9-17
Being in Hungary has been the strangest experience in my life. For the first time ever, I can not understand a single thing anyone is trying to communicate to me. At least the germanic/romantic languages I have had experience with you can understand some words or get the gist of what is going on. But whatever, Hungary is awesome. After waking in our loft rooms, I was uncertain on the time of our meeting that morning so I yelled to Christian in our bathroom (our bathroom walls were extremely thin, allowing us to conveniently communicate without going into the other persons’ room). Then we wandered aimlessly around campus since nobody told us our meeting place, feeling like we were horribly sticking out. But Gürtler found us and took us to breakfast. Afterwards, we began the academic part of our trip with a lecture about Eastern European economics, while not the most interesting subject, was amusing because of how excited the professor was in teaching us and I guess about the subject. We then went on a fun tour of the small campus. The campus was built only 15 years ago and was designed by a famous Hungarian architect whose name I can’t remember at the moment. It was built on an old Russian Army camp and many of their old buildings were artfully renovated or built upon into new classroom and administrative buildings. Most of them symbolic of Hungary’s rise out of communism and poverty, some were also extremely whimsical. They call it the Hungarian Disneyland.
We then took the train into Budapest, ate lunch in a creepily western food court in a creepily western mall. Our wonderful tour guide Láczló, a grad student of American Lit., took us on a fascinating tour of his home-town. His hobby is architectural history so it was really interesting and an awesome mix of pointing out cool looking buildings and showing how those painted the fascinating history of the city. This tour lasted 5 hours but it could have gone on much longer. He coined a phrase ‘plaster archeology’ in which one looks at the plaster peeling off of old buildings allowing you to see what is underneath, whether graffiti or advertisements, it allows you to get a sense of parts of the city in the past. I think we only went to one really touristy spot most go to when they visit the city, the rest were small little cool sights, some that Láczló himself discovered. I suppose we’re just going to have to come back… For example, there are little metal doors on the sidewalks in some parts of the city, apparently these were escape hatches for bomb shelters from the world wars. But since they were on the sidewalk level, if there was rubble, people could not get out, so they painted white lines on the sides of buildings above so that rescue teams can find the openings. He pointed out a couple of these and you can still see the faint white paint almost all peeled off above it on the side of the building. People walking in and out of the buildings were giving us weird looks as if their building was of any interest, but some (I guess the English speaking ones) actually stopped to listen sometimes and were just as fascinated as we were.
After a tour that rivals all of Rick Steve’s self-guided tours (even with his amazing puns, I don’t give out such compliments lightly), we ate dinner in a funky restaurant in the old Jewish Quarter with more authentic Hungarian cuisine (my dish came out with a slab of pork fat on top; they eat lard like we eat butter, it’s amazing). Next we were taken to a favorite nightspot of the Hungarian students called “Szimpla.” On the outside it looked like a simple, shrapnel-riddled, run-down condemned apartment building in a small sketchy looking alley.
When you walk inside, there is a series of rooms (one specifically to park bikes), each one different but funkily furnished and each having a bar. Finally at the end of the building, a large open courtyard opens up before you full of young people (this was on a Monday night). It’s surrounded by crumbling buildings covered in ivy. When we arrived, many of the Hungarians we had met the previous two days greeted us and had saved us some tables in the middle of the courtyard. We all enjoyed a thoroughly magical evening, chillin in this courtyard under the stars. Since the place was a little more expensive than the pub near the university, it was obvious that it was a treat for the Hungarians to go there and they were really excited about taking us there. It was really unfortunate when we had to leave, but we had to make the last train back to the University, and so begins one of my strangest experiences using public transportation in my life:So the 11:30pm train from Budapest to the middle of nowhere Hungarian farming towns already has some interesting characters on a Monday night. Add some Americans who just left a bar, a broken train bathroom, beyond repair, and you have quite an adventure. First of all, as usual after drinking, many of us needed to use the restroom and the only WC on the train was in our car. It had some orange sign with a crazy Hungarian phrase written on it that was half stuck on the door and half stuck on the wall and it was obvious previous similar signs had been there prior but had been ripped off.
People were going in so I figured it was okay (note that my seat was literally 2 feet in front of this door so I got a front row ticket to the evening’s events). I patiently waited my turn to use the bathroom while others went in front of me. Hayley, who was right before me came out and for whatever reason, her pants were soaked up to her ankles in God knows what toilet water. As we were laughing on how she managed to accomplish this, two of the creepiest men shove in front of me and both go into the small, wet, dripping bathroom in front of me. Together! I was so shocked and yet amused by the situation that I could not be angry. We were hysterical with laughter by this point. But it gets better… After 10 minutes of us nearly wetting our pants, a young Hungarian woman comes in and doesn’t realize that there are two men, together, in the bathroom, she then opens the door (no lock, I guess that’s what the sign said) and since we were all facing the bathroom, in a fit of giggles, we got a full view on what was going on inside! Fortunately, they were just awkwardly standing in there, I don’t really know what was going on, but when she opened the door they just kind of walked out, and she went in to use the bathroom. Finally she leaves, and I have the toilet for myself, and I calm myself down enough to pee. When I’m finished with my business, wary of what would happen after seeing Hayley’s pants, I opened the door, pressed the flush button and we watched what happened. The contents of the toilet all disappeared suddenly after a few seconds in a huge suction noise (as is normal in trains) but then after a beat as if dissatisfied with what it just consumed, the suction noise sounded again and we all watched as the toilet spit back up the contents about 2 feet in all directions around the bathroom. It was a good thing I had just relieved my bladder because I would have peed my pants in laughter right there. Perhaps that’s what the orange sign was about. Well after my little adventure with the toilet, in go Chuck and Larry AGAIN together for another 15 minutes! When they finally emerged in a cloud of smoke, I guess that they weren’t doing anything more than smoking. By the end of the ride, after multiple uses, the contents of the toilet had spilled out into the train compartment and the whole floor of our car was soaking. 
The whole situation now seems so surreal since we were cracking up the entire 45 minute ride back. Goofiness continued until we arrived at our station.The next day, we had two more classes before we had to leave back to Salzburg. I can’t really recall what they were about which I guess gives a clue as to how interesting they were. The lectures overall could have been really cool and interesting about eastern Europe’s economy, religion, and culture after the fall of the Iron Curtain but they seemed to be a little haphazard, too common sense, or the professors were talking so quietly you couldn’t hear them. We then had to say ‘goodbye’ to our newly made Hungarian friends and take the 7 hr train back to Salzburg.
No comments:
Post a Comment