country is built on a cursed Indian burial ground, and the map is full of cigarette burns marking civil rights massacres, but we do our citizens the favor of pretending it never happened. I just can't imagine what it would be like to be an old European and know what your neighbors did in the war and the terrible times after and what they needed to do to survive. Like, it would be weird to see the kids of the guy who reported on you to the secret police.

Then we rolled up on Heroes Square

Cool place commemorating when the pope dreamed that Archangel Gabriel told him to give Stephen of Hungary the crown. Stephen had sold the most subscriptions to Christian Magazine, and that was the reward. Cool, open plaza with some beautiful statues. The first thing they told us about it was that Michael Jackson had filmed a video here. It's the one where he's a giant statue.

Earlier in the day, I had seen a shrine to MJ. It was a tree in a corner of Erzabet ter (ter means "square" ya dig?) He was cool, I guess, but he was no Franz Liszt. He sure inspired folks to put his face in a daisy and nail it to a tree, though.

  I hopped off in the Square and walked back to the opera house. It was... a long walk. It seemed so short on the bus. I'm very glad I did it, because when you dip down small streets, you see weird shit like tiny doors in the sides of buildings and strange signs beckoning you to join basement poker games, and real people. Real Hungarians walking their dogs and carrying bags of groceries. Old women in house dresses. And everywhere, everywhere, fascinating architectural detail. Chipped statues, overdone Byzantine facades, everything, everything. Got some great snaps.

Snap!

Also got exhausted. Hot day, terrible sleep the night before. So the whole hop off and trudge back plan worked on paper, but the execution was... nope, not going to complain about it. It was awesome. I filled myself with images and feeling. I saw a boy in a shirt that read "I cannot live without shocking colors," I saw a boy in red pants smoking at a cafe. I saw a statue of a skeleton holding a man's skull, I saw an enormous crew of Germans drinking on the sidewalk and smiling with foam in their mustaches.

Kept seeing shit. Couldn't see enough. Got a little beauty fatigued. Like, if everything is amazing, then nothing is, but... turned a corner to see an amazing Art Deco theatre. They have everything.

Hopped back on the bus and kind of hit the wall. I wanted to max out my ticket, but it was maxing me out, so I just let the city flow around me and took in parks and mansions and tree-lined avenues. People laughing, people talking, a man selling ice cream. Singing Italian songs.

Palaces and castles and the least advertising I have ever seen in a city. Is there an ordinance against it? I've never been less hit with demands that I buy a phone or the internet or an insurance. Why so little? 

Oh, that's been something. My phone doesn't work here, so I'm going six or seven hours without... looking at my social media or my email. It's a kind of detox. I went through withdrawal at first, but got over it pretty quickly.

Though, the length of this entry belies the need for something. Some connection.

Got some fried rice at The Citadel. We crossed the bridge into Buda. Turns out I'd been in Pest the entire time. The rule, the driver said, was if you can see a hill, you're in Buda, if it's flat, you're in Pest. This appeared to be true. Nice panoramic view of everything from up there.

 They have their own Statue of Liberty here. It's a chick running with a shield over her head. She doesn't look like she's protecting herself with it, though. It looks like she's bringing it to cover you. I liked that idea very much. Like, our Statue of Liberty is kind of a sedentary lighthouse in comparison.

UPDATE: have since learned the "shield" is a palm frond. Sure doesn't look like it to me! But, that's what it is. Guess I'll make my own statue!

 Learned about a dude who climbed the hills to try and get the pagans to hunt Easter eggs, but the pagans preferred to stuff him in a barrel and roll him down to the Danube. He drowned and died, so the church thought he was awesome. That's how you do it, evangelists. You go up there, ask those witches and pine cone sniffers to be Christian, and you let them kill you in some weirdo way. That is exactly how it's done.

Then we got back to something I recognized, and I hopped off, grabbed some crocodile-shaped crackers and went back to my sleeping silks. I thought about Gloria coming back to check on me, knew darkness, and got the first healthy, natural sleep of the trip. Dozed through a golden afternoon.

Woke up at 8:30. Had a coupon for an 8:45 boat ride. Grabbed my jeans and made it to the docks with thirty seconds to spare.

Beautiful night. Perfect breeze. Happy English ladies having a hen party. Boat was infested with enormous spiders. It was terrifying.

Got some good shots of the Parliament all lit up, though,

Fled the spiders. Got ripped off at a late-night dinnery. The menu said gnocci, but it sure looked like spaetzel to me!!, came back here, imagined Gloria coming back to see if I'd brought any escorts up here, knew darkness, and woke up ready for Day Two. The time difference is such, that I was able to listen to a live baseball game back in the States while I wrote to you.

Too,
Long