Posted: October 19, 2007
- Location: Vienna, Austria. Eden of felt, doilies, and lace.
we got to Venice relieved. I don't want to offend any Hungarians who may happen upon this journal, but it was not our favorite leg of the journey.
Crushed beneath the concrete foot of USSR Communism, Hungary never regained much of its stature. While we were traveling through, it seemed to be a depressed place of angry people, not on whole, some people we interacted with one on one were very nice, but most were not.
The bartender here, at the Huteldorfer Hostel in Vienna, and I were talking about places we'd traveled and I asked her what she thought of Hungary. She's Austrian, she's been Hungary many times. She said the Hungarians are "all pissed off." Her theory is that the language is very hard to handle, the Hungarians are very poor, struggling against EU inflation without the benefit of being a Euro currency nation. So all travel season the Hungarians are inundated with people who have more money than them, might or might not be obnoxious, and cannot speak their language worth a damn.
Enter two genial bicyclists who try to get the language down, don't have a lot of money, in fact we're on shoestring budgets, and act quite tame in public, usually. We still paid the price of admission by every shop owner who scowled at us and just short of shooed us out.
Here is how you say thank you in Hungarian. Kosonome.
Here is how you say thank you in Italian. Grazie
Italian is a much easier language, the people, while swamped with tourists year round, have accepted their fate, sure, they won't work very hard for you, but they won't glare at you until you leave. We were happy to be in Venice, where one-syllable grunts will get you nearly anything you need.
Here's a script I came up with. The best scenario for this is that is to be shouted by both parties, and accompanied by wild gesticulations and general waving about of the hands and arms.
Shopowner: Pronto!
Me, entering a shop: Pronto!
Shopowner: Prego!
Me: Prego!
Shop: Si, si, si, si, si.
Me: Caffe latte!
Shop: Caffe latte! Si! Pronto! Prego!
Me: Pronto! Prego!
Shop: Caffe latte!
Me: Grazie!
Shop: Grazie!
Me, leaving shop after having drunk the best coffee of my life: Grazie! Ciao!
Shop: Grazie! Ciao! Ciao! Grazie!
Really, it was a wonderful contrast to our time spent in Budapest, where most transactions were handled with vague silences, pleading from me, and finally a dejected exit.
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Posted: October 12, 2007
- Location: Budapest, Hungary. On the Pest side, at a loft hostel.
Budapest, a city of considerable density, long, spanning the great Danube, metastasizing tentacles into the green hills. Ron and I were in the center of it, after a day of travel by bike and train, hauling rigid packs up staircases and eyeballing suspicious bedspreads, learning the Hungarian shower and popping toothbrushes from thick plastic tubes. We were out. We were among the people, Hungarian, English, Italian, burning candles and yellow awnings, amidst cobblestone squares.
We ate pizza and had a beer at a place decorated in the idea of Pompeii, a city of ruined lives. Here too. Elderly begged at our tables and the young ran gauntlet of barstools outside and deposited flyers for bars in the area.
Ron and I snatched a crisp black flyer that was shoved beneath my beer glass. "Free first beer," read the flyer. Ron and I debated the validity of the flyer, perhaps it was a very small beer we had to share, or the beer came in fried duck bill, or some odd Hungarian custom where they beat us with spiked boards while we drink.
Caution pitched windward, we shuffled off along the night puddles of light and concrete. Neon beckoned and down a spiral staircase we tumbled into the maw of a hundreds years old building, until in the red bright aquarium of a modern bar we occupied seats at a leatherette burgundy banquette.
Set upon by creatures of bad liquid tan jobs, streaky blond dye, and incorrectly configured spandex clothing we protested.
Here's what happened.
We sat at a booth in the bar, offered our first free beer and friendly women came to sit with us. "Hey, buy us drink. You rich American."
"No, get lost," I said. "I don't have any money, but I do have a blazing case of mouth herpes and a trick knee. Get away."
They didn't like me.
Ron wasn't as sturdy with his refusal of company. He never agreed to buy the girls wine, but it showed up at the table a minute later anyway. He asked around, "Hey, how much is that?" pointing to the wine the girls ordered. "Hey, I never ordered that. I'm not okay with this."
His meek disagreement was lost in the language barrier, or better yet, understood and ignored. After our free beer was finished we stood up to leave and we were stopped by a fire hydrant Ivan. Shorter than me, if you can believe it, with thick veined arms and a jaw you could beat horseshoes against.
"You must pay this bill," he said. "Your friend ordered wine for those girls."
Hands held up in surrender, but resolve steadied, we refused to pay for the girls' wine. Two more bouncers show up. Three more.
One of the bald-heads was in a suit and tie and threatened to smash our hands.
Ron and I figured out in our heads, those glasses of wine were 300 American bills.
"We're not paying three hundred dollars for two glasses of wine we didn't order," we insisted.
Under threat of bodily damage I crept closer to the stairs. Once at the stairs we argued ever more stern for our defense.
"You two are pussies. We will fucking kill you and leave you in the back. You pay now."
"There's no need for violence," I said. "This is a classy establishment, you're gentlemen of business. This is bad business."
They threatened to remove our hands. Five of them threatened to leave us, cold as marble, in the rushing brown flow of the Danube. Then, morons, threatened to call the police.
"Oh thank God," I said. "Call the police so we can resolve this."
They kicked at the carpet, dropped the pride from their foreheads, and angled their noses toward their knees. "We will call the police," they told us again.
"Do it."
"We will call the police. You will go to jail. We will get paid. We will take everything from your hotel. Just pay us and leave."
"No. Call the police."
This same theater of the adrenal glands, raised heart rates, and flushed wide open dilated eyes, played out for another two hours.
"We will smash your hands."
"No need. We will resolve this."
"Pay the money. We will call the police."
"Call the police."
My knees stiffened with rigor mortis we stood there so long. An hour after the police were called, we were beckoned up the stairs to meet them in the lobby.
"The police are here; they will take you to jail. You should just pay."
Up the stairs and in the weak sodium light of the establishment lobby two uniformed men walked in, and I said, "Those aren't cops."
"What? You think these are not police? They will arrest you. They will put you in jail!"
Stalwart, we stood again. "We're not paying. We didn't order the wine. These aren't police."
Five of them rocked their knees and rolled their sleeves. When one stopped cursing us, another would relieve him. When he stopped, another after that. Cursing us.
"We will cut your hands off. We will smash your hands. Come back to the office."
"I'm not going back to the office," I said.
"Then pay the money."
"We're not paying a fucking Forint," haughty now because they'd given all their shit up and chased at their tautological tails.
"These are police officers."
"No, they're not."
"We will break your knees."
"In front of the police?"
When Ron and I stumbled into Amateur Night at the Grift Factory, it was maybe 11 at night. When we breezed free, fake cops in pleather jackets and tin stars, calling after us, squarely-cut Eastern European bouncers unhappy, but frustrated at their impotence in the situation, cursing our sweatshirted backs, it was 1 am.
Under threat of our heads crushed, sustaining pre-fight jitters, rocking weight and balance from foot to foot, in case, you know, the little guy swings, we stood and argued, in a foreign country, with the locals for 2, maybe 2 and a half hours.
And we walked out, unscratched, without dropping a cent.
We still ran to our bikes and rode to the hotel, at speeds beneath, but just barely, to sonic.
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