First Trip from Madrid (Part 1)

Budapest, Hungary

Budapest Parliament building along the Danube River

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*We are currently in a small cabin-motel in southern rural Poland. We did not do the local hike because of crowds and incoming bad weather.

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The night before we left for Budapest I slept like shit. I always sleep badly before a trip. I hate flying, for one thing. Mostly it's the anticipation, the thrill of a new adventure, of the unknown. I actually enjoy the barriers: The language issues, the different cultures, the geographical confusion. There's a mystery to it that can't be easily replicated.

We had two early twenties women cat sitters, both Jews from Israel, one living in Tel Aviv and one living in Berlin; they were meeting in Madrid for a concert and to explore; we'd found them on Facebook six weeks ago looking for a place to stay, had researched them online and did a zoom call, and they got the job. (One is a professional cat-sitter.) One was arriving at 7am this morning, the other later that evening.

I'd set my alarm for 6am so I could have time to drink tea and wake up somewhat gradually. But, still exhausted when the alarm went off, when I woke up again it was 6:40. Britney woke up at the same time. Crap.

We jumped up. I made tea, chugged water, did my typical routine, only much faster and sadly without reading or writing. Soon the sitter arrived. She was nice, maybe 22-23 and had flown five hours from Tel Aviv to Madrid. "Five hours," I remarked, that's not bad at all! She laughed: "Not for you because you're American, it's only flying from one side of your country to another; but for us it's far."

Touché.

We filled her in on our three cats, the routines, how to switch them out (they don't all get along so we move them from room to room throughout the day). We were in a hurry and already running late (it was 7:15 and our flight was at 9:40: We still had to take two subway trains) but I was deeply tempted to ask her about her views on the conflict in Gaza. One could not assume in today's youth culture (even in Israel) that said Israeli was automatically pro-Israel. She might have been a Hamas-apologist. (Or at least deeply critical of her own government.) Who knows. Either way she was kind and friendly. It was none of our business anyway.

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We half jogged down the street and got on the train at Plaza Espana. Soon we were moving, packed in on the morning work commute hour. (Highly unusual for us. We usually don't get out of the house until the afternoon: Britney cleans and works out and listens to podcasts and I read and write.) The subway system here, in my experience, is excellent. It rivals--if not tops--New York City's subway system. It's fast, cheap and efficient.

After getting on the second train Britney almost had a mini-meltdown when she momentarily thought she lost her phone and couldn't find it anywhere. It turned out to be in her jacket pocket. (Typical.)

Since we were staying within the Schengen Area--a collective of 29 European countries with an open border policy--we did not have to deal with customs. So basically it was like flying domestic in the States. We whipped through security in no time and found our gate for Budapest. (Trip destination: Budapest, rural Slovakia, rural Poland south of Krakow. One week. City, then nature.) We were one hour early. I ate a 'bocadillo con jamon' (ham sandwich) and we had tea and coffee.

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The two hour and forty minute flight was almost perfect. We'd been warned about crosswinds near Budapest. And, sure enough (and very weirdly), the final ten minutes of the flight, as we slowly descended, felt like being on a hardcore rollercoaster every couple minutes, that harsh dip in your gut, your heart thudding, adrenaline soaring, swearing internally that if god let you live you'd be more kind to everyone! (And you meant it this time!)

We landed, a little roughly, and then taxied forever. Finally we got off with the crowd. It was hot, in the low nineties, just like Madrid. Unlike landing in Madrid, we got an Uber-Taxi very quickly. And we were off. It took maybe half an hour to get to the city center. Our driver was younger than us, a pale dude with aviator shades and a shaved head.

Our hotel was right in the city center. The buildings looked much older and more dilapidated than in Madrid. Budapest is old; Hungary is still considered 'developing,' aka 'second-world' even though it's part of the EU and is considered a 'high income' and 'high GDP' nation.

Hungary also has a history of communism, struggles with Russia, authoritarianism. In fact, the current prime minister, Viktor Orban, is a far-right Trump-type but more extreme: Free speech and free press are tightly controlled, as are other aspects of life here. Hungary has a storied modern history: It lost most of its land after The Great War, joined the Axis powers during World War Two, became a USSR satellite communist country until 1989, and has had a patchy history in the Third Republic since then. (Hence Orban.)

Hungary was once divided into three sections (as was Budapest into three territories, Buda, Pest, and Obuda, unified into 'Budapest' in 1873) and controlled by the Turks (Ottomans) and then the Habsburgs. In 1867 the people after revolting compromised with the Habsburgs and joined with Austria to become the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was incredibly powerful globally until it collapsed after World War One.

A treaty in 1920 established Hungary's current borders; they lost 70% of their land. Hungary fought in World War Two on the wrong side along with the Axis powers. After the war Hungary became a communist satellite of the USSR. A people's revolt occurred in 1956 but the nation still remained under communist rule until the fall of the USSR in 1989. Since then Hungary has been on paper a democratic parliamentary republic; it has since joined the EU and is included in the Schengen Area. However, it has still had a complex recent past and has a nuanced, sometimes difficult relationship with Western Europe and the EU.

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We got delicious Italian food at a local restaurant, sitting at a small table outside and chomping on salty, vinegar-saturated salad and eating various pastas. Britney had red wine; I had black tea. (Our usual.) The Hungarian currency is the 'Forint.' $5,000 Forint = about $14 USD. The food was pretty cheap.

Soon we were walking around aimlessly in the bright hot late afternoon sun. People were everywhere. We found a mobile bookstore but all but maybe 15 of the books were in Hungarian. (The 15 weren't any good.) We stumbled upon a large open indoor market. We used the bathroom and wandered. Then we were back out in the sun, walking towards the deliciously aesthetically beautiful (and very famous) Danube River, which flows through ten countries including Germany, Austria, Hungary and Ukraine. Dozens of times over the years I've read of this River, usually when referring to the two great wars of the twentieth century. (And in much literature by masters such as Joseph Conrad.)

We walked over the bridge, seeing the massive, wide river, the spectacular Parliament building on one side, other old buildings flanked side by side. It was very romantic on multiple levels.

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We decided to pay $15 each to take a one-hour riverboat tour. We got excellent seats up top facing the achingly hot sun. Once again I had tea, Britney had...not wine but free champagne. Others cascaded around us. We waved to people standing up above us on the bridges as we moved. We lost ourselves in conversation, our own and collective eavesdropping, which we both relish.

The breeze lightly tickling our faces, shades and hats on, seeing the buildings and the water, I felt like, Ok, this is a life; this is really living. I felt content. Genuinely content. I didn't feel as if I were wasting my life. I felt like we were doing something; we were having an experience, seeing something important. It felt good to feel alive.

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The next day--Friday--we took our time. We were exhausted from yesterday: Shitty sleep, rough plane ride, lots of walking, trains, etc. I kept working through my reread of Madame Bovary (brilliant, but Flaubert always is), we did our own routines.

We started the day at a snazzy, very delicious breakfast place. The older lady waitress was beyond friendly. Everyone had been so far. We ate while secretly observing a confusing couple at a table outside: The wife snapped endless photos of her husband while he ate (he seemed annoyed, even bitter), before turning to eternal selfies. It was like a parody of a parody. We paid and left.

Next we hit a thrift store where I almost bought a The Shining tee, a Guns n Roses tee, and a Patti Smith tee but ended up buying none and instead purchased a silky collared shirt with long sleeves to protect my arms from the intense sun. (Given that my dad and grandfather both died of skin cancer I'm aware of it.) Down the cobblestone road--there are many cobblestone roads, just like in Madrid--we walked into a bookstore/cafe. This one had only four books in English. We sat and sipped tea and cappuccino and drifted off into iPhone land, each of us absorbed in our screens like we were characters in Brave New World who'd just taken our daily dose of Soma.

After this Britney went back to the hotel and I walked to a good bookstore with English books, according to Google. She'd rendezvous with me at the bookstore after. It was called Massolit Books and Cafe. It was perfect. When I found a Thomas Mann short story collection I knew I was in the right place. The woman behind the counter was friendly and overly chatty. I bought 'Childhood, Boyhood, Youth,' a collection of three autobiographical sketches ('novels') by Leo Tolstoy. Then I ordered mint tea and sat in the back in an outside protected patio area. It reminded me of Bart's Books in Ojai, where I grew up in the Southern California mountains. Britney came 45 minutes later and we walked to the Lukacs thermal baths, which Budapest is evidently known for. Britney went in; I walked to an outdoor restaurant to sip tea and read Tolstoy. I was the only one without alcohol, and the only one reading. Story of my life.

We met back up a little before 7 and then walked to a place for dinner. We ordered Hungarian food and it was delicious: She had a garlic bean soup and I had pork knuckle with potatoes. Lovely. We were a one hour walk from our hotel. Britney wanted to try a wine bar our Israeli cat sitter had recommended called Humbak Borkápolna. It was on the way, a 45 minute walk. We trudged along the east side of the Danube, taking pictures of the gorgeous close up parliament building, everyone out and about along the water and the streets, drinking and laughing and electric with vibrant life.

The walk was lovely. B had to pee badly so we nearly jogged part of it, shaving off several minutes. The bar turned out to be highly, deliciously irreverent: A former chapel, it seemed, with large sardonic, satirical paintings mocking priests and monks. There was a vomiting monk, a drunk monk, a man pissing into a river. And it wasn't a 'wine bar.' It was loud, punk and rowdy, people taking shots and getting fucked up. We laughed. Our cat sitters were young, probably ravers. We are old, and so not. B ordered wine and I got four bottles of cold water, downing them like I'd once downed beers, as if they'd somehow get me drunk.

We left after maybe half an hour.

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This morning we got up and did our routine. In Madame Bovary the asshole-misogynistic player Rodolphe totally pulled the rug out from loose hussy cheating Emma's feet by not showing up as planned so the two could run away together, with her baby, leaving her poor, dumb, clueless doctor husband, Charles, in the dust. I felt for Charles but, more so, for Emma, even if she was cheating. (All that expectation, all that anticipation, all that passion and need and longing.)

B and I gathered our things, checked out of the hotel and walked the 25 minutes to another hotel where we weren't staying but we're only picking up a rental car. A silver Renault Clio, manual. We paid and got the car and headed out (B driving; I never learned on a stick). We were starving so we stopped for food. Sated, we hit the road again and soon we were out in the country , flying on the open road. Parts of it looked like New England, Pennsylvania, upstate New York, and other parts were reminiscent of Nebraska. (Just a year-and-a-half ago we did a cross-country American road trip.)

It was nice to get away from the city. Madrid is loud and never sleeps, especially where we live in Universidad right by Gran Via, the Times Square of Spain. It reminded me of our two week Canada road trip last year.

We passed castles and hills and distant mountains and fields of wildflowers; everything was very, very green. People like to drive fast out here, 90, 100 seems normal. We stayed under both. We weren't trying to race but enjoy. We passed into a new country: Slovakia. We headed east for a good while before switching north to Highway 71. This took us to central-northern Slovakia, a tiny rural town called Hrabušice. Right by 'Slovak Paradise National Park.' (Where we will hike.) We got dinner in town (I had gnocchi with sheep cheese and oh my good lord it was good). Soon we were back in our little cabin-like motel room. I showered and dug into Tolstoy.

Tomorrow: Poland. Mountains. Alps, in fact. Two nights.