1 October 2008: Budapest, Hungary

I woke up at 11:00 and brought my wet clothes, which I had washed at Charles' flat, to the hostel to dry them, since he didn't have a drier. The hostel didn't, either, but Szylvia let me hang the clothes on the drying rack.

After this we had a 45 minute conversation in which she explained that I couldn't leave my stuff there after that day because she wasn't working again during the week and whoever else was working might not be so keen. I already knew this.

Then I asked her about the sight-seeing that weekend and about a "surprise" that she had e-mailed me about and said she was planning for me with her boyfriend. I hadn't a clue what it was, but surprises are lovely so I was intrigued. But Szylvia only knows so many words in English and I had asked her about the sight-seeing and the surprise a few times before. The problem is that it makes me sound completely ungrateful for all that she had done for me when the only way I can ask her about the sight-seeing and surprise is by asking "when can we go sight-seeing" or "when can I get the surprise." I wanted to ask more off-handedly, or at least less with a point of getting those two things, but when I tried to ask off-handedly she didn't understand what I was saying because she didn't understand less obvious phrasings.

Honestly, talking with Szylvia was as frustrating as any other part of my first week in Budapest. Her response to every question I had, whether it was about the job or a couch or the surprise or sight-seeing or anything at all, was "I will e-mail you if I know something"-- I never knew what something she was referring to. And, at least for the past few days, she had been mentioning "they" a lot. I never knew if she meant they as in her co-workers or they as in the manager and owner, and when I asked "who is 'they'?" it required another explanation and I had to rephrase it in simpler terms. Like it can get simpler than "who is 'they'?"

Finally, after the painfully redundant 45 minute conversation in which she told me that which I already knew, I set out to see some more of Budapest, since I had had my tipping point the previous afternoon. I rode the tram to the north side of town and was caught without a ticket.

Now, to be honest, I had it coming to me. I hadn't bought a ticket once my entire time in Budapest and I had ridden the tram upwards of 50 times, so it was only a matter of time before they got me.

All I can say, then, is thank God I had done laundry the night before. The fine for riding the tram without a ticket is 6000ft, but since my clothes were drying I was wearing my athletic shorts. They don't have pockets so I wasn't carrying my wallet with me, just 400ft for food for the day.

The guy asked to see my ID or passport and, again solely because of the laundry, I didn't have either of those with me either. So I gave the guy the 400ft and that was it.

(Not that I had 6000ft to give him even if I had had my wallet with me, but he would have taken a couple thousand and he could have taken my information. So, seriously, thank goodness for the laundry. I got off BIG TIME.)

(And, even though he took the 400ft, I had already gotten my tomatos and bananas, so at least I had some food in me. There just wouldn't be any dinner.)

On this day I decided to walk up to Buda Castle, one of the main things to see in Budapest. You can wikipedia it if you want to know more, but walking around Buda Castle-- since I didn't go in-- gave me another realization. The thing about Budapest is that, if you just open your eyes a bit, you get it. I couldn't afford to go into the museums, which was frustrating for me, but Buda Castle made me realize that as long as you take everything in while you're walking you don't need to go inside anything.

You just have to appreciate Budapest for what it is-- namely, a miraculous city on the outside that is unlike any other place I've ever been to.

This realization made me feel pretty good, because I had certainly been appreciating the city for its spectacular buildings and the vibe you get from walking around its streets. But now the fact that I wasn't going inside anywhere sat a bit easier with me. Nothing changed, but I was more satisfied with the time I had spent in Budapest so far.

After a long day of walking-- just what I needed-- I went to a university building that Charles recommended for finding a place to crash. I couldn't find anything, but a dude gave me 1000ft to help with a hostel, if it came to it.

Beate was working at the hostel that night, but I sort of felt like I should give it a rest for a while. The hostel that was 2200ft, though, had been highly recommended by a few people that I met, so I figured I'd give it a shot. Now that it would only be 1200ft for me. So, as it turned out, it DID come to it.

Except there were only three people staying there. Including me. I got the bed anyway, but it was pretty terrible. Like I've said before, I don't mind staying in a hostel if there is company, but to spend money to sleep by yourself is frustrating. And lame as hell.

The girl at the desk recommended two clubs for a Wednesday night, and I picked the one called Club School because it had a dumb name and was near the hostel. I wasn't staying there, but I figured I would at least stop by and say hello to Beate.

So I got to the hostel at around 11:00 and buzzed up, but from the sound of it I had clearly woken Beate up. She asked if I needed a place to crash, which means I could have if I wanted to earlier, but I said I was just saying hello. She said to come in for a bit, but it was clear she was exhausted and I didn't want to keep her awake. So I said not to worry and that was, for all intent and purpose, the end of Beate. Or the End of Beate.

I stopped by Club School but it had a 1000ft cover charge, and there wasn't a chance in hell I was going to pay that. The bouncer pointed me to another club, called Club Raday, which was free and is usually good, but there was hardly anyone inside. I did meet some Americans outside, but they weren't exactly the friendly type. At all.

Then I stopped by a bar called Paris, Texas-- such an obnoxious name I could barely believe it-- and met some more American students. They were nice, and it was fun, but they said two things that brought my night to an abrupt hault.

1) They said that I should have gone to Morrison's, the other club that the girl at the hostel had recommended, which was one of the best places in town and only had a 500ft cover charge.

2) They mentioned Domino's, which is "the best hostel in town by a land-slide." I had been staying at lame, shitty-ass hostels. This Domino's place made me sick.

These two things summed up two of my frustrations with Budapest. The second was simply that I had been spending money on lame hostels with no one around. Even though I probably wouldn't have been able to afford Domino's, or something better than Adagio, the fact that I had been staying at empty hostels was taking a toll on me.

As for the first of those points, I hadn't really adjusted to Budapest Bar Hours. In Ireland the pubs close at 2:00 and so bar hours aren't really so different from Ann Arbor. But the bars and clubs close at 6:00 in Budapest and people don't really go out until almost midnight. Or, if they go out earlier, they nonetheless make it until the early morning hours. And since I was one of the few people in the hostels, I didn't really adjust on my own. This was another frustration.

A third frustration, incidentally, is that Budapest is really one of the few cities where I could have used a guidebook. I like trying to discover a city on my own, but Budapest is so huge that it's very easy to get lost. Not physically, but in the sense of not knowing what you should do or see or how to get the Budapest Experience. And the fact that I don't know a lick of Hungarian only adds to the problem; there's a decent amount of English, but you're lost if you try to read about the history or find out the particulars about Budapest by talking to locals.

(Oh, and the other frustration-- maybe the main frustration-- was the job situation. Which is why I said that finding out about the possibility of a job was what decided how my time in Hungary would go; because it was the big reason why I was dragging along in Budapest.)

So anyway, I hadn't realy done anything in a week and I felt like I needed a jump-start. Sort of like when a contending baseball team makes a mid-season managerial change. The season's been pretty successful and you're winning ballgames, but the team has put it into neutral lately and so you make a managerial change to light a fire under them. You're not making a huge change in the game-plan and you're not changing the roster, because the season has been a success so far, but it's an attempt to light a spark.

My time in Budapest had been successful, it was hard to argue that, but to get that spark I felt like I needed to get out of the city for a bit. I talked to some students on the walk back to the hostel and asked them for "a cool, second-tier city with a big university." The responses I got were Pécs, Szaged, and Debrecen, but Pécs seemed to be everyone's favorite.

And so, just like that, I decided to high-tail it out of Budapest the next morning. Although I deemed it necessary to come back for one final weekend at the end.