Selena Gomez

Another item to add onto the long list of things Selena Gomez and I have in common: we've both been to Budapest.

Friday Night in Budapest

From Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia

Friday night proper began at a hole-in-the-wall, rock 'n' roll brick cellar pub called Kőkorsó, the sort of place where I feel most comfortable. It was quite small. Three forms of entertainment intersected there: 1) table football, 2) singing along to Red Hot Chili Peppers songs strummed on a guitar somebody had brought in, and 3) drinking. The bar was frequented mostly by students, though there were a couple of old guys wandering around (a glimpse into my own future—that is, if I live to be that old), one of whom took over guitar-strumming duties at the end of the night accompanied by a chorus of rosy-faced drunk kids.

The table football action was furious. One young woman there was the best table football player I've ever seen (though I haven't exactly studied the sport). She always played offense. Before taking a shot she toyed with the ball a little in order to line it up perfectly. Sometimes she rapped the side of the table gently with her palm in order to shake the ball into precisely the right position. This was usually followed by a quick tap of the ball to one side (no doubt to get around the defender) followed by a thunderous WACK! The ball moved so fast that the shot was invisible to the human eye; only the sound of the ball rolling around inside the table indicated its successful transit to the back of the net.

Nonetheless, I managed to beat her and her teammate twice. Perhaps she let me win.

I got into a great conversation with two students there; only got the name of one of them, Gergo, a typically tall Hungarian fellow. At last I got to ask questions about Hungary and being Hungarian. Gergo and his friend, a blond college girl, made music recommendations. They even produced a list of folk artists I should check out. They raved about a great summer music festival on Lake Balaton; I would love to check this out, especially as it has a heavy emphasis on electronic music.

They acknowledged that the Hungarian pop music scene is not that developed, something I had thought might be the case after studying their music charts for a year or two (though I am fond of Zséda's "És megindul a föld").

Gergo's friend recommended a sort of cider-like drink that had a wine-like quality to it; the result was served in a pint glass and looked and tasted like a berry cider. They could not explain to me what this was in English (maybe half cider, half white wine?), so I must leave things this vague. In any case it was tasty, but all sweet drinks invite disaster later, so I am glad the bar ran out of the stuff, forcing me to switch to four or five beers instead.

The three of us headed to a disco bar across from the Nyugati Train Station. The DJ stuck to a party theme. Songs played included:

ABBA - Dancing Queen
Bryan Adams - Summer of 69
The Doors - Break on Through (to the Other Side)
Joan Jett and the Blackhearts - I Love Rock and Roll
John Paul Young - Love is in the Air (I love this little-known [in America] song and was surprised to hear it there)
Katrina and the Waves - Walking on Sunshine

Gergo's friend, who earlier had warned us of the dangers of switching from wine to beer (before she indulged in wine followed by beer), ran off to get some McDonald's food to absorb some of the alcohol. After a while it was clear she had vanished. A concerned Gergo checked up on her via his cell phone and found out she was safe with her friends, who were keeping a watchful eye over her while she threw up on the streets of Budapest.

With Gergo's help I found my way back to the hostel. And that was my Friday night in Budapest.

Saturday I spent half the day recovering, though I did manage to check out the charming Ethnographic Museum.

From Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia

Dating Budapest

From Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia

Sometimes you don't click on the first date. When that happens there is usually not a second date. After my first full day in Budapest I felt ready to give up and move on to a smaller city. I felt lonely and lost. I had been targeted by scam artists. And to compound my unhappiness, yesterday morning I realized that I had shampooed with conditioner, which is the sort of thing that happens when you go shopping for supplies in a country where you don't speak the language. But I kept telling myself that I must not have given the city a fair chance. Everyone talks glowingly about Budapest, so what's wrong with me?

I have found the magic. Last night I stopped by a cool movie-themed bar full of hipster, artist types, and so finally I enjoyed a couple half liters of Budapest beer. The women con artists I wrote about are still working their poison in the shopping district (two different pairs tried ensnaring me as I walked through last night; or maybe I am just irresistible to female duos in that particular part of town), but get just a few blocks away from that tourist trap and you find the awesome Budapest your friends told you about, the one you read about in the travel section of the New York Times, the one Lonely Planet claimed was, "More cosmopolitan than Prague, more romantic than Warsaw and more beautiful than both."

To literally top it off, the city is being blanketed with beautiful snow. The flakes fall outside the window of Caffe Break Kft., a cozy wi-fi enabled joint with 1960s newspaper pages pasted on its walls. A CD of acoustic versions of current pop hits plays in the background.

I sometimes gaze at a city's celebrated architecture and say, "So what?" It's the people that make a place great, not the pretty bridges. A small town like Timisoara, Romania may not be gorgeous, but it is very friendly; a more glamorous city can be beautiful but emotionally cold. Where would you rather be?

But now I see the appeal of a gorgeous city. As I gazed at the Parliament building from halfway across the Chain Bridge today I felt as if I were walking past an earth-sized version of a Whistler landscape. A beautiful city inspires you. It puts an extra spring in your step as you explore it. This translates to a more positive frame of mind. Soon you're ready to write a novel, or at least tidy up a freelance article and scribble a travel blog entry.

Three dates with a person in order to decide whether you are compatible with that individual is probably two too many, but on my third full day in Budapest I feel like the city and I are finally clicking. I even found shampoo.

Budapest: Almost a Great Story

From Ukraine and Romania

I'm at the Red Bus Hostel in Budapest. There is hardly a soul here. The room of four beds is mine alone for the moment. My former roomie, a quiet Chinese girl who has been winding her way through Central Europe, left this morning. She gave me all sorts of pills to help me with my coughing, presumably because she didn't want to be kept awake by it. So I have Chinese cold medication and cough drops. She also gave me something that I think is for acid reflux, but I am not sure. Since I haven't been drinking lately, I tried it hoping for a buzz.

I said to her, "I know what you're up to with all your travels! You're a drug dealer!"

I was half-right. After she departed I found, on my bed, a shrink-wrapped copy of the Bhagavad-Gita. In fact, I am quite interested in reading it. Perhaps I will be more enlightened after the next few train trips I take. Often times the things I say are mistaken for sarcasm. Really, I am interested.

In fact, I envy people of faith. They wear an extra layer of armor that atheists must do without. I wrote recently about the stress of dealing with ne'er do wells at a Cluj Napoca autogara. I always assume religious people are better able to face that sort of stuff. Most religion seems to say, "Don't worry; everything will work out in the end." And usually, things do. Oh ye of little faith, indeed.

Last night I was targeted for a different sort of scam than any I've described before; something much more sophisticated than a mere selling of a pick-pocketed cell phone, and with far greater potential for terror. This scam is so excellent because it involves an entire cast of cons, each of whom must be excellent playing their role. Mine is "almost" a great story because unfortunately for you, dear reader, I was suspicious enough to walk away from what was unfolding. Had I fallen for it I would have had a much more interesting story to tell, something along the lines of this one.

My story is as follows. While wandering about on my own last night, two blond women, probably in their mid-30s, saw me, shouted something to me in Hungarian, and then switched to English when I told them I spoke English. They asked me for directions to "an Irish Pub" (you know you've been pigeon-holed in a foreign country if women ask you about Irish pubs, but I am admittedly fond of such places). I told them I thought I had seen one in the vicinity called the Guinness Pub or some such thing, but I was not sure being new in town myself. They were friendly and told me they were visiting from the Lake Balaton region of Hungary for a few days.

They asked where I was headed that evening. I told them I was looking for dinner. They invited me to join them. Thinking this a bit odd ("instant friends" usually set off alarm bells in my head) I declined. They expressed disappointment, then pointed in a particular direction they were headed saying they had found a good pub on the Lonely Planet map I had shown them. So they headed off that way, and I went in the opposite direction thinking, "Strange, strange," but not sure why I thought it was so strange.

Being lost and confused, I circled the block. Sure enough, like an idiot, I wound up at exactly the same place I had met the two women before. And who should come strolling down the same street from the same direction I first saw them coming from but the same two women. They had not gone to that Irish pub after all; they were walking a loop.

At first I was embarrassed, so I waved at them and laughed. "How funny! We run into each other in exactly the same way we did just minutes before! Haha!" They laughed back (actually they impersonated my laugh, because unfortunately I have a horrible laugh).

I went back to the hostel, then Googled for Budapest scams, and lo and behold all became clear. As the link I provided above demonstrates (here it is again), this is how the trick is done (the guy in the link tells it beautifully, but if you want the short version, what happens after you say yes to the women is you wind up in a restaurant, bar, or strip club where the final bill winds up being phenomenally and inexplicably high; you hand over a lot of cash; in some cases you get marched to an ATM by somebody with a gun and hand over more cash; and you realize at some point later on that the women were in on it from the get-go and had deliberately brought you to that place with that outcome in mind). The U.S. Embassy in Budapest has a list of establishments implicated in this scam.

It is fortunate also that I love my girlfriend, because that added an additional cautionary voice in the back of my head which said, "I wouldn't 'do anything' with these two, but my girlfriend would be—to use her perfect words—'quite PISSED, actually' if she knew I went off drinking with a couple of Hungarian women anyway, and that would make me feel guilty, so why bother?"

Since my story was merely "almost great," I have included a great photo of some men moving a statue of a guy on a horse taken later that night.

International Women's Day/Lost in Transition

It's International Women's Day, so women all over Timisoara are carrying flowers offered to them by the city's most chivalrous men. At the train ticket office today one older gentleman came down expressly to hand a flower to one of the young ticket salespeople. A college student bearing two roses for some lucky recipients at the Tequila Club just ran past the window of the cafe from which I am writing this. Ah, here come two more guys, one with five roses and the other with one rose.

Weather is sunny, with temperatures somewhere between cool and cold as spring jousts with winter for supremacy.

There are two types of travel stress. One is the "rush to the airport while worrying that you left your passport at the hotel" type. The other is the "I have been vegetating in the same smallish city for the past five days and I need to get outta here" variety.

Timisoara, and the country of Romania as a whole, have been wonderful, but after five days in this city--and over a month in this country--it's time to bid "La revedere" and head for new pastures. Tonight I go to Budapest. The trip by train will be a mere 5 hours; cost of a ticket was about $30. There's a time zone change, so I will be an hour closer to Cristina. :-)

Last activities here are to enjoy a small lunch, drink a final beer (or two) at my favorite little wi-fi enabled cafe, head to the Gara de Nord, mail a package (hopefully) from the post office there (said to be the only one in the city that handles international mailings), and then await my train.

Travel days are always strange; counting down the minutes I have left in the city I am about to leave while contemplating a city I have never seen before leaves me feeling lost between places. It will be a pleasure to wake up in a Budapest hostel tomorrow morning with my attention undivided.

I'm feeling sentimental, but I look forward to visiting some new (to me) countries in the coming weeks. These will likely include Croatia and certainly Serbia, where I am meeting up with a talented band I will be writing an article about, along the same vein as the Gorchitza piece that ran in the Kyiv Post.