In the land of Pest (late June)

I left baseball camp on an overnight train to the border (met a rich student from Nigeria who studies in Kharkiv and travels the world in the summer), waited a few hours to go through passport control, and took a little two-wagon train to the neighboring Hungarian town. I didn’t have any forint on me and had to reserve a seat to Budapest, but a kind American man bought my ticket and helped me orient myself on the train. He lives in Ukraine with his Russian wife and they were flying with their children to visit family in the States. I was amazed at the ease with which each part of the trip was completed, considering I had booked no tickets in advance.

I got to the hostel and found out that Heather wasn’t getting in till much later that night, so I did my usual exploratory walk, had delicious goulash at a cafeteria-style restaurant in a giant covered market, took a nap and woke up to French (some guys from Montreal were staying in our room!) and checked out the other side of the Danube on a glorious sunset stroll. Budapest is beautiful! Its architecture has dark details, giving the city a mysterious appeal; you can sense its tortured past in the statues that labor to hold up balconies and buildings, supporting the weight of the stones through the centuries. Actually though, much of the architecture currently visible in Budapest dates only to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with some concrete communist beauties mixed in, and bullet-holes peppering various buildings for a dash of local flavor.

When Heather walked through the door, it was like no time had passed! I love the security of a steady friendship. We stayed up late drinking tea and eating cookies in the hostel courtyard, and were eventually joined by two of the Montreal boys; one was drunk, so the rest of us amused ourselves outwitting him. He would say inappropriate things in French, forgetting that Heather and I both speak it. We had a week to leisurely explore the city, so we joined a few free walking tours (regular, communist, and Jewish—the last they paired with a pub crawl to lighten the mood after visiting the old ghetto), went on a failed quest, and ate our weight in goulash. Most travelers stayed for only 2 nights on whirlwind Euro tours; Brazilians therefore quickly replaced the French Canadians. We taught them “Cheers, Gov’na!” and they caught on quickly. Our last day we went on a field trip to the “countryside” and drooled over local delicacies, then indulged in several hours at one of Budapest’s most renowned spas, where we alternately lounged in naturally heated thermal springs, a steam room, and a cold pool. Heather also treated me to a massage for my birthday, so we both had fun experiences with terse Hungarian ladies. The indulgences continued at a ruined bar (a brilliant Hungarian invention to recycle dilapidated buildings they can’t afford to renovate into partially open-air bars with creatively used junk for seating and decoration), where we had a sampling of tasty cocktails and chatted for a long time with a pair of Dartmouth grads.