Incredible Budapest

I disembarked at the Keleti Railway Station in central Budapest at nine o'clock in the evening. Already I saw it was dirtier than Vienna, more weathered. The streets had a layer of grime on them. Litter on the sidewalks. The equally glorious buildings weren't kept up to the same standard; they needed to be restored, repainted. In Budapest I sensed decay. I sensed a place that - unlike some Western European capitals I'd visited - could no longer afford to maintain the splendor reared up in its golden age. But Budapest isn't the worse for it: the way its modern inhabitants embrace and interpret the decaying past is what gives the city its signature ambience of gothic cool.

Let me say it succinctly: Budapest is incredible. Beautiful during the day, a hell of a lot of fun at night, with a deluge of art and culture everywhere you turn. I saw in a decrepit, long-abandoned synagogue huge modern paintings suspended from a fifty-foot domed ceiling and not a trace of an exhibition space besides. The paintings hanging ghostly and unexplained as if left by squatting artists as payment in kind. I drank at some of the coolest bars I've ever been in my life, "ruin pubs" where locals gather in crumbling mansions turned with found decor to hip, stylish haunts. Where once lived prosperous merchant families, landed gentry, servants of the empire.

It would prove a hard place to leave, and not just because of what I'd see. I had a great time, with some wonderful people. Here's what happened to me.

From the train station I made my way to Carpe Noctem hostel. (That's "Seize the Night" in Latin. Sorry had to, Classics major.) I hove up around nine o'clock and found the place nearly empty. The staff member on duty informed me that most of the guests had already taken off for that night's drinking event, a karaoke bar called Morrison's. I got directions and headed over.

Carpe Noctem is affiliated with several other Party Hostels (they call themselves that explicitly), so each night you go out with them you get a good-sized crowd of young tourists looking to have fun. After about an hour in this bar it seemed like everyone was making out. I'll admit I hadn't had much luck with the ladies so far on this trip and I was starting to feel a little lonely. Then I saw a girl eyeing me from the bar.

She was American from Seattle and was a studying archaeology. She was really into it and we talked for a while about Egypt and ancient Greece and Rome. Finally a girl I liked and who seemed to like me. We went to the dancefloor and made out a little and when she went to the bathroom I told her I'd meet her at the bar and she smiled and nodded yes.

I never saw her again. I walked up and down that bar ten minutes and at six foot five I'm hard to miss. I don't know if she got sick or too drunk or if she just changed her mind. Anyway I was bummed out and not really knowing anyone I walked out of the bar and started home.

I'd gone perhaps a hundred feet when I heard good music and voices coming from a lit doorway down a set of steps from the street. The steps were behind a locked gate. The gate was ten or twelve feet high so there'd be no climbing this obstacle. But the gate didn't go all the way to the ground. It stopped maybe a foot and a half short. I bent over to gauge the space. Then I laid down flat on my stomach and slithered through the gap.

I walked down the steps into a room in which seven people were hanging out. Five guys and two girls, all Hungarian, one of the guys manning a small bar. The music didn't screech to a stop when I entered but it might as well have. They all looked at me.

"Hello," I said.
"Hello," one of the guys responded.
"What is this place?"
"It's a private party. How did you get in here?"
"I walked in off the street, the gate was unlocked."
He looked me up and down, at my jeans and t-shirt covered in yellow dust.
"No you didn't."
"I crawled under the gate."
"I know you did. Where you from?"
"Chicago."
"Chicago," he said. Then he put his fists to his temples and stuck out an index finger from each hand to make little horns.
"Derrick Rose," he said.
I smiled at him and he put his hand on my shoulder and guided me to the bar.
"What you drinking?"

It went from there. I bought the room a shot of the cheap local liquor and drank with them the rest of the night.

My second day I went to the public baths located in the city's main park that looked like the baths in ancient Rome must have. Three pools each a different temperature ringed by a baroque palace which was in turn crowned by a white colonnade. Water spewed into the pools from the mouths of goddesses carved in stone and from green bronze spigots affixed to the center of giant urns filled with flowers. I tried all the pools and levitated on the jets in the floors of the pools and let the sculpted fountains that feed the pools pour onto me.

When I got home to the hostel I ducked through the low door. Not low enough - I banged my head on the lintel. There to laugh good-naturedly at my misfortune were two girls, one a staff member from Australia and the other a girl from New York City who had just checked in. I didn't say much to her that day but she ended up with the bunk next to mine, we both had a top bunk. The following morning she woke up to find me reading my book. I don't remember if she asked me about it or if I volunteered the literature euphoria I was experiencing from reading it but soon we'd talked about books for a good half-hour and it was on. We had lunch at a cafe on a tree-lined boulevard where we were the only customers and the waitress brought us apertifs on the house. One was clear anise and the other looked like red wine and had the aroma of a sweet I could not place and an aftertaste of marzipan. When we'd finished eating we went to the park and laid down in a shady spot and I kissed her. We stayed in that place the whole afternoon and worked on a crossword puzzle and talked and kissed and slept.

There were other highlights. An elegant dinner of local fare taken with my roommate from that Istanbul hostel who was my first friend of this voyage and who I know will be my friend for a long time. A debauched evening cruise on the Danube where I nearly suffered blindness by champagne cork. An intrusion while consummating affection in a hostel that was an embarrassment to all involved.

I could have stayed another week in Budapest, but I was leaving without regret. I'd partied hard, met a great girl, and most importantly I felt I'd given the city a good look. The great haste of Europe continued next with Germany. Some photos of Budapest below.