Day Three - Sheep's Cheese

Day Three

Left Budapest before first light. Long walk to the Keleti train station underneath sherbet skies. I was a little wary but kept seeing other backpackers. Shadows would peel off of buildings and reveal themselves to be nervous travelers trudging the same way I was. When they heard me behind them, they would tense up. I had become the monster. It was like I am Legend. 

Awesome crescent moon hung in the sky like a blazing wound. 

Lots of statues with sickles in this town. They value work, you see, but every time I see a sickle, I think it's Death. So work equals death! 

Got to a more urban area and it was pretty hopping. Buncha scruffers waiting at bus stops to get to their job at the pigeon factory. A few drunks making transactions in doorways. Nothing threatening. They're building some kind of flyover near Keleti, so there was a lot of zigging plus zagging to get into it. 

It was 6am, and my train was scheduled to leave at 6:40. Plenty of time for Plenty O'Toole. That's me! Thought there'd be a machine where you could just hit a button and get a ticket, but there was a counter, and a lady and no line.

"I'd like a ticket to..."

She held a paper number up to the window and made a mean face. I looked around for a deli-style number 

thing. Found it. Took one and showed it to her - 435.

She hit a button on her counter, and the number "435" lit up on a screen above her.

"I'm 435. I'd like a ticket to..."

There was no one else there.

She said it left at 6:15, which, because of the Number Charade meant I had four minutes. Would it be the right train even? I figured I'd just get on and see. How bad could it be? 

Hauled my pork over there, found the platform tucked away in a corner, and jumped on. There was no "all aboard!" but plenty of chugga chugga choo choo.

Plenty of room. Had four seats and a table to myself. Stashed all my shit so someone would have to carve through my body to get it, put my hat over my face and slept.

Woke up to show my ticket every 45 minutes or so. Nobody spoke a lick of English. Bright, beautiful day. Yellow fields of rape flashed past the windows. I snacked on seeds and drank something called Libra Water. Read more You Can't Win (just astonishing) and dozed to the border. Why did the 6:40 train leave at 6:15? Who can say? I was on it. Was it really the right train?

When the dudes checked the ticket, they'd make that insect crawling across a velvet curtain language sound, and it was like, are they saying, "thank you," or "change at Ronkonkama." Adventure!

Chick came by with a battered cart full of snacks. I bought some Paprika Lays to be polite and to get rid of my forints.

At the border, a cop came on with what looked like an organ grinder's case. The case had a giant stamping device in it. When I pulled out my passport, he rolled his eyes and made his younger buddy take it away to an office. There must be some kind of extra process. Young Cop came back to say "Computer slow. two minute." 

Interpol assured them I wasn't an infamous Pocky smuggler, Young Cop gave me a smile, returned my passport and we were off again.  Across the border -- into Romania.

It was an immediate carnival of color and sensation. It was like the difference between going home for the night or staying and having a fourth drink. Hills dotted with crooked homes, each with their own distinct character. 

Even the border guard was different. All smiles. And the ticket takers! Hysterically friendly paunchy avuncular dudes come to life from Breughel paintings. Shirts unbuttoned way too far. Healthy patch of grey chest hair, amazing bright red leather straps holding their ticket bags on their shoulders. When I offered the first one my ticket, he took it with the delighted expression of someone being offered a wooden spoon of homemade sauce.

I was in love at once. At the first stop, families spilled in noisily. Life and chaos. Steely grandmothers, children scanning the universe for candy, and foal-like college girls heading to the University of Cluj. They were cat's claws on my lustful heart. The Romanian air is a weaponized hallucinogen.

The movie outside the window was all gardens, mansions, immaculate churches with majestic spires, curving pipelines, men with skullcaps and mustaches, and swayback horses pulling carts. Everything weather beaten, everything wonderful.

Rotting old wooden trains, crazyquilt patchwork huts made of multicolored corrugated iron salvage. It was total shack porn. Goats, haystacks, wild dogs, fields of brown corn, nuclear reactor towers, clotheslines, and women in headscarves. 

Long-haired sheep, speckled roosters flapping proudly, bent old women with slop pails, and white horses sleeping in a field of failed sunflowers. Graveyards and hydroelectric dams.  

I drank it all in, a wild feast.

A young girl who I had seen texting on her iPhone earlier came and sat next to me. She was just suddenly there. She asked me what I was writing. She asked me what I was reading. Her name was Alexandra, and she asked me if I were Christian, and she offered me "Romanian plums" from her garden.

They were delicious.

We spent the next four hours talking. She spoke excellent English. When I told her this she said, "hearing this is like having stone removed from my heart!" 

She told me all about the Roma people (she's "half gypsy") and she explained much of what I was seeing to me. The clumps of shacks were "gypsy communes" and the half-finished buildings with beautiful roofs and unfinished walls were "gypsy palaces for celebration."

"The silver material is very cheap. Gypsies like shiny things no matter their worth."

It was the perfect travel experience. Two strangers, she was also alone, comparing notes on their civilizations. They don't have Amazon in Romania, but she had heard of it. All her friends wished they could order from it. They joked about starting their own gypsy version. I suggested the name Romazon.

She said she knew I wasn't from Romania, because they don't sell Libra Water there.

It was the friendliest, most unguarded, fun four hours, eating plums and laughing. I drew a map of the US to show her where Seattle was, and she said my version of the US looked like a dinosaur bone. She showed me interesting cities to visit on the map. 

I bored her with some pictures of Budapest. She showed me some pictures of her dog. A few of them were of her embracing it naked. "Forget these," she said. She wants to be a force for social change and help as many people possible. She was traveling to Cluj as part of a conference of student leaders. Later this month, she's going to Berlin on a scholarship for a course on how to teach diversity studies. Her father is a politician who helps gypsies get cabinet positions.

She said most young Romanians move away. If they marry a foreigner, they move to that person's country where ever it is. She said when she finds a husband, she will ask him to stay in Romania and help her fix it.

At the very end, she called my host in Romania to make sure he took good care of me and to ensure I had the proper directions. Just outstanding random friendship.

We said good-bye at the train station. 

The cab driver was fucking hysterical. I got in, showed him the address, and he was off. "What is with your man Obama? He is a man alone on Syria! Everyone is telling him no! Do YOU think he will do it?"

Funny middle-aged dude with giant sunglasses.

I was like, "I hope not. I don't think anyone wants him to."

Outside, a sweet little valley town rushed by. Shops, towering apartment complexes, bright walls. Giant churches (because Europe).

I gave him the bill that came out of the ATM. It was a 100 leu bill. I want you to leu to me, just for tonight.

A little easier to do the math with this currency. It's, like 3 leu to a dollar, so a 100 is like a $33 bill. Anyway, when he saw it, he was like, "You are all so rich. My god," and he meant it. The cab ride, which has been pretty long was only 9 leu. I got back a giant's fist full of change.

"There's no oil in Syria, so I don't think you will go," he shouted after me. Then he said, "I have gone to this pizza place from time to time!" and he pointed to a place and drove off.

My apartment here is nice with a good view of the Carpathian foothills! The landlord, Cristian, was pleasant and businesslike. Incredibly fancy, brand-new building for professionals. I think Cluj has some money. I think it's the tech-center of Romania.

He showed me where everything was, encouraged me to stay an extra day and headed out. Nice view from the window.

I had planned on sleeping on the train a little more than I did, but I Alexandraed instead, so I was pretty tired, but I was like, "fuck it," grabbed the camera and went out.

The immediate difference is that the streets here are wide, so I could really see everything. Bright, clean, bustling. Soft pretzels everywhere for 1 leu. This is the cheap Eastern European paradise I dreamed of in my youth. Lanky, beautiful boys and girls lounged in straw seats in outdoor cafes. Thin, edgy, beautiful people drinking and looking at one another casually but with knowledge. With plans.

I don't want to be the guy who goes on and on about the sheep's cheese he bought at a farmer's market and moans and smacks his lips at the memory of it. I don't want to be that insufferable guy who wistfully rhapsodizes about the fresh food he bought in a foreign country, but oh my fucking god, did I get some goddamn sheep's cheese to murder over. With plans.

Post Script - Day Two

Woke up around 8pm with the "chuck horrors," the trembling of the American used to regular meals. I had sunflower seeds in the apartment and supposed the little grocery store was still open, but I figured one last tourist trap meal couldn't hurt. I'm not spending very much money on this trip, so one splurge meal a day is cool.

They call Budapest the "City of Baths" because they soak you for a huge bill at all the restaurants.

There was a place I've been seeing all trip from the balcony. All dolled up with Chinese lanterns. I figured if it was open, it would be for me.  It was. The lady tout seated me near two German girls and said, "For this table is extra, since you are next to beautiful ladies." I gave a sort of smile and tried not to look at anyone.

A few moments later, I heard her tell the waiter, "So I tell him his seat is extra since next to ladies." The waiter laughed. I guess when your job is to pull people in off the street, you take your kicks where you can get them.

Ordered the goulash (the thickest I've had!) and the chicken thighs (covered in spices and cream! Outstanding) and wrote in a little notebook I bought in the park. Sketched out a 1,000 forint bill while a weirdo cover of "Don't Dream It's Over" played in the background. Strange slow-core version with an accented choir.

Thought about events I'd forgotten to write down. Buying the little book, and… oh, all the guide books said to look out for a weirdo scam where dudes flip cards on the ground and challenge you to find the queen. Or some shit. The old shell game. The sheep shearer.

I figured that info was outdated, but earlier in the day I had seen dudes playing it in the street, and a group of tourists trying to find the queen. I couldn't believe it.  It was like seeing an animal do a thing you've always read the animal does. Cats get in boxes, let's put a box down, and… he's getting in the box!

The only other scam I've seen is people trying to sell me iPhones. They have a box and something that looks like an iPhone and they say, "iPhone," and I walk away, and they keep trying to sell it to me in their Alka Seltzer fizz language. Either they don't speak English or they don't think I do. No idea how much they cost or what the scam is, beyond their surely being fake.  

This place had real coffee in a real cup, so I drank it all up.

Just wrote and sketched and let my thoughts drift. It was starting to become the trip I envisioned. Like, I wanted to see things, but I also want to write and think.  I've front-loaded the trip with activity, and the second half can be anything I like. I can spend five days in the Carpathian mountains if I want to or find a hop house in Bulgaria and bang the gong around. 

If I want a motorcar, I'll pluck one from the trees. If I want Pretty Polly, I'll take it.

The waiters were playing Good Magyar/Bad Magyar and trying to get me to order extra shit. I was just Ophelia floating in the stream. I knew going in it was going to be the old shell game, the sheep shearer, I wasn't tempted to order any beer or desserts. There's some kind of regional favorite here called, like, The Golumpky Pancake. It's like an old newspaper filled with chalk and covered in Hershey's syrup and witch hazel. I'd tried one the night before. No thenk you.

It took them forever to bring everyone's bill. Maybe they were still trying to figure out how much the "seated next to beauty" upcharge was. The German girls smoked and pretended the delay wasn't bothering them, but it was. A man behind me spoke English in the most…sonorous voice. He was saying the most ridiculous shit.

I wrote it all down. I was dying to see what he looked like, but I was afraid he would see me turn around and stop.

"Being a fat man, and he was a fat man, he kept doubling his bet. He was losing badly, but men his size have tremendous capacity. Not just for food, but for losing. He was happy to swallow his losses like we're swallowing these potatoes."

The waitress must have come up with drinks.

"And here is temptation, yes? The serpent in a form of a lady with a tray. No, I'm sorry, none for us. My young friend has no stamina. Few young people do these days. You are tempting him, though. One can picture dozens of paintings with this theme."

"I saw the most extraordinary building today. It seemed of great importance, but there was nothing really to indicate what it was. My eyes searched it for clues, and I saw several stars of David. It could only be a synagogue. The tiles were really quite wonderful, just extraordinary."

Then they brought the bills and spoiled my fun.  Germans left. The Sonorous Scholar left (sneaked a peek - mid-60s but still dark-haired, weathered face with character, pointed goatee, light blue suit). Didn't get a good look at his "young friend."

Paid and went around the corner to see if the 7-11 was open. Sitting next to the girls with the chick having made such a big deal out of it made me self-conscious about my appearance. I bought a razor and some shampoo. Figured I'd make myself nice and clean for Colonel Kurtz, since I'd be heading down the river in the morning.

Got back to the place and decided the box thing I'd been resting the towels on was some kind of Commie washing machine. Opened it up, and it seemed true. There was a metal wheel with a detachable lid, and all kinds of buttons. I figured, fuck it, I'll throw all my clothes in it and have clean clothes.

There was even some detergent in the cabinet.

Put it all in and went to listen to baseball and plan the trip to Cluj. The machine made noises like it was working, but also some thumping noises. I was like, "Europe, right? Can't make a quiet machine," and went back to my business. Found a ticket to Cluj and slept a little.

The thumping from the machine woke me up, so I closed the door. It was creeping up on midnight.

Around two I woke up again and went to check on the stuff. The box wouldn't open. I had to unplug it and twist the dials to make anything happen. Got it open. My clothes were outside of the wheel, sopping wet and mangled to shit. Holes in everything and a pair of socks destroyed.

They were the San Francisco Giants World Series Champion socks I got on Fisherman's Wharf. They rest now in Budapest. They keep the angels' feet dry now.

The lid you open to put your clothes in the wheel had come detached and fallen in, so the thumping I heard was the lid of the washing machine washing itself. Since there was no lid, the clothes came a'tumbling out, and since the exterior of the wheel was spiky, it grated them all up.

They were still intact, and I'm still going to look like a prince in Bucharest where the standards for clothing are supremely ah-low, but pretty sure this is the last voyage for poor old Vintage brown Arrow shirt.

Hit the shirts with a blow dryer, hung 'em on the balcony, laughed at the idea that it was the mummified hand of St. Stephen that slapped the lid off, started to scare myself, and grabbed another cat nap.

Woke up to the alarm. Showered, shaved, grabbed the stuff off the balcony, put on the driest shirt, shoved the rest in a plastic bag. Gathered up my books, locked the door, shoved the keys through the mail slot and made my way to the train station. It looked like a half hour walk from the apartment, so I gave myself 45 minutes.

Headed to a new country with a backpack of wet rags. Just the way I drew it up. 

Day Two - Monument Park

Day Two

Got up nice and early. I knew from previous trips that Europe closes on Sunday, but I didn't really have any shops I wanted to go to. The plan was just to explore for a few hours and to be sure to make the bus to Monument Park. I did some writing, washed my face and went out.

Streets were cool and deserted. Quiet, still morning light with a slight breeze off the Danube. I went down streets I hadn't tried yet. Brought all the lenses and fooled around changing them on street corners. It was quiet, but not eerily. Got some nice shots of some signs.

For all the exciting sights here, and this is a world-class city to be sure, I wasn't finding a lot of... urban street art. Another goal today was to poke around in some places that weren't on the bus line. 

Around 8am, I started to see people. Traffic and buses. At a stoplight, a car with three old dudes pulled up, and one of them was going nuts. Waving his hands and obviously yelling. But they were all cracking up. It was like he was telling the kind of joke where you talk about how furious you were. His audience loved it. I was changing lenses, so I was only able to get him at, like a 4 on the scale of mock wrath he was displaying. I looks like a still from a movie to me.

Made my way down Rakozi ut to Karoly kt, (which I was calling Carol's Court. I'm certain I'm pronouncing everything wrong here. It's the equivalent of someone asking me directions to the Spock Nettle, I'm sure), and had to dip into the subway to get across the street. This summer, the only way out is in.

There was a little kiosk selling fresh bread and coffee, so I bought some. Coffee came in a Dixie cup. I didn't want sugar, and I waved the girl off when she hovered a bag over the cup, but the bag had milk in it, which I DID want, so I asked her to come back. Who keeps milk in a bag? You're Buda for this one, Pest. 

It just had a white square on it, so I thought sugar, but it was milk all right. She was irritated that I'd asked her to come back. They have no patience for surface dwellers in the land below. I ate a roll and went back up.

Got a little more deserted the direction I was going. I saw a man with his arms outstretched like wings come soaring up to a woman at a crosswalk. She dodged him and kept walking. He was just a wild drunk. He careened around until his hit some kind of metal box in a park, and then he leaned on it. I came upon the Great Synagogue. 

It's pretty hard to photograph. It's huge, and surrounded by tall buildings, so you have to shoot up, but even then... Later, I looked online for pics, and it looks like everyone else had the same problem. It's strikingly beautiful and looks more like a fancy mosque than a synagogue. The locals call it the "Jewish cathedral" since it has a rose window and vaulted ceilings and stuff. It's perfectly Budapest, that mishmash of style.  

In general, if I'm not on a major avenue, it's hard for me to tell I'm on a street here. The roads are all very narrow, so they don't even register as streets to me. My city sense needs to be calibrated a little differently if I'm to escape without getting hit by a car.

Couple times I've had my head up gawping at some gargoyle, think I'm stepping over a bike path, and an Audi will be bearing down on me.

Dipped into a marketplace that was still setting up for the day. People smoking indoors. It was weird to see, since everywhere I've lived for the last fifteen years doesn't allow it. It was like seeing a dog's balls. Like, you forget they have them, since everyone gets their dog fixed. You don't remember that women smoke in small rooms while they fold blankets to sell later in the day.

Fooled around and fell in love with a fountain.

I liked that her toenails were painted black. She has a marble sister with a bunch of wriggling marble fish in her lap. A dude was poking around in the fountain looking for coins and acting all irritated. I remembered the Drunken Condor from a few blocks ago and got out of his way. He stood up on the fountain and pissed in it. The back of his shirt read STAFF.

The clubs are open late here, 5am, some of them, so I'm going to assume he just got done cleaning up broken bottles and was headed home.

Made my way over to the Basilica of St. Stephen. This is the guy from the Heroes Square yesterday, the one the pope dreamed about and said, "I have an extra crown if you want it," to. Apparently his mummified hand is inside. I didn't go. I don't want no centuries-old hand grabbing me, no suh. I ain't shakin' that old hand.

It's funny to think about him like Thing in the Addams Family just scootin' all up and down the dome.

Bunch of cafes were setting up. It's cool to be wander around before everything becomes umbrellas and beer.

Dipped around to a park with a weirdo Soviet monument. I reckon there's some tension here, because some folks are still proud of having served the party. So not everything is tucked away in Monument Park (where I was headed later, never forget)

Scooted over to the Danube where I found the Shoes of the Danube memorial. It's a bunch of bronze shoes lining the bank. Apparently, during WWII, the Nazis put a local Nazi crew called the Arrow Cross party, and they did what Nazis do and rounded up the local Jewry and shot them on the bank of the river. They asked them "please to remove your shoes" before they mowed them down. Their shoes were of value. Their lives were not. 

Pretty terrible, and it's easy to think if it were me, I would have thrown my shoes in the water. Go get 'em Fritz. Hope your own shoes are fins. You want my Skechers, you're gonna have to grow a pair of gills, you dir...ack ack ack.

I'm sure in reality, I would have taken my shoes off, tied them, set them nicely down and smiled for the bullets. Sure I would have been more then ready to see what the riverbed felt like. Maybe there'd be a mermaid making cuttlefish kugel down there.

Seemed like it was getting late, so I headed to the park where the bus picks folks up for Monument Park. Plucked my strings down tiny alleys lined by bullet-scarred buildings. This town's seen some stuff, boy. Thirsty, so I popped into what I've come to discover is the local 7-11.

Bought some sparkling water. The radio was on, and they were having a contest to see who could make the best Michael Jackson noise. This place is obsessed. They DJ would be like "mushky brushky, urzhy zizzy" and then you'd hear MJ's "heee hooo!" and then some normal person would go, "heee hooo!" and the DJ would pitch his voice to sound either excited or depressed. I found it all thrilling. It was very funny.

Drank my bubbles in the park, read more You Can't Win (incredibly cool and funny autobiography about a kid growing up in the Great Depression), and waited for the bus.

Monument Park is where they stuffed all the giant commie statues from back in the day. Like, the Russkies would take a place over and then install enormous colossi to remind folks who rules. They're huge and designed to awe. Most folks wanted them melted after Communism ended, but some folks were like, "Well, they're kind of funny, right? I mean, now they are. They used to be scary, but... let's just stick them way over in a part of the city no one goes to. Can't hurt, right?"

The bus plays hilarious Red Guard marching songs to get you fired up, you rise up into the Buda hills, and when you get there, the first thing you see is a pair of boots from a statue of Stalin.

In 1956, Budapest revolted against their crimson overlords and started off by tearing down a big statue. All that was left were these boots. Of course, I was immediately struck by the parallel to the Shoes on the Danube. Like, this city is always saying, "get out, but leave your shoes."

The Russians showed up and crushed the 1956 rebellion, though. Eventually had to leave in the late 80s, though!

The statues were awesome, but they make you stay in the park for 90 minutes. Loved the first 30. Lay on the floor bored for the last 60. A little German boy threw pebbles in a puddle while his father whispered, "Nein." He never stopped, though. A Hungarian man joined the boy and encouraged him to throw harder.

I leave here tomorrow. Trip is about to get rougher. No more palaces. No more hop on hop off bus. Loooong ride to Cluj, Romania coming up followed by longer ride to Bucharest. This is why you brought the books, Simon. Remember the books. Should be a good opportunity to think and write. Please, lord, let me sleep.

When we got back, took one last jaunt up to where they stash the "ruin cafes" and found some street art at last. I knew there had to be some. I just knew it.

Limped home, heard the clock tower strike three bells and let the sound of the touts calling folks to Sunday paprikash lull me to sleep. I needed to plan my train to Cluj, but I also needed to Budapezzzzzz.

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

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!

Interlude - The Journey

Nine hour flight from Seattle. Connecting now in Amsterdam. Their airport is called Schiphol, which looks too much like "Ship hole" to mean anything else. With all the extra vowels, Dutch always looks like it's meant to be yawned rather than spoken.

They kept us pretty busy on the flight with free movies and a planewide sudoku contest. Constant free sandwiches. Folks watched Iron Man 3, cheeks bulging with cheese. Folks entered numbers into squares with one hand and squeezed packets of mayonnaise onto pickles with the other. I murdered a stack of New Yorkers and started Utz (Bruce Chatwin).

On my last extended trip, I didn't want to be weighed down with books, but I dearly needed something to read. Back then, I would never have thrown a book away, so anything I had with me would have been lugged around as dead weight for three months. So... my girlfriend photocopied a million short stories for me, and had them delivered one of the hostels.

I read them on trains and ships and threw them away. It was a wonderfully random collection of famous stories, contemporary stories, and chapters from books. She illustrated some of the pages. Those I kept.

When they ran out, I would go to used bookstores in whichever country I was in and ask if they had any books in English. They almost always had a shoe box with two or three busted paperbacks. Almost always "sleaze" or children's classics. That's when I first read Call of the Wild.

I didn't buy the porn, but I regret it now. I'm sure they were hilarious, rare collectibles.

For this trip, I brought an entire backpack full of books, but I'll be giving them to used bookstores when I'm done, so someone like Young Simon will have something when they run out of photocopied stories

Sat next to a friendly Aussie on the plane. He slept healthily most of the time. I may have slept, but as usual, I dreamed I was on a plane, so it's hard to know. Here in the Ship Hole, I can't tell if I'm exhausted or excited.

Boarding another plane now for Budapest.  Two hours. I'm staying in a room I booked on airbnb, and I sprangsprung for a car to pick me up. The note I got from my landlord says:

"The driver will be waiting for you at the airport and showing a paper with your name on it. Then my friend Glória will greet you at the apartment around 17:50"

I've been singing Glória like it's pronounced Glue-rea and saying "I think she's got your room key, Glue-rea" and cracking myself up. I'm a dime store Laura Branigan.

Loved seeing all the European faces and clothes as I transferred to the new gate for this connecting flight. Fierce brows and proud expressions. Boys with perms. All the women look like German film stars.

There's a little bodega called V!ZZ!T, and that is making me laugh too. The ! is what they use in writing to represent the "click" sound they use in those clicking languages. It's a supply store for cicadas.
One more flight, and I'll be there.

Eastern Europe - Prelude

Why Budapest?

In 2000, I graduated from college after a semester in London. Since I was there, had a little graduation present money, and didn't have a job waiting for me back in the States, it seemed like the thing to do to travel around Europe.

Because I was precocious, I'd read when I was a boy that the children of aristocrats would be sent on "The Tour" when they finished their studies, and because I was pretentious, I decided I wanted to do the same thing.

The idea was to get a formal education, and then a "real world" education. They went to Italy and drew the stones of Venice. I went to Berlin, ate gyros and oranges, and looked for cool record albums to ship home. They walked around their uncle's vineyards in Florence, I slept in train stations waiting for the internet café to open.

I traveled a corridor from Berlin to Athens, poking around in Prague and Vienna, but everywhere I went, every hostel I stayed in, the cool kids were coming from or about to go to Budapest. Thirteen years ago it was "the new Prague."

What that meant was, a place newly freed from under Stalin's stubby thumb, dirt-cheap places to stay and eat, and fawning locals mad for Snickers bars, Gin Blossoms cassingles, and other trappings of The West. It sounded cool.

I liked Prague (of course!) but there was this idea I had then, and I think it's common, that you've just missed out on something cool. That you've moved to Williamsburg after it was gentrified, that the day you found a pair of Diesel jeans at Goodwill, they started selling them at Target.

So, though, Prague was a million red-brick shades of bridge-covered glory, it seemed (in my snooty mind)  like the Starbucks version of Eastern Europe whereas Budapest seemed like the cool indie coffee place where drunk girls played the harp until everyone got up to sing Bowie songs together on the way to a party in an abandoned machine shop.

I don't really feel that way anymore. Like, I don't think I need to be ahead of any travel trends. I just want to see other places and get a flake of what life is like there. It's essential to see new places to get a broader sense of what it means to be a person, and you need to have a bunch of trips where you fuck up, so you know how to do it next time.

Did I "waste" my first trip to Europe when I was 15? If you measure it by not meeting a girl on the Bridge of Sighs and coming back a painter, then yes. If you measure it by building a foundation so I could take better advantage when I came back at 18, then no. When you travel, you learn about yourself, what you're capable of, what bores you, what you're afraid of, what you like.

You usually have the opportunity to do something very unlike what you usually do, and you can untether yourself completely if you dare, or you can keep one foot in both worlds and just use the sampler spoon. You might also discover you're only comfortable with what you already know and spend the whole time in the hotel watching Dallas. It's all cool. It's all your experience and it all helps with the next time you travel or helps you decide you don't want to.

For this trip, I don't want to check places off on a list of cool places or discover a secret goulash recipe to shock folks with. I just want to surround myself with new stories and new flavors and absorb them to enhance my experience. I'm cool enough with being alone that I don't need to force anything or any connections.

So, it didn't need to be Budapest, but going there felt like a promise kept to my 26-year-old self.

I'll flesh out Young Simon's Tour with castles and a dip in the Danube, and Now Simon will read in café's and make new promises for Old Simon to keep later on.

I also want to take a bunch of pictures, because Young Simon thought taking pictures was sooo Left Bank. That leather-vested tool deserved everything that happened to him. But, I love him anyway, so I'm taking him to Hungary. 

I hope Old Simon will love me the same way some day.