Week Twenty-Four

We get up early, to oblige the management, and head downstairs for breakfast: my God, it's full of children - not just in the dining room, but queuing out the door. We elect to wait until they've cleared, and retreat upstairs to pack our stuff. We hit downstairs again late, through the chaos of milling children and feverish staff cleaning rooms and changing sheets, and do one more raid on the breakfast supplies - we now have a plastic bag full of stuff, which should last us for days. There's a lockable storage room in the hotel, which the man at reception lets us use for our bags, and then we set out one last time into Vienna.
Our first stop is the station, where we check the train times to Budapest, use my credit card to withdraw one last batch of euros, select a train (Milla's choice - the last one to get to Budapest in early evening, even though it gets into Deli station rather than Keleti), and buy tickets. Unlike for internal Austrian trains, these tickets are for specific seats on a specific train, so we'd better not be late. Also, even though our original (Cesky Krumlov) plan was to overnight in Gyor, we decide to go all the way to Budapest in one, since my arm is holding up quite well.

It's raining outside, so we decide to spend our time visiting (indoors) museums rather than catching the last few outdoors sights (the Belvedere palace, the Ferris Wheel, Karlskirche, etc.). Candidates at the top of the list are a Dali museum/gallery and an exhibition of black-and-white photos from the Habsbug days: there's a museum of Globes as well, but Milena is considerably less enthusiastic about that than I am. We opt for the Dali - it's opposite the Hofburg and, if we have time, the photo exhibition is next door.
Even though it only has three rooms, there's a lot to see - mainly his book illustrations (eg. for Alice) and sculpture. They also have a fair number of limited signed prints and (better) limited signed casts of some of the smaller sculptures (small versions of some of the larger ones). Some day, when I have lots of money to waste again, they'd make quite a stylish purchase.

After the Dali we hit an (expensive) internet place to answer a few emails, and then catch the wrong metro line to the station: actually, it's the right line to the station but we miss our stop - and, of course, we don't want to be going to the station at all, but to the hostel/hotel for our bags. We manage to sort ourselves out, and get to the train with just under ten minutes to spare. There are two girls sleeping in our compartment, but the carriage is half-empty so we just move into the compartment next door. Milena dashes out to buy a box of chocolates for her mother from one of the station souvenir shops, and then we're off - heading back towards Easten Europe.
So, my last thoughts as we pull out of Austria and Vienna? Well, Austria is very much the stereotypical Western European country, as many Eastern Europeans see things: it's clean, law-abiding, frighteningly expensive, high-tech and so on. It's enough to make you wonder if Hungary, the Czech Rep, Poland, et. al. would be quite so keen on joining the EU if they bordered Portugal, Spain or Greece instead. Together with these facets, though, it's also very boring in comparison with most Eastern European countries, and the same is true of the capital Vienna. Apart from the tumble of the Hofburg, all the major buildings are "safe" versions of the prevailing architectural styles - perfect cubes or spires or circles or whatever: conservative with a small "c" and a capital Yawn. So Vienna, which got 6/10 on my last visit, stays at 6/10 - but a lot of that is because of the amenities, museums, and so on rather than the look-and-feel.

A few hours later, after pefunctory border controls (I don't get an exit stamp from the EU, even though I got an entry stamp), we pull into Budapest's Deli Station. For accommodation, we have a couple of hostels identified close to Keleti Station (where we will leave from), and Milena also favours an option of returning to the Citadella Hotel - I'm against that plan, because it's up the steepest hill in Budapest, there's no public transport direct to the door and it's miles from either station. We're accosted by the usual gaggle of women trying to interest us in their private rooms, but they're all nowhere near Keleti and too expensive. As we stand in the station hall discussing how best to get to Keleti from here (metro), two of the women catch us up - they've found a third (a dumpy little white-haired woman with no English) who has a couple of rooms next to Keleti: presumably such women work on a sort of self-help group basis. After negotiation she halves her price to 4,000 forints for the room, so we decide to take a look.
After changing £20 at a machine in the station (it gave a pretty good rate) and buying a book of ten bus/tram/metro tickets, we accompany the little woman to the flat. It has two decent-sized twin rooms, cooking facilities, a bathroom, and is literally a block and a half from the Keleti Station - you can see it if you lean out the window. Me? I'm quite satisfied with it, though Milla seems to have doubts, and we select a room and pay the woman - she leaves us, presumably to return to the station to try to find someone for the other room. It's only when we're alone that I discover Milla is really pissed off: she is convinced that we're going to be murdered, or at least robbed - she tells me that she won't sleep at all tonight. Supporting her viewpoint are the following:
1.) We didn't see the woman's accreditation,
2.) It's not a very good neighbourhood,
3.) The woman exchanged some kind of secret signal with a biker in the courtyard,
4.) No-one knows where we are.
Supporting my assertion that everything will be fine are the following:
1.) At least some of the other women at Deli seemed to know her, and she had a whole book full of previous occupants' addresses and passport details,
2.) The neighbourhood's fine - and there's a supermarket and a McDonalds at the end of the street,
3.) She was only saying hello to the damned biker, a neighbour,
4.) We can email the world saying where we are, if we need to.

Milla is in no way placated by my reasoning, and is still pissed off when we set out to the station. If I'd known she was this against the place I'd never have taken it (just for peace), but she didn't want to argue with me "in public" - ie. in front of the little non-English-speaking granny. Ah well - we'll learn from this experience (if we're not murdered).
We hit the station, where Tourist Information is closed (we were going to check on Statue Park, our major missed attraction from last time) but we find a woman to convert our open return tickets into actual seat bookings on an evening train tomorrow (for a small fee). We also find a currency exchange place which changes our loose euros (not cents) at a fairly poor rate. Then, on Milla's insistance, we visit our original target hostel in order for her to prove that we would have been better off there. It turns out to be an equally dodgy building (with a definite smell), much further from the station (though still quite close), and considerably more expensive. Hey-ho.
After a coffee across the road from the hostel, we return to the room (where our bags have thankfully neither been nicked nor searched), have a big meal based around supplies from Austria, play some cards and eventually retire. Milla puts her flick-razor under her pillow, just in case.

We wake, after a good night's sleep in surprisingly comfortable beds, and find ourselves still alive. Milla repacks after breakfast and I leave her to go and retake some of the Budapest photos from our first visit, which didn't come out so well. I have to un-jam the front door on the way out, since Milla sabotaged it last night to dissuade our would-be attackers. We agree to meet after she has put the bags in Keleti's Left Luggage, at our favourite metro stop - Batthany - and I spend the next hour and a half circling around places I've already been: principally Vajdahunyad Castle and surrounds. I finally catch the metro (with its wondeful little tunes before each announcement) to Batthyany, where Milla intercepts me on the platform: she was on the same train - how's that for synchronisation? Bizarrely she's wearing my rucksack (which is about the same size as she is): Left Luggage turned out to be a disaster. They have a rate for "normal" bags and a rate for "large" bags - and the rate for both our bags was apparently "large". This would have been fine, except that today (for the first time since the accident) I'm carrying most of the money and Milla didn't have enough. Somewhat pissed off, she put the trolley bag in a locker (which wasn't nearly big enough for both bags) and came out to meet me.

We sit on a bench and watch the Danube flow slowly past, reaquainting ourselves with cheese pastry rolls (sajtos rollo) and reflecting. Our amazing efficiency during our initial visit means that we've pretty much seen everything we want to. The exception to this is Statue Park, but we share an unspoken opinion that it's both too far to fit in today (it's afternoon by now) and too expensive to rush (we've seen some prices). After being largely immobile for almost an hour, Milla gets her breath (and energy) back and we return to Keleti station to deposit my rucksack in a second locker. Funds are reasonably tight by now (we had a second pastry each at Batthyany), to the tune of 404 forints - that's enough for two (good) cappuccinos at the place we were last night. They're not as good this time (nor are the cups full), and they waiter gets pretty pissed off that we won't leave him a 40ft tip - like most of Eastern Europe, he hasn't managed to make the mental link between the tip and the level of service. 40 forints, he tells us, will buy a kilo of bread here - this is excellent news, since we have 44 forints!

We explore the immediate area, a district called Elisabeth (Erzsebet - District VII) which includes a couple of interesting but closed) churches: the old parish church, now Greek Catholic (there's a mix) and the new c.1900 church which has something to do with poor assassinated Sisi. It's possible that the entire district is named after her but, lacking a comprehensive history of Budapest, we dunno. Nipping into a little mini-market we pick up some bread at .25 kilos for 40 forints (the waiter lied!) The long walk into the centre takes us via Deak ter back to the good ol' Chain Bridge, which we cross - no seagulls balancing on ice floes at this time of year. We meander up the west bank of the Danube and reach Batthyany ter in plenty time (ie. just as it's getting dark) to use two of our three remaining metro tickets to return to Keleti.

At the station Milla tries in vain to a.) sell our last ticket in the book, or b.) exchange our euro cent coins with random travellers - she wants to get more money since our 4 forints (c. 1p) isn't enough to buy anything. Then we board the fairly empty 18.10 train (it starts at Budapest, so it's waiting on the platform for us): our tickets say "smoking", but the compartment says "non-smoking", so we shift up a couple into the smoking zone. Five minutes before we're due to leave, a Romanian girl and a German man bust in with a jumble of bags (oddly her ticket says "non-smoking", but her seat is in this "smoking" compartment). They argue for a bit, she breaks a nail moving her luggage around, they say tearful (seriously) farewells, and then we're off.
Milena and the girl talk in Romanian for a couple of hours (Milena's Romanian is wonderfully rusty for the first few seconds): interestingly, despite being quite detached while speaking English, as soon as they switch to Romanian they shake hands and formally introduce themselves. Later we try to play cards balanced on top of our trolley-bag (it's a 14-hour journey after all), but later give up and get some sleep. Border control is perfunctory and, unlike my last entry into Romania, there is no last-minute invasion of gypsies.

The morning's excitement is provided by the train not stopping where our fellow traveller's ticket is booked to (Deva): the unhelpful conductor suggests she catch a taxi back from the next stop (Simeria - Conan's home town?). A little heated discussion goes on (Milena chips in), but Thomas Cook confirms that the conductor's right - this train, the Ister, doesn't have a stop at Deva: the correct route by train was probably to change at Arad, with a 40-minute connection. Ah well. The night wears on and eventually becomes day - my arm's none-too-happy with being on a train and not having anywhere to lie down properly, so I'm not getting a lot of sleep. I watch Brasov go by and late Sinaia - the train stops in Brasov and Ploiesti for a while, but no-one gets on to disturb our isolation. At about half-eight, when we should be arriving in Bucuresti, Milena wakes and looks out the window - we're apparently still two hours away, so we settle back down to get some moe sleep. Inevitably, half an hour late we pull into Bucuresti and have a bit of a scramble to get our stuff together and disembark (last off the train).

Wow: back in Romania after our little adventure!
Romania, where the tap water is colloidal to the point of opaque!
Romania, where the internet cafés are mostly filled by kids playing games!
Romania, filled with pale latinos, with a dash of Slav!
Romania, where our regular cigarettes seem to have dropped in price since we left!
We get some money out an ATM, buy some cigarettes and head out: Milena stares, puzzled for a moment, at the coins which she gets as change - she's forgotten what her own currency looks like (the first time that happened to me was 1987). More major culture shock is waiting, though, after we dodge the waiting taxi drivers and catch a 46 tram home. Milena stands at the back, looking out the windows, as the unending procession of totally concrete blocks goes by - Bucur Obor is a particularly painful moment. For me, the bumpy and jerking tram-ride is sufficiently hellish that I'm pretty oblivious to the passing landscape.

Waiting for us at the flat, apart from a thick layer of dust (Bucharest is a very dusty city) is a working phone and working electricity. From the stack of bills and receipts on the table, we infe that Milena's uncle Liviu has been taking care of things here for our return. Adding them up also reveals that we owe him a small fortune (at least a third of which would have been avoidable disconnection/reconnection charges, if Milla had paid/mentioned the outstanding electricity bill on our departure). The one service notable by its absence is Cable TV - during our trip someone has noticed the extra cable running from the rooftop distribution box directly into Milena's kitchen, and has cut the cable and removed the splitter.
There are a couple of large packages fom Scotland waiting, filled with requested items (mainly sugar products) - good ol' parents! As we munch our way through samples of toffee, tablet, Orkney Fudge, butterscotch (Keillers have apparently gone bust!) and so on, Milla prioritises. First up, after rebuildling the bed, is the Cable TV: she confidently disappears onto the roof (through the kitchen window) with a length of RF cable, a pair of pliers and a hammer. After an hour, it becomes obvious that she has been operating on a misconception about RF cable (it's the same as thickwire ethernet, for those in my field) and has been trying to connect the cores only. The eventual result is that not only don't we have cable, but neither does the entire adjacent block now (the distributor serves a couple of blocks, and Milena decided it was safer not to target her direct neighbours). She hastily retrieves all the cable and hides any evidence before the Cable repair people can turn up, and then we head out to visit he mother and Tina before they do.

Tina is a changed dog - all bouncing and energy: the injections just before our departure have obviously worked minor miracles, above the level of the vet's expectations. Milla's mother, however, is badly unwell: tests run during our absence have shown she needs a fairly urgent operation. Conversation revolves primarily around this, my accident, our trip and what our intentions for the future are (there's still a degree of tension over the fact that I intend taking Milena with me to the Middle East and Africa).
We leave late and eventually retire in the small hours of the morning.

A day for furious activity on the Milla front - dishes, surfaces, floors, clothes et. al are subjected to a whirlwind of intense cleaning. The stuff which wasn't unpacked yesterday is summarily unpacked and stowed away. Me? I attempt to sleep all day, but am awakened and washed and dried and then folded neatly away in bed. Lists are also made (we have a lot of stuff to look after in the coming weeks). Finally, we watch a lot of terrestrial Romanian TV: the Cable Mafia have not yet broken down our door and shouted at us.

The activity of Thursday continues into Friday and the weekend, though at a more relaxed pace. This coming Tuesday is the date when MUDr Masek indicated the cast should come off, so we also need to find an orthopedic specialist before then - Milla has a medical acquaintance, so she phone him to get a name. The name is Dr. Pogo (or close enough), at Colentina Hospital just the other side of Bucur Obor: not only is he the best (or second best) othopedic surgeon in Romania, but he apparently won't be backward in telling us how much he'll want to treat a foreigner who isn't covered by the Romanian medical system. Excellent - sounds just our type of doctor.
Friday turns out to be some kind of Romanian Something Day - a day on which to give flowers to women, apparently. Ella drops by with hyacinths late in the afternoon for Milla (I can't help but recall that on previous occasions she has brought cakes): not to worry - as Milla points out, it'll save us having to buy flowers for her mother. We arrange an evening get-together at Liviu's (we have to visit him as thanks for everything, and we also owe him lots of money). The plan is for him to phone us (he might be working late), but this plan falls apart when he doesn't ("Oh - was I meant to phone you?").
On Saturday, we successfully visit Liviu (bearing a few beers). I should add that he has a cat (half Milla's - she seems to own a number of half-pets, none of which she has accepted responsibility for looking after) and a book collection which includes all the Dune series, Philip K. Dick, William Gibson and othes - all in Romanian.
Sunday is a domestic day, inasmuch as we don't even try to visit anyone. We get up insanely early to watch the first Grand Prix of the season, but Romanian TV misses the start and the crash - after that, I put in three hours of early-morning, one-handed internet time.