11 October 2008: Budapest, Hungary

I woke up to sounds of Marvin's roommates getting ready to leave for the weekend, and when I woke up a second time it was just the two of us.

I had made a date with a girl named Gabriella from the previous night, and I was pretty sure that we had agreed to meet at "the plaza at Florian Ter." The first step was to make sure that it was the correct name and that such a place existed, and it did. Check.

We had said we'd meet at 2:00, but what I hadn't counted on was Florian Ter being so big. It's sort of the Central Park of Budapest-- although NOWHERE near the magnitude-- so we weren't talking about just a little square.

To complicate matters further, I had no idea what Gabriella meant by "the plaza at Florian Ter." It could have been the tram stop of the same name, the bus stop of the same name, the underground for the metro stop of the same name, the area just outside the metro stop, or any of a half dozen plaza-ish spots in the actual square.

To complicate matters FURTHER, there were loads of people there and I didn't remember what Gabriella looked like. She had told me to dance with her the previous night, but I had to talk with Marvin to make sure he wasn't getting too bored on account of his just sitting there. We spoke for about 30 seconds, and when I went to find Gabriella I had no idea which was her since EVERYONE was wearing black. So I hadn't really left with a good mental picture of her on account of the abrupt goodbye. I just knew she was cute with brown hair, and that wasn't going to do me much good.

So consider this one a failure. Although, considering that she had a boyfriend and that I had said he could come too, it might have been a touch awkward, anyway.

I went back to Marvin's and we went to Tesco, which was my first trip since Ireland. I got 3 packages of ham and cheese and some bread for 860ft, and Marvin and I both got two one-liter plastic bottles of beer for 490ft-- just over $1.50 each. As Marvin put it, it was "the stuff homeless people drink."

We went back and I had my first of the packages, which was pretty good, actually, and downright delicious when I put it on the bread and toasted it. It was a bonafide panini, yes it was.

At 7:00 I called the girl from the night before that I had left for a while with, and the first thing she said was "What's my name?" Boy, for the life of me I hadn't a clue. Not a single clue. And so she said that wasn't good enough hung up. Just like that.

So I had had two dates for this afternoon and came away empty-handed. Talk about high standards, eh? Apparently in Budapest you need to know what a girl looks like-- Gabriella-- AND a girl's name-- the second girl. Jeez, It's not like I wanted to marry these girls.

I went back to Marvin's place earlier than I had hoped, but took a nap for an hour and a half, which was unbelievable. And when I woke up I actually thought it was a different day. Man was I exhausted.

We went to a club that night that had a 1000ft cover, but I just walked in without paying and Marvin followed. Add to that the fact that the club had half-liters of beer for 99ft-- about 60 cents-- and I was practically going to make money at the club. Well, not quite.

Anyway, the club was the first real club, in the clubbiest sense of the word, that I had been to in Budapest, and with 99ft beers we got drunk pretty quickly. But the problem with Budapest bars is that, as far as I could tell, they're not really a singles scene. I mean, you could tell that practically everyone there was with someone, or at least with a tight group. So you're pretty much stuck with whoever you go with. Just how the scene works, I guess.

It was weird, though, because Marvin kept telling me to go talk to random girls, and I always did, but I'd keep waiting for him to show up and join me and he never did. He just sat there by himself. It was incredibly uncomfortable, to be honest, since I was the guy with the mute and unsocial friend. Not to mention that I was constantly looking over my shoulder to see if he was still there. And, without fail, he was. And I felt really pretty bad about it, this being the second night in a row or him having/being negative fun, and so after a while I suggested we leave and he jumped at the chance. Oops. I hadn't really been serious.

So we left and on the walk home Marvin started walking on cars. I started walking on cars too. Not a good idea when you're drunk.

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Here's the thing about Marvin. He has a girlfriend, and while I know he doesn't want to cheat on her, can't he still talk to other girls? I mean, is that why he doesn't talk, or is he just really that anti-social?

The other thing is that he has long hair, admits that he wears a scarf "all the time," and crosses his legs when he sits down. He's either French or gay, but he claims to be from Germany and claims to have a girlfriend. A girlfriend in Germany who he talks to on skype for literally seven hours a day. I feel like him talking to a girlfriend in Germany on skype for seven hours a day actually serves to confirm that he's gay rather than French, like some sort of paradox. Am I wrong about this?