Hungary

Well I finally made it to Budapest, it’s nice to be here though the city, or at least this area, is quite drab. Like Germany, people are not significantly friendly on the streets. Well, let’s back track. I spent about 2-3 hours in Dresden last night. I tried to find the big famous Cathedral but my GPS told me it was a 2.5km walk from where I was and I didn’t punch it in until about 8;45, it said I would get there about 9:30 and with needing to catch a train at 10:10 I did not want to risk it. So where the Dresden train station is is south of the river sort of in the city center. The area surrouding is one giant long outdoor shopping area with things like Starbucks and McDonalds to a couple fancyhotels and clothing stores and a few cocktail lounges and restaurants. It was quite a lively area around 8:00 when I made my way down there, it’s like Beurs a bit. I did not want to  wander too far from there with 3 bags to carry around. Since it was a surprise ending up there thanks to the Frankfurt train delays I did  not rally know much about it, so first I went to Starbucks to have coffee to keep myself awake and to access the internet, then I walked up and down the promenade to figure out what to have for dinner, I thought about going to the sitdown restaurant but decided against it and settled with Subway, just wanted to make sure I was fed, nothing fancy yet. So I got back to the station around 9:30 and sat on the platform waitin. The train started in Berlin maybe, would get to Dresden at 10:10 and get to Budapest at 8:30. It was cold and there were not that many people waiting and I was hoping because it was overnight Sat-Sun there would not be many peple. Since it is over night train a seat reservation was required. So in Frankfurt I switched my reservation and the guy said I’m have a seat in a compartment, wasn’t too keen on being that close to people for that long but whatever. Train came and I got on, car 260, seat 55, I saw most compartments were not occupied and the one with seat 55 was and there was a guy sitting in seat 56 with his feet on 55, so I figured I would go to an empty compartment and cross my fingers about getting my own. These were not sleepers, these were not couchettes, these were not even reclining seats. Straight up seats, 3 on a wall, in a small room, for 10 hours, I thought I was nuts to not at least have gotten a reclining seat. At first I wasn’t sure what to think, no one in the compartment and I wanted to sprawl out on the row but I didnnt want to get berated so I sat there on vigilante mode until a conductor or someone else would come so I could ask, because I had read that it was new, a direct Dresden to Budapest route, that would have been grand if it was just Dresden to Budapest and no stops in between but I couldn’t be sure because it said Praha and Bratislava on the route but I wasn;’t sure where they were in respect to the route, my map confessed to me what I didn’t want to see, that there would be stops along the way so most likely I would not have my own compartment, on the bright side no one was sitting across from me and I had a window seat. There was no way to get a good night sleep in those seats, they were of death and so uncomfortable no matter what way you shifted. First guy who sat down had no bags and just sat there motionless I was not too keen on going to sleep thinking he might steal my stuff as he was odd and had no luggage of his own,. He ended up getting off at the next stop, then 2 guys came to the door and asked if it was free to which I responded yes, they proceeded to be speaking in a language I think was Czech, it sounded remotely like Polish which is sensible considering their relations. One of the guys had the most annoying hoarse whisper voice I thought I was going to jump out the window esp when I was trying to doze off but I couldn’t and I couldn’t figure out why I had not brought ear plugs. I couldn’t imagine what the 2 had so much to talk about, they were jabbering for cclose to an hour, then finally they shut up and we all dozed off, then they got off, and a bunch of old people clamored their way in, they were speaking a language I could not make out at first and I thought they would request my seat, I had hatched a plan that I would see my ticket says seat 55 and pretend I had just misread it was 75. But that never happened and I got to remain in my seat, in any case 5 old men and women joined me in my compartment, they did not say much less a word to me, I nodded at the guy across me and he slightly acknowledged it. Since they weren’t saying anything to me, I assumed they could not speak English or not with any comprehension. They remained for the rest of the trip, later I determined it was Hungarian they were speaking as I picked up on them saying ‘igen’ which is ‘yes’ and ‘nem’ which is ‘no.’ As soon as I had gotten on, soms policy lady came in talking so I was in the middle of saying ‘en nem beszelek magyarul’ which means ‘ I do not speak Hungarian’ btu she stopped me and simply wanted my passport for customs/border check, one glance at it, she smiled and handed it back and continued on her way. Later it seemed at every border crossing they would recheck tickets presumably a new crew each time. I thought the train would go germany à Austria à Hungary but unbeknownst to me it went Germany à Czech Republic à sSlovakia à Hungary. All that was okay except that my Eurrail pass did not support passing through Slovakia, so the conductor talked to me and I said in Frankfurt I made a reservation with my eurrail and I was not informed the Dresden/Budapest route goes through Slovakia  so just to avoid any difficulties I asked if I could just pay some fare premium to cover the part of the trip in Slovakia and she said yes, 21 euros, I asked if I could use credit card, she asked if I wanted receipt and I said yes, and she says if you don’t request receipt I can bump it down to 10 euros cash. I had no complaints of that, and while Im not sure it was legal it satisfied her until we reached the Hungarian border at which point my ticket would be valid again. I needed to pay somehow for the part of trip through a country I was not previously covered for so whatever. It started getting light between 6;30 and 7:00 in Slovakia and was nice, but everything is so drab andin Germany in East Germany there were soooo many abandoned train stations and in Slovakia it seemed like nothing was new just everything falling apart and in Hungary everything is strewn in with graffiti its kind of ugly to an extent. So we got into Budapest station and the old people in my car were pleasant enough at one point turning off the room light and everyone trying to sleep so I appreciated that, when the conductor lady had come I had heard one of them say ‘angolul’ which is the Hungarian word for ‘english’ I know some Hungarian words like igen, nem, koszonom, and beszelesz angolul. I have not ha d real sleep in a few days, and I have now been wearing the same clothes since early aturday morning (it is now mid-Sunday morning) so this is about enough, the hostel is nice enough, cheap, no bullshitting, my own room, no wifi in the room tho so typing this on word first, breakfast  for 3 euro a morning is a bit meager but it is like continental breakfast in the US, there is the bread, jellies, margarine, rolls, various cereals, milk, coffee, and tea. Also cheese and some package meats probably ham or what not so I had a cheese sandwich and a bowl of cereal with some coffee no fruit though but I saw a market on the corner that probably has fruit and it said 0-24 so I assume that is 24 hour store, not ‘tot 24:00’ which in Holland means ‘until midnight’. So here I come shower and lets see what the rest of the day has in store…