Waltzing Matilda: Down and Out in Budapest, London, and Split PART ONE.

Alternate and more accurate title: Taking the Piss Out of Uppsala, Stockholm, Nyköping, Warsaw, Budapest, Birmingham, London, Cheswick, Luton, Kastela, and Split.

It began, as every great venture does, with a toga party.

The occasion was Ashley's birthday or something, and the party was much like other parties, except people wore togas and some guy in a track suit showed up wanting to use someone's internet. Sarah, as previously mentioned, was all over everyone there, and I left annoyed around 4 AM. I don't remember what I had that night, but I was pretty much too drunk to sleep, a feat I do not intend to reproduce. I spent most of the next day hungover and bitter and listlessly reading Blood Meridian and making my last-minute travel arrangements. I watched Amadeus with Loufer and Aisling at about midnight, and got home to find Mohammed (the guy who lives in the corridor, not the prophet) watching old Disney cartoons on TV.
"It's Pluto," he said, sounding extremely excited. "Do you want to watch? It's Pluto." Mohammed must be in his thirties, and his a tiny, balding man who almost never speaks and has a curiously flat, rectangular face. His excitement over old Pluto cartoons may have been the most endearing thing I've ever seen, so I sat and watched them with him till he fell asleep around 3. Spent some time MSN'ing after that, killing time till 4:30, when I packed up my stuff and set off across the sleeping city. It was cold, since autumn seems to have arrived all at once at about 3:15 in the afternoon the Tuesday before. Nothing was moving save for the dozens of rabbits which sat around in the field between the Engelska Parken and the Carolina Rediviva, all of them facing right and chewing pragmatically. I was the only one in the train station when I got there at about 5:15 AM and caught the train to Stockholm.
Unfortunately, the Stockholm Skavsta airport is absolutely nowhere near Stockholm. It's in Nyköping, which is a good hundred-odd kilometers south. After spending some time blundering around the Stockholm train station, I finally figured out how to get across to the right platform (you can't get to 11 from 10, you see) and sat on the bench there, drinking cold Jolt soda and watching a stark bald woman smoking while the trains came chattering and retching in around her. I was the only one who got on the train I needed, which I took as a promising sign.
Then it was a bus to Skavsta airport, where they lack virtually all amenities save for a lonely fooseball table:

The flight was about what you might expect from a Hungarian company called WizzAir. After an hour or two, we touched down, and I stood up with all the other lurching, leg-cramped passengers and trundled out of the plane, only to be greeted with a rather surprising sight

If you can't read what it says on that bus, it's "Warsaw Airport Services, Ltd."



I will admit, this was a bit surprising to me. I made my way back up to the plane and asked the flight attendant why the hell I was in Poland.
"Oh," she said. "We're just stopping to let some passengers off here, then we'll continue on to Budapest. It's just like a bus."
"It's an airplane. It's not at all like a bus!"
"It's got wheels," she said. Which I really couldn't argue with.

I finally made it to Budapest though, coasting on about two hours sleep in the past seventy-two. In order to get from the Ferighey airport to the city, you have to take a bus to the last stop, which is the first station of the metro, and you take that for about twelve stops till you finally get to the Danube. We were making good progress down the bumpy highway, surrounded on all sides by tractors which seemed to be plowing large fields of dirt and dust so that more dirt could be planted there. Then we pulled up short: there had been some sort of spectacular traffic accident ahead, and the police had blocked off the highway, though they didn't seem to be doing anything other than standing around, saying to each other in Hungarian: "Man, that was a hell of a traffic accident. Would you look at that truck up there? God damn." Our redoubtable driver leaned on the horn, shook his fist out the window, and finally stormed out of the bus to go shout at the police:



Eventually he stomped back into the bus, gunned the engine, and took us up over the center divide, into oncoming traffic, past the accident (flipping off the cops on the way) and then back over the center divide again. Welcome to Hungary.
Budapest is a run-down city. The whole place seems to say, "Hey, I may not look like much now, but you shoulda seen me back when we threw out the Ottoman Empire. Good times." Downtown is pretty good, and I don't really have any complaints about the city, but as long as I haven't been to Paris or Berlin or Rome or Prague, I don't really see any reason to go back. The whole downtown is essentially one big outdoor cafe, occasionally interrupted by tiny shops where wrinkled women sell glittery fabrics and beads.
As far as I can tell, there's three major things you have to check out in Budapest. The first are the romkocsma, the "ruin pubs." They're pubs in abandoned buildings: basements, warehouses, stuff like that. I went to two, Szimpla Kert and the West Balkan, the latter of which was pretty good. Had a nice leafy outdoor jazz thing goin on. The second attraction is the baths, which is what drew the Romans to the place. There's quite a lot of them, but the big one seems to be in this giant pillaired, gargoyled building on the Buda side of the river, sort of by the citadel on the hill. I guess they can be pretty relaxing and all, but if you go, remember not to go on a Tuesday. Tuesday is Gay Day.
The third major attraction is the statue park, where all the old Soviet statues have been put. I didn't make it there, sadly. If I did, this blog post would be nothing but endless pictures of Soviet propaganda, so I guess that's probably for the best.
I stayed at the Museum Guest House on the Pest side of the river, so named because the bathroom fixtures are relics of the Magyar dynasty.



Trips to the grocery stores were pretty much the high point of Budapest for me. Bottles of hard liquor for three euros? Yes, please. I was eating whatever I could lay hands on for about five dollars a day, and it was fantastic. The first time I wandered into one, I stood there, mouth slack, staring at all the liquor and cheap food and going, "My God..."
They even have grocery stores in the metro stations, which are by far the best I've ever seen. They have the usual newspaper stands and little convenience store-type places, but they also have fruit markets and clothing shops and phone stores and guys selling goddamn violins and stuff. You could probably do all your shopping in the Baross utca train station if you wanted. Me, I spent a good amount of time at the crappy dive bar I found there:



Also found an English bookshop, where I stocked up for the rest of the trip, since I'd already eaten through one of the two books I brought along. Spent most of those first couple days sitting by the Danube, reading M. John Harrison's Course of the Heart and Signs of Life. That got a bit peculiar when the characters in the latter went to Budapest and spent time wandering around the same streets I was. A long succession of gay men tried to pick me up, all of them beginning by asking me if I had the time. After about the fourth one, I began to wonder if this was some sort of code, and the way you responded expressed some hidden sexual preference.
I tried mixing up my answer with the next couple of suitors, but to no avail. Apparently I was just the best piece of ass in Budapest.
On my way back to the hostel the first night, a pretty girl stopped me and asked for change for the poor. I said I didn't have any, and she replied, desperately, "Everybody has something." I gave in and handed over my change, which probably came to about 300 forint, or a dollar fifty.
"Now I have to give you a present," she said. She dug through her bag and handed over a tiny book called "The Perfection of Yoga," by "His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada." To my delight, it turned out to be an entire book of crazy Engrish, with inexplicable pictures of Hindu deities.
The girl who worked in the hostel was named Olga, and was exactly eleven times more attractive than you'd expect someone named "Olga" to be. I sat around with her for a while in the evening, drinking bad coffee and talking about jazz, before heading out to the bar I found nearby, which made good burgers:



My flight out had been changed by the airline from a stately 6 PM to after midnight. I left the hostel while everyone was asleep, rode the metro almost alone, on trains which produced sounds exactly like a chainsaw caught in a garbage disposal. Got to the airport much earlier than I'd expected, and sat for two hours in the empty arrival lounge. I actually rather liked the Budapest airport in the middle of the night, in the same way I tend to like most places at night when there's nobody around. Deserted airports make me think of The Machinist, a film I am still convinced is actually about me.
Anyway, eventually it came time to check in, and the girl at the reception desk expressed a rather curious opinion. Flying into London, it seems, has become a bit cliché. Let's face it. It's been done. Why not go to Birmingham?
"You had better not mean the one in Alabama," I said.
"No, no. It's in the UK. Just like London!"
"But it's nowhere goddamn near London."
"Yes, but that's where this plane is going."
"Will I be able to get to London from there?"
"I don't know."
So I flew to Birmingham in the middle of the night, sandwiched between an affable British man with a Terry Pratchett book and a graphpaper shirt and an inaudible Romanian who looked like The Fonz and who was exactly like Roberto Begnini in Down By Law, which is a great film you all should see. The customs guy grilled me, to the extent that he demanded I speak Swedish to him to prove my origin. They had a bus waiting when we landed, which was kind of them, and it took us to Victoria Station in the middle of London, which was about three hours away. We piled out of the bus, our breath misting in the air, into wet deserted London streets. It was about 5 AM. The Romanian and I set out into the train station to find something to eat, finally finding overpriced sandwiches at a place called "The Terminus," which reminded me of all the strange signs you see when you drive to Antioch that just say "Terminous". The Fonz caught a 6:15 train to somewhere, and I stayed, listening to the loud echoes of people's feet on the station floor.



The plan was to stay with Len's friend Rex, who lives somewhere in West London. I hadn't expected to be rolling into town at ass o'clock in the morning, though, and I didn't really want to wake up some guy I didn't know, so I sat around in the station till 9 or so, reading the free newspaper they have there, and being accosted by bums.
I drank a lot of black coffee from the shops that opened up at 6, but found you have to pay to use the toilets. Did the goddamn Sudoku, which was much more difficult than it had any right to be. Watched a guy walk his dog into the station, lay down some newspapers for it to sleep on, then stand around aimlessly while his dog slept. I saw an extremely old man with a beard (he looked quite like George Bernard Shaw, if you want the truth) in dusty formalwear, who walked by shuffling his feet back and forth about two inches at a time. At nine, I called Rex from a pay phone.
No answer. I didn't really expect one, since if some shmuck called me at nine in the morning, I sure as hell wouldn't answer. I spent an hour wandering around the surprisingly comprehensive book store in the station (their history section is more robust than any Borders I've ever been in) and called again at 10. Again no answer, so I said I'd head up to Notting Hill and bum around for a while and call at noon.
So I did. I like Notting Hill, and it was much more hospitable now than the last time I was there, which was Boxing Day, 2004. Chilly. Found a hell of a good bookstore up there with a basement full of trashy books for 10 pence each. Bought more than I could reasonably carry and drifted around the little shops and cafes they have up there. Called Rex at noon and got through.
He was much more apologetic than I would have been. Turns out, I just missed him with the first call, and he went all the way down to Victoria station to find me. Had me paged over the PA system, found the pay phone I'd been using, and got my second call while in the process. Which means we were both in Victoria station at some point, and I either didn't hear or didn't notice my name being called over the loudspeaker. He said he had a class, but we could meet at 3 at the South Acton station, which is right near where he lives. I said that sounded great, and I'd be there.
And indeed I was. Managed to get stung by some sort of hellish demon bee in the process, and my finger promptly swelled up to the size of beer bottle as its fiendish poison coursed through my veins. Sat under a tree and read Paul Auster's "New York Trilogy," which I liked, but wasn't what I was hoping it would be. Some time passed, some girls randomly waved at me from a bench, and suddenly a guy showed up in a silver BMW convertible, calling my name.
This turned out to be Kareem, Rex's new housemate, who had been sent to pick me up. Rex, you see, was in the process of moving into his new place literally that day. Kareem turned out to be a capital guy (though like all British men in a tradition set down after the Battle of Poitiers, he looked more like a "Nigel") who has been in a band, drinks a hell of a lot of tea, and knows something about neuro-linguistic programming, which I do not. I sat around in his extremely well decorated living room, drinking cup after cup of tea, while he told me about all the things he needed to do that day. Finally he got around to asking how I knew Rex.
"I, uh, don't, actually. I'm pretty much just a complete stranger sitting around in your house, drinking your tea."
He was fine with that. And this brings me to:
A Few Words on British Hospitality
In the States, things usually go a certain way. The host offers some sort of kindness. The guest goes "No, not necessary! Don't go out of your way on my account!" and the host goes, "Oh, well, okay then."
Maybe it's just me.
Whatever the case, I spent a lot of time with Rex and Kareem offering me things and me going, "Nah, nah, don't worry about it," and them going ahead and buying me Chinese food or toast or building a bed from scratch or something. I don't know if this is a nationwide British thing, or if these two guys happen to be the best goddamn hosts on the planet or what, but I have never been the recipient of such comprehensive hospitality in my life.
Rex drifted in around 8 or so with a German named Rajah (I think) in tow. We went out for gourmet burgers and I explained my Flogsta bar/strip club idea, which they were both pretty keen on. Then it was wine and apple tarts at home, talking about films and drunkenness and universities and the like. By then I'd been awake for a good forty-odd hours, so I went to bed (they honestly brought in a bed that we built for me to sleep on) around midnight and got up for the early morning train.
I sat there watching those closepacked brick houses with their messy little backyards and their satellite dishes scrolling by and I thought, Man, I love the UK. I love their ruthless tawdry papers, the way everything is just a little more compact than in the States, the dismal rain, and the excellent television reception. I don't even mind the peas they seem to serve with everything. It's a gloomy, rain-addled place and everyone who lives there is crazy, but I quite like it.


I'm going to leave off there for now, since this is almost the halfway point and I'm tired and bored. Time to eat an ICA pizza.