I woke up after twelve beautiful, undisturbed hours of sleep with the curtains drawn. And also because the woman had locked the door between my room and the rest of the basement from my side the previous night, so I couldn't go anywhere else-- but no one else could come in, either.
I took a shower and brushed my teeth, using soap for the whole works-- hair, body, teeth. Pretty disgusting. I walked to the restaurant to return the key, and I thanked the woman profusely. Which sounded like "thanks thanks thanks" since my profuse thanking is nothing more than one word over and over again.
And then, just as I had hoped, the woman made the international sign for eating. I nodded, she again motioned for me to sit outside, and this time brought out the same meal as before-- steak and potatos-- but in a soup form with carrots. It was delicious.
After lunch I decided it was time to head back to Pécs, and who should I see on the walk back to the main road but the same old man as before, fishing again. I smiled at him and he smiled back but shook his head, and that was that.
I'll tell you, that might be the most convincing argument I've heard for growing old-- moving to Orfü and fishing every day.
I set off on the road back to Pécs, and the sign said it was 12km away. That was 3km less than the sign to Orfü said, and while it didn't match up I figured I at least had the advantage on my side.
It was a beautiful day, and there wasn't any traffic on the road leading directly to Orfü, so I started to walk. But this was a terrible road for hitch-hiking because it was unbearably curvy. On the one hand, that it dangerous, since I was constantly switching sides of the road in order to stay in view of whatever car was coming from whatever way, but on the other hand it also meant that there was no room for cars to stop safely in order to pick me up.
I walked for 50 minutes, and really only saw a handful of cars, and by the time I got to the main road the sign said "Pécs 11km." Kill me.
At this exact moment, though, a bus went by and I ran to catch it at the next stop. It cost 160ft, which meant it cost me a dollar to get back to Pécs, and much of the rest of the way was just as curvy. So it was very lucky I caught this bus.
When I got back to Pécs, the first thing I did was e-mail Lutca to see if I could invite myself to one final dinner. The second thing I did was stop by Tomi's place, but he wasn't there. So I spent much of the day going back and forth between the internet cafe and Tomi's place, alternately checking for dinner and checking for a change of clothes-- since I was going on my fourth consecutive day of the Michigan hockey jersey.
As it got later, I still hadn't gotten a response from Lutca, so I just bought myself a salty breadstick, I guess, and a chocolate croissante for 165ft. Not exactly horse sausage, but I could've done worse.
This day happened to be the last day of the Pécs Film Festival, which I'm guessing is one of the bigger ones in Hungary since the Hungarian film industry is practically non-existant. I was walking back to Tomi's place at one point and walked by the festival during a series of what I can best describe as the short films before a Pixar movie-- you know, the short, animated films that are always as funny, if not funnier, than the feature-length one? And, like the Pixar shorts, without dialogue, so even I could enjoy them.
Anyway, I stayed and watched for an hour or so, and remember how I said Pécs has a Mediterranean feel to it? Well, I was sitting on a bean-bag chair in the middle of a cobbled square on a beautiful evening. And, I'm telling you, I could have been in Granada or Siena for all I knew. It was incredible. I just needed a coffee.
When the Pixar films ended, I went back to check Tomi's place, and though he still wasn't there I ran into him when I was walking back to the square. He let me into the flat and I finally was able to change. But that Michigan hockey jersey served me well, and might be the most versatile piece of clothing that I own. It's warm enough to be all I need on a chilly night but light enough to not be oppressive on a sunny day, and it's interesting enough to be a conversation starter with Americans and non-Americans alike but nice enough to wear to a bar. Cha-ching.
I left Tomi's flat to get some money from the ATM, and here is where I had my first legitimate freak-out of my trip. I put my card into the machine, entered my pin number, and selected the amount of money I wanted to take out. Then nothing happened. I pressed cancel and nothing happened. I banged on the machine and nothing happened. And my ATM card was still in there.
This was bad not only because I was without my ATM card for the night, but because when my mom mailed me my card she said that it was the last one I could get for a while, because I had tried and failed to get a few other replacements before. So, if I lost this one, I was truly shit out of luck.
I mean, I was seriously freaking out. It was bad. I went back to Tomi's place and asked him to take a look, and he said that the ATM screen-- which was, of course, in Hungarian-- was the first screen you see before you enter your card. Tomi said I needed to go back to the bank in the morning and ask them about it, which was bad news, not only because I don't really trust myself to communicate that the ATM machine ate my card and I needed it back but also because I was planning on leaving for Budapest the next morning before the bank opened.
So then I took out my old, temporary card to see if somehow it would still work, and what did I realize? It wasn't my old, temporary card. It was my new, still-working card. Boy am I an idiot.
Relieved beyond words, and now with a little money, I headed back to the square and sat down with a beer to write. I met a couple English-speaking girls, one of whom worked at "American Corner." I told her I was going back to Budapest the next day, but she said I should just stop by in the morning to see about possible employment. Didn't seem like a bad idea.
For the night I decided to go back to the reggae club from my first night, just to make a full cycle of my time in Pécs. It was good, with more of the same goofy-ass dancing from Tomi's friends although Tomi himself wasn't there, but the night will be remembered solely as the night in which I failed The Sixth Test. Here's a re-cap of the tests, all of which occured after a little dance-floor hanky-panky with a cute girl in glasses.
1) the hanky-panky itself
2) her friend nudged her to say a few words
3) her friend led her away for a bit
4) the girl left for the bathroom
5) the girl left and came back with a beer
6) the girl left with her friend and didn't return
There. I'll let you make your own decisions on this one, but six tests? Since when has there been six tests with a girl at a night club? I couldn't believe it.
Anyway, I started talking to some other kids and one of the girls found me a couch with one of her friends. But when we left it was already 5:30, and the friend lived 15 minutes away, and I told Tomi I would be back to pick up my stuff at 7:15 the next day. It didn't make a lot of sense to go to this kid's place to sleep for an hour, so I just went back to Tomi's flat and slept in the hallway outside his door. Solid.
But seriously, six tests? I couldn't have been more disappointed.
*****************************
Two very quick notes:
1) There's nothing funnier than a 7-foot tall dude dancing to reggae music. And he WAS 7-feet tall, the first one I've ever met in my entire life.
2) One of the girls at the reggae club had dread-locks, and after I talked to her for a bit one of Tomi's friends said that she was the "Rasta girl." I didn't really believe him, so I asked her if she was "as upset as I am about the white oppression of the black man in Jamaica." She was. And I was sold.
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