Non Fiction
Issue #2
Three Days in Budapest
Speeding across the Eastern European countryside that lay black outside our window, I tried to force my legs into a more comfortable position. All in the compartment but me slept. I shared it with a non-speaking woman; two Chinese girls in their super-efficient fold away uniform blue blankets and my two friends. I looked out of the window. As we had left the city, I had seen cars change to an old woman sitting in a cart, the silhouetted horse still and resigned as the woman. The ever-changing black shapes grew and shrank and I wondered what scenery I was missing. It was worth it, though, the feeling of excitement and quiet contentment I felt, travelling the world in this train that felt like a cross between Harry Potter and communism, the compartment shabby but private. We were leaving behind us Romania, the land of vampires, cable cars and wonderful cake shops and heading towards Hungary, moving ever westwards, towards home.
My friends and I scratched together breakfast as the sun woke them up. It consisted mostly of the chocolate we had bought in Romania, receiving chewing gum instead of change, the currency being so inflated that the coins are hardly worth keeping. We were in Hungary, our tired eyes watching the landscape turned from country to city. When we finally emerged onto the platform we consulted the scrawled instructions that we had to find our hostel. I looked out on the huge station with bleary eyes, the excitement of the night before reduced to a longing for home and preferably a bed. Backpacked like snails, with white faces and a new city to conquer, we set out on a journey of trams trains and buses, finally to arrive at the hostel. Unlike the crowds of friendly faces that had greeted us elsewhere, a cold blonde woman showed us to the brightly coloured bunks and left us with the rules and the key. We collapsed, exhausted, onto the brightly coloured bunks and the others fell asleep, leaving me to stare at the orange-bleached wood and think of the thick mattresses and familiar beds of home.
Later in the afternoon we showered in the interestingly decorated bathrooms, completely blue tiled but for a red one in the centre, all in keeping, we supposed, with the Art Deco style so enthusiastically advertised on the website we had booked on. It seemed a long time ago, peering at tiny pictures on a computer screen at home and trying to make a choice between the identical-looking bunks and offers of breakfast. Now we were here, in the silent and unfriendly hostel, choosing due to decoration no longer sounded like a good idea.
We eventually headed back out into the city. After the storybook charm and the jingles that had welcomed us at every station in Romania, Budapest was strangely westernised. Our minds confused already by strange sleeping patterns, the flashing of lights and bright advertisements made our first wander around the city feel like a dream. We somehow found our way to the citadel that looks over the river and across the city. Tiny pillars made small alcoves, the other side a sheer drop. I sat in one, the dreamy feel and weathered pale sandstone making me feel as though I were looking down from a distant fairy kingdom.
The next day our mission was to find the Turkish baths, something for which Budapest is famous and which had been one of its main attractions when we had sat trying to decide, on scant knowledge, which countries to visit. We managed to find the Szecheyni baths, the biggest ones in the city advertising an impressive total of nine pools. We went inside, paid our two thousand forints, and walked down the stairs. My friends and I nervously entered a changing room, just putting down our bags when a Hungarian woman flung off her clothes, joining the few other naked and brown Hungarian women brazenly changing into their swimming costumes. Rather unwilling to embrace this particular piece of culture, we hid in corners and changed into our swimsuits, all the more obvious for being subtle.
After we had negotiated the complicated arrangements involving chalk, a number tag and several keys to lock away our bags, making us worry only slightly as to whether we’d ever see them again, we went outside. Though advertised to have only the nine baths, wherever you went there seemed to be another, of a different temperature or shape or purpose. The day was wonderful, lying in deep water and gently washing away the stress of the day before, today we had only to relax and sample the various delights of varying temperatures. One of the pools boasted water jets that turned off and on successively every few minutes. These were evidently a prize of great worth to the Hungarian people, and we watched them with amusement, for even when they were not switched on grumpy looking elderly couples stood guard, the women’s sloping breasts and the men’s inevitable stomach that was reminiscent of a hippo making an almost symmetrical shape in the waist-deep water.
After a day of soaking in the water of Hungary and the sweat of thousands of tourists, we wandered gradually back to Moskva Tér, our tram stop, where we bought slices of pizza. When we sat down, to our amazement we were serenaded by an American band, touring in Bulgaria. After almost two weeks of travelling the sounds of familiar accents singing familiar music was extraordinarily relaxing. We hung around in the fading sunlight, too shy to go and speak to them but happy in the knowledge that if we wanted to, we could.
The next day we explored the city more generally. To our amazement we found ourselves joined by large numbers of cow figurines, placed in important places in the city by cow parade. Not only did we see the opera house, the houses of parliament and unsuccessfully scour a large indoor market for something saying ‘I’m Hungary,’ but saw cows cut in half and decorated as watermelons and milkshakes (complete with straw) among many others. They served to make the city more like some sort of game, our time was spent gleefully spotting cows as well as trawling through the heat between various attractions. It was hard to engage with the buildings presented to us when we ached to go back underground away from the blazing sun, but nevertheless we persevered, rewarding ourselves with another surprising sign of westernisation, Burger King. It was strangely familiar inside; had the toilets not pronounced that they were for ‘Costumers only’ we could have been in England.
Spending such a short time in each city meant that we got to know them very quickly, and by the end of that day, even with our skin protesting at the heat of the sun and our minds reeling with the places we had seen, we were home.
At the previously quiet hostel that night we were welcomed by a sudden crowd of people, a bonfire and loud music which we could only assume to be Hungarian. We had managed to be there for the year anniversary of the hostel’s opening, which meant a night of free goulash, drinks of various sorts and a group of very attentive Dutch boys. The goulash was cooked on a cauldron outside, the sky darkening and our stomachs rumbling as it got later and later and more and more shots of different Hungarian drinks kept arriving. We finally sat out on the grass at about eleven with our bowls of goulash and bread, surrounded by singing Hungarians and murmuring candlelit Dutch boys. The knowledge that we had to leave the next day made it the more exciting, every moment was precious and irreplaceable, we were in the sparkling Budapest for only one more night.
For our last morning we headed to Margaret Island, an island turned into a public park in the middle of the Danube. We lay on the grass and listened to the classical music blaring from tinny speakers. These showed off the island’s main attraction, a fountain that varied its arcs, spurts and cascades along with the melody. After a lazy morning, surreal in spite of the cheap ice creams candy floss and sandwiches, we made our slow way back to the hostel. Snails once more, we trudged back to the train station. Almost old hands we found a carriage and took our places as the Hungarian countryside started to speed once more past our eyes. Laden with small packs of paprika and whittled flutes to present to our relatives, the train whizzed us from the parched streets of Budapest, ever westwards. In all of three days Budapest had become a temporary home, had turned from a map to a city and was now rapidly becoming fond memories. The smell of paprika and hurried words scribbled in my diary seemed insufficient: how could I hope to portray a snapshot of a city?
Nevertheless the train moved us onwards, forever onwards, to a new place with a different feeling, different sights and smells and people. To Vienna!