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MISSION: ACCOMPLISHED
DATE: MARCH 19, 2005
PLACE: UNKNOWN CAFE, BRUSSELS, BELGIUM
On our way from London to Athens, we had a four-hour layover in Brussels, Belgium, which was the perfect amount of time to find a Guinness.
I will always love Brussels because their airport has storage lockers, and those storage lockers meant I didn’t have to drag my sopping wet clothes all over the country and could instead seek out a Guinness in peace.
Kristen speaks French, and I do not, so she gets 100% of the credit for getting us on a train that went into [what I believe to be] city center.
Do you remember The Gates in Central Park?
(Photo from Mike Rollinger on Flickr)
Brussels seemed to have its own really messed up version going on:
We lovingly dubbed this “Sketch Park,” partially because it was half children’s playground equipment and half seriously deep and dangerous holes that were not even roped off. I respect any place that respects Darwinism like that.
We found a restaurant and ordered a Guinness and mozzarella salad. Nom. Sadly I did not anticipate becoming the Guinness Globetrotter and therefore neglected to note the name of the place. Fail, I know. A place someplace near Sketch Park? I believe it had a spiral staircase inside. (Do you know?)
After our drinks (I also had my first Chimay Blue in Brussels) we wandered around a bit, hopped a train back to the airport, and made our flight to Athens in plenty of time.
MISSION: ACCOMPLISHED
DATE: MARCH 17, 2005
PLACE: IRISH CAT CLUB, BUDAPEST, HUNGARY
Ever since reading Prague by Arthur K. Phillips (which is actually about Budapest) and seeing Adoption by Marta Meszaros (which happened in the same week), I have been somewhat obsessed with Budapest. It has a haunting familiarity that I cannot explain, but have simply come to accept and enjoy. That said, there was no way I was not going to spend time in Budapest during my first trip to Europe — and no way I wasn’t going to have a Guinness in the process!
Hungary is the first (and last) country I ever owned a guidebook for. Traveling is much (much, much, much) better if you leave the guidebook on the bookshelf and just try to figure it out on your own, as I learned within 20 minutes of landing at Ferihegy Airport.
The travel guide said to arrange a ride to my hostel at the travel counter, which I did. They said it would take at least an hour for my ride to arrive, so I paid (after withdrawing forints from the airport ATM) and leaned up against a wall to people watch.
A few minutes later a couple cute guys came up to me and asked if I spoke English. (They were British.) They were with a big group taking a long weekend and invited me to ride to Budapest in their coach bus.
What could possibly go wrong?
They were a very entertaining bunch and I was glad I went with them instead of sitting around forever at the airport. We stopped at their hotel (Hotel Eben - it looked nice and had a very clean lobby) and I accompanied them to dinner at a local place across the street. We then parted ways, but they invited me to meet them that night at the Irish Cat Club — seeing as it was St. Patrick’s Day and all. I had no idea where I was, where I was going, or where the Irish Cat Club was, but I said I’d be there and then started wandering.
It was early in the day yet, but I’ll admit to being slightly worried about not knowing a lick of Magyar and needing to find my way to the Catarina Hostel from Wherever I Was. At some point I wandered past a train station and attempted to ask the kiosk man for a subway pass. He spoke no English and I spoke no Magyar and yet, a moment later I had exact change and a three-day unlimited subway pass. Woot.
The subway in Budapest is on the honor system, with police occasionally checking for tickets either on the train or as you exit the station. Contrary to other honor systems (like Salt Lake City’s TRAX or most of Germany), in Budapest they seemed to check all the time. Don’t try to cheat.
There are three metro lines (red, blue, and yellow) and it was dirt simple to get from one place to the next. I easily found my hostel off the Oktagon stop and checked in.
Despite the rather icky-looking stairs leading up to the hostel,
it’s actually very nice inside, and the caretakers are incredibly kind (and speak damn near every language on earth fluently). I highly recommend staying here. It was dirt cheap and it comes with breakfast - and there’s no curfew.
Prague the book is, as I mentioned, actually about Budapest. Arthur K. Phillips lived as an American ex-pat in Budapest as it was becoming more westernized in the early 1990s (just as Prague had westernized prior, hence the title), so he knew Budapest intimately and used real places and landmarks in the novel.
I loved sipping a cappuccino at the Gerbeaud:
But I could have done without riding the Funicular Railway (an outdoor elevator, basically).
Before heading to the Irish Cat Club I wandered around Budapest more, tracing the Danube and walking across the Chain Bridge. This could very well be me over-romanticizing the situation, but it was really peaceful and really beautiful.
(Yes, I suck at photography. I know.)
I found the Irish Cat Club on a map the night before, so I hopped on the metro and made my way over. The whole group of guys from earlier was there with a green hat and a Guinness for me. (Goal achieved!)
After taking a sip or two of Guinness, Main Guy asked, “Would you fancy a group poke?” (Yes, those were his words exactly.)
Why, YES, Guy Whose Name I Don’t Know, now that you mention it, I would love to have sex with an entire bus of men I met a few hours earlier.
Heh. I said I’d love to, but I really needed a shower first. He asked if I stunk. I repeated that I needed a shower, but “my hostel is right down the street” and “I’ll be right back.”
In case this needs saying: I never did go back.
I woke up at 6am sharp to enjoy as much Budapest as I could before flying back to London in the afternoon.
(Tip: waking up early at a hostel means you get the shower to yourself and ample hot water)
I skipped breakfast, much to my host’s horror, but I did agree to some peach tea, which was delicious.
By 7am I was out the door and ready to see the world. Except, the whole world was asleep.
I walked around and around and the only thing that was open was McDonald’s. Fail. (Although, in Budapest, the McDonald’s has waiters and tablecloths. Somehow this made me feel a little better.)
So I sat in McDonald’s reading and journaling and sipping coffee until 10am when other people finally appeared and I could check out more of the city.
I bought some postcards, found the post office, and attempted to mail them. (Visiting a post office is something I like to do in foreign cities - it’s not typically prepared for tourists, so I have to figure out how to communicate what I need without using English. The postal workers may not appreciate my little exercise, but I enjoy it.) [Update: The postcards indeed arrived, so I must have mailed them correctly.]
I also went to the grocery store and hunted around for some peach tea bags. Score. As I was checking out, I tried to use a large (relative to the cost of the tea) bill, and the cashier very helpfully asked if I had any “little time.” She meant “coins” (little money - I’m assuming she confused time/money) — I don’t know why this struck me as particularly amusing, but it did. Laugh, damn you.
Finally, I had - of all things - some really delicious gnocchi at an Italian restaurant, Oliva. (I intended to go to a vegetarian restaurant mentioned in the guidebook, but the address it listed was for a steep set of dark stairs leading into a basement. No thanks.)
At this point, I made my way to the last metro stop, where I connected with the airport bus (which conveniently has an image of an airplane on its sign - and a crowd of people holding luggage standing around it!), and I boarded a flight back to London.