30 September 2008: Budapest, Hungary

I was woken up at around 10:00 by the cleaning lady, who made a completely unintelligible sound with an accompanying international sign for sleeping and pitter-patter hand motions. I didn't have a clue what she was trying to say, but I was too confused to sleep any more.

I stepped into the hallway and the woman was still there. She made more unintelligible noises and more of the same pitter-patter motions. I guessed that she was trying to tell me it was check-out time, but she was just making the moaning noises and the pitter-patters. She was basically Helen Keller and Nell rolled into one. Tree in the wind...

(That was a "Nell," the movie, joke. You probably didn't get it, but I'm OK with that.)

You really have to hand it to the Griff Hotel, though. Not only are they a halfway house, but they also hire out their work from mental institutions. Good for them.

I tried to cook the rice but there weren't any pots in the dungeon kitchen, so I went to reception. The guy at the desk said to ask in the hotel restaurant, and the lady in the restaurant said to check the kitchens on the residential floors. So I walked around the entire place and found one pot in the entirety of Griff Hotel, and it was already being used. I tried to ask the guy using the pot if there were more pots somewhere, but I didn't know the word for pot. So I just kept pointing at the pot, hoping he would say the word, but all he would say was "mine" over and over again. I was getting nowhere.

(By the way, if you're wondering why I thought the place was a halfway house, part of it is that the rooms were so prison-like. I mean, they really were. But the other part is that half of the hotel-- the halfway house part-- consists solely of fat, grumpy, middle-aged men who walk around in their underwear and probably are unemployed. Not exactly a Hilton.)

I decided to take the rice to the hostel, and luckily Szylvia was there and she let me use the kitchen. I couldn't leave any leftovers because I wasn't supposed to be using the kitching in the first place, so I cooked everything and ate 500 grams of rice, four eggs, and a jar of salsa in about half an hour. Afterwards I felt sicker than I have ever felt in my entire life. No kidding.

(By the way, if you're wondering, the manager hadn't let Szylvia go to the interview and Szylvia hadn't followed through with quitting, since now that she wouldn't be getting hew new job she still needed money. Sort of lame to not follow through with the threat, but I understand needing money. So I was OK with it.)

Szylvia said that the owner was coming in that afternoon and that he was nice. I figured that since the manager had been decidedly not nice maybe I would give it a go with her higher-up. I was pretty desperate for anything at this point.

So I waited in the hostel for three hours. And when those three hours had passed nothing had happened and the owner hadn't shown up. And this was where it suddenly occured to me-- I HADN'T DONE ANYTHING IN BUDAPEST.

This was the kick-start I needed. Sort of like the kick-start I had gotten with Neil and Laura and the kick-start I had gotten when I found out I wasn't getting the job, but now it was serious. I had to do something with myself or I was going to go crazy.

I went to Adagio Hostel to say goodbye to Neil and Laura, who were leaving to go back to Ireland that night, but they weren't around. I was in absolutely no mood to sit around more, so I left them a note saying goodbye and left. Poor form, I admit, but it had to be done.

Except that by this point it was already late in the day. I didn't have much to do other than walk around, but I had already "walked around" this part of Budapest countless times and it would take me too long to get somewhere new.

At this point, I was beginning to lose it out of sheer frustration. There isn't much more that I can say that I haven't already, but I wrote in my notebook, "so frustrated with myself--> waiting for job to turn up I did nothing--> now have no job and have NOTHING TO SHOW FOR IT--> Budapest tipping point."

I think that about sums it up.

I went back to the hostel and Szylvia said that she would take me sight-seeing over the weekend, which put me at ease a bit. Even though it was still a few days away, and even though I had learned yesterday that maybe I shouldn't count on things like that. Oh well. In principal it was a nice idea.

i went to the Griff Hotel to get my stuff from the storage room-- and was pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn't stolen-- and then went back to the hostel for one final check to see if the owner had shown up. He hadn't, but Szylvia said that I could crash at the hostel that night if I needed to. It was a nice offer, and I would have taken her up on it most other nights, but I felt like if I stayed at the hostel again I would literally explode. I needed some energy/excitement/challenge, and I needed to stay with a student.

Well, it wasn't really so very much of a challenge. I had met a student, Charles, the night before who said I could crash at his place the next night-- the current night, that is-- so all I had to do was call him.

But, since this is Hungary, everything is a challenge.

I obviously don't have a phone and neither did Szylvia, so I went outside to find a pay phone. But the phone ate my change. So I had to ask for some more change, since I was out, but I didn't know the word for change. Nor did I know the word for phone, but it's easier to make a sign for that. Except no one would let me use their phone until a girl stopped and gave me some change for the pay phone. I told her I couldn't figure out how to use it, and it ate her change too.

So the girl let me use her cell phone instead, and I got a hold of Charles, but he had to call me back. So I walked with the girl for a few minutes and, when Charles called, we sorted the thing out. Finally.

So I met Charles and we walked to his place. He's a really nice guy and is fluent in English, since one of his parents is a native speaker and he grew up speaking it at home. He's also 19 years old and in his third year of medical school, so he's basically a Hungarian Doogie Howser. Or, I should say, a Hungarian Doogie Howser with a hot girlfriend.

Charles didn't feel like going out, and I didn't feel too strongly either way, so we just stayed in. He asked if I wanted to get some pizza, and I explained that I had eaten the rice earlier and didn't want to spend more money on food. He was adament about the pizza and kept insisting, and I told him I was fine, really. Finally he said "I'm paying for it, but would you just eat a quarter of it? I don't want the whole thing." Well, if I had known that... just a quarter, huh?

(When Charles went outside to get the pizza from the delivery guy, he left me with his roommate that didn't know a word of English. The room was painfully quiet.)

So that was the night. I slept in a sleeping bag on the floor and was out in a second.