5 October 2008: Harkány, Hungary

I woke up too late for the early bus to Villány, so I decided to have more stuffed peppers with tomatos for lunch. The walk to the bus station was longer than I had expected, though, and I missed the second bus too.

Or so I thought. It turned out that I had somehow set my watch ahead by an hour. I have no idea how it happened or when it happened, but it was an hour earlier than I had expected. And so I was on my way to Villány after all.

The first bus got to me Siklós, where I had a brief layover before catching a second bus to Villány. The first bus cost 280ft with my ICIS card and the second bus cost 250ft, although the driver didn't give me a student discount because I'm not a Hungarian student.

The thing about Hungarian buses is that they don't announce the stops. So, one, if you plan on falling asleep you better set your alarm for around when the bus is supposed to arrive, otherwise you'll sleep right through it. And, two, unless you know what the town looks like or what the bus stop you want looks like, you have to keep asking people where you are. Which, for me, meant saying "Villány?" every time.

Finally a woman nodded when I asked, and I got off. But I was sure that I had gotten off at the wrong stop. Luca's step-mom told me that Villány was a famous wine town, but I could have sworn that the first thing I saw when I got off was a good old-fashioned American amusement park. There was an "American Baseball" whirly-ride, a "Break Dancer" whirly-ride, a moonwalk, a climbing air-thing with a scary clown at the top, two carousels, a virtual reality machine, and bumper cars. And there was music blasting, which I can only describe as dance-club music for kids-- it sounded like Alvin and the Chipmunks, set to a techno beat.

I had expected something like Napa Valley, but what I got was more like Point Pleasant. Or maybe Wildwood-- I'd have to see it on the weekend.

(Not that I know anything about Napa Valley, but I'm guessing it's not like the Jersey Shore. All this place needed was skee-ball.)

Not giving up hope, though, I walked about 100 meters down the street, to see what else this carnival of goodness would offer me. But instead I found booths of wine-venders, with people strolling around drinking wine out of glasses and a stage with a mariachi band. A mariachi band with an accordian.

This was literally 100 meters from the amusement park thing. Apparently I had come to Bizarro Villány-- which is like regular Villány except it's when the annual wine festival and the carnival roll into town on the same day.

Now, as you might imagine, a wine festival isn't exactly the ideal festival for a backpacker with a budget. However, although I didn't buy any wine from the street venders, I did learn a new Hungarian word: Koshtolo.

Koshtolo means, you guessed it, "sample."

I walked up one side of the street and hit about 20 booths, with a success rate of maybe 30%-- probably the equivalent of two full glasses of wine. I started to come down the other side and saw a table of older people dancing and drinking. It looked like fun.

I walked up to them and said hello, and at this time on this day that was really all you needed to have older people hand you a shot of palenka-- or, in this case, the entire bottle of palenka. One of the guys at the table spoke a pretty decent amount of English, and I was mostly talking to him while taking swigs from the bottle. And after every swig, I would say "Egg-uh-sheg-uh-dray."

Egguhsheguhdray, which I spelled phonetically because I haven't a clue how to actually say it, means "cheers" in Hungarian, and was the first word I learned when I got to Budapest. I get pretty trigger happy with cheers when I'm drinking-- as everyone should be-- and, similarly, I get pretty trigger happy with egguhsheguhdray when I'm drinking in Hungary.

I'm sure you're well-versed in my theory that people will do anything for you if you smile enough, but the adendum to that theory is that, in Hungary, if you don't speak the language all you have to do is smile a lot and say egguhsheguhdray after every drink. If you do that, Hungarians will LOVE you and think that your minimal grasp of the Hungarian language is adorable. After all, you just loooooove to say egguhsheguhdray.

So, like I said, these people loved me. I mean, maybe more than my own mother loves me. Just maybe.

I told Szadós that I was looking for work, and he spoke to one of the other people at the table. Szadós told me that the other guy was the owner of the restaurant they were at, and that he would have work for me to do the next day. I told him that sounded fine but I needed a place to sleep that night, and, after speaking to the owner of the restaurant, he told me that I would have a place to sleep in town. That was good enough for me.

And then, wouldn't you know it, the owner of the restaurant took out 2000ft and handed it to me. Just like that.

I thanked him profusely, and he took his finger and mimmicked slitting his throat. He said something to Szadós, who in turn told me "He will hunt you if you leave." Good to know, thanks.

But he was smiling, so it was all in good fun! Of course!

Szadós asked if I wanted food, and I told him I was starving. So the owner-- whose name was Janni-- handed me the bottle of palenka and told me to sit down. A short while later he came out with two delicious chicken breasts and a loaf of bread. It was a feast. I was like Augsustus Gloop in the original "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" during the interview after he finds the golden ticket. I hardly had time to breathe between bites.

(Oh, and another man at the table gave me another 1000ft bill. I was cleaning up.)

After eating, Janni told me to come back in two hours, at which point I could have left without a trace and no one would have known. But there was no way that was happening, not only because of the unyieldingly bad karma that would have haunted me for the rest of my time in Hungary but also because I figured I was probably in for something good. Or interesting.

So I took a walk back to the music stage, passing by the rest of the wine booths on account of having had more than my share of palenka. The flamenca band was gone, though, and in its place was a Hungarian funk band. They sang "Brick House" and "Very Supersticious," among other classics, all of them in Hungarian accents. But the highlight was when they played "Gangsta's Paradise" with the lyrics actually in Hungarian. It was unreal.

I went back to the restaurant at 6:15 and Janni, I believe, was genuinely surprised that I had returned. I sat around while the rest of the staff cleaned the place up, and the cook brought out a plastic bag of food for dinner-- which I couldn't conceivably think about eating at the moment because I was so stuffed from the chicken and bread.

When the restaurant was cleaned Janni poured me a glass of wine. It was delicious, but when I asked him what time we were going to leave and all he could do was shake his head, it occured to me that there was a problem-- the inherent problem when employee can't understand a word of what the employer says and the employer can't understand a word of what the employee says.

After this, Janni's wife-- I assume she was his wife-- got us from the restaurant and we drove home. That is, I assumed she was driving us home. It wasn't until fifteen minutes after we arrived, when Janni's grown son came home, that I realized we weren't at Janni's house but his son's house.

And this, my friends, is where it occured to me that there was another problem-- the inherent problem when someone is staying with someone else and neither can understand a word of what the other is saying.

Because, you have to realize, I knew five Hungarian words at this point-- hello, goodbye, thanks, cheers, sample-- and Janni might have known twice that many in English. But hello, goodbye, thanks, cheers, and sample weren't really going to do me much good at this point, and Janni wasn't exactly a whiz with verbs, nouns or adjectives. We literally could not communicate.

And so, in the car ride back to Janni's actual home, I had no way to ask if he had any cats, which I'm allergic to, without meowing and strangling myself. And I didn't feel like doing that.

There wasn't a cat, so it wasn't a problem. But I also didn't have any way to ask if there was a microwave or eating utensils or a glass, so I just ate my pork and potatos cold and with my hands and drank the wine that he opened straight from the bottle. It was like I was at Medieval Times, but without the pageantry. So, I guess, it was like I was a caveman.

The meal was still delicious, so it wasn't a problem. But I also didn't know why he kept pointing to the objects around the house-- the shower, television, and house-key, among others-- so I just said the English words for what he pointed to. Since I thought he just wanted an English lesson.

This whole thing was pretty amusing, so it wasn't a problem. But I also didn't know why he kept going back to the bathroom and mimmicking taking a shower, complete with shampooing and washing his body, so I just smiled and nodded. Since I thought he just like playing charades.

These weren't problems, just complications. "The inherent problem when someone is staying with someone else and neither can understand a word of what the other is saying," however, came into play when Janni pointed to his watch, held up eight fingers, pointed to the floor, handed me the house-key, and left.

Seriously, and he just left. I honestly had no idea what happened or where he went or where I was. All I knew was that I was the only one in the house. All I could assume was that Janni had gone somewhere and would be picking me up at 8:00 in the morning.

And that, my friends, was that.

Now, like I said, I had no idea where Janni went but I figured I was staying in his guest house for the night. Or maybe it was his summer home, since the place could not have been emptier. Upstairs there was a bedroom with two beds pushed together and a dresser. Downstairs there was a kitchen, two bedrooms with a bed in each and nothing else, and another room with a table and the television.

Oh, and me. I was there, too.

The house was in the town of Harkány, which is two towns over from Villány. Two towns over and in the middle of nowhere. I walked to a hotel, which was the closest establishment to the house, and the girl at the front desk told me that the nearest bar was in Pécs. That wasn't quite true-- there were three bars on the main street-- but it was Sunday night, so a quiet town was about five times quieter.

All the young people that I asked-- and they were pretty much all working in the three bars-- told me that, if I wanted to do anything, I had to go to Pécs. Yeah, well...

It was a beautiful night so I walked around Harkány for a bit-- not so terrible a town, really-- and then went back to the house. Sorry, my house.

Now, to be honest, the coolest thing about Harkány is that at night you can see all the stars in the sky. Maybe it was just Janni's backyard, but I literally could see every single one. It's almost worth a trip there just for that. The only thing you need to bring is a blanket, since all the wine you could ever want is only two towns over.

I was in bed at 10:30, since I was maybe going to have an early work-day. But really, who knew.