26 September 2008: Budapest, Hungary

What a beautiful day.

I went for a walk around town and made my way across the river into Buda for the first time to get some falafel for 490ft.

(Buda and Pest are on different sides of the Danube and were separate cities until the 1800s. They both retain distinct characteristics, with Pest being the main commercial area and Buda being the more artistic area, although I have yet to see that side of the place. There's your history lesson for today.)

After lunch I came back to Pest to try to find a couch. There are multiple universities in the city, but nothing even close to a campus-- or to any one place where students are likely to hang out. No common building or common area, just academic buildings all over the place. And student housing all over the place, too.

It might astound you to hear this, but even I fail to score a couch once in a while, and in a city like Budapest that's bound to happen. Plus, I figured that on my first real night in Budapest it would be wise to be in a hostel anyway.

So I went to the 2250ft place but it was all booked. Then I went to the 2200ft place and the cheapest bed they had was now 3200ft for the night. So I decided to go to Borocco Hostel, the place where my job was going to be, to show the owner that I was committed to the place. Smart planning, I thought.

I took a nap for 45 minutes-- totally unfulfilling, I might add-- and then went to meet Laura and Neil, the American and her Irish boyfriend, for dinner.

I was 20 minutes late and was worried that they had left without me-- since it was Laura's birthday, thus making me mostly irrelevant-- but they had overslept their nap and so weren't even ready to go when I got there.

Instead of dinner, though, Neil wanted to find a bar immediately. Fucking Irish. So we put dinner on hold, which was bad, but Neil bought me two shots of tequila and two beers, which was good.

Finally we got dinner-- falafel for 600ft-- but by this point the night was just about over. The problem with going out with Laura and Neil was that, since they are together, they don't care about anything more than just sitting at a bar and having a few drinks. That's lovely, it really is, but the whole thing was more than a bit underwhelming for me, to be honest. I wanted to go to a club, or at least to a bar where you moved, and Neil was indifferent, but Laura absolutely refused. I'll tell you, with the one of them needing to go to a bar constantly and the other one refusing to go to a club, that pretty such sets the plan right there.

Anyway, despite the lovely company-- and they really are wonderful people, the two of them-- it was a pretty boring night. Home by midnight and, in a sense, a waste of the 2300ft I paid for a hostel. And a waste of my first Friday in Budapest. Such is life.

One final note about each:

When we went to the bar, Neil handed me two condoms he had come across during the day. Not like either one was close to being used, but still a nice gesture. He's a good dude, despite my first impression.

Laura, on the other hand, talks to me like I'm 18 years old and this is my first time abroad. I mean, she uses baby tones with me-- actual baby tones-- and it is so aggravating. I wish I had a quote, but you'll have to take my word for it. She's definitely a sweetheart, but a rather condescending sweetheart.