Budapest
That time I passed through Budapest.
No. 26: Budapest
Budapest, and there’s a pretty girl. I’m willing to look over the fact that she’s from Australia, and I do. Three days. That’s how long I’ve got to make something happen. It’s not my primary goal, more of a sidequest. Nonetheless, it’s a quest, and one where time is of the essence.
The hostel is small and musty. There’s a tiny common room with a flatscreen TV. A massive couch with dirty pillows takes up most of the space. Dirty travelers lay on it with dirty bags and dirty heads. She lays on it too, next to some of her countrymen: wild, loud, drunk Aussies. Her hair is black, cropped, and her eyes are icy blue. She’s having none of me. My usual tactics fall flat. The intense gaze. The playful joke. But I’ve piqued her interest. I’m someone to toy with. I’ll take it.
A few hours earlier I was at a different hostel across town, where I’d booked a three-night stay. It was in the attic of an ancient building. The wooden rafters could be seen overhead. Probably it was from the not-so-distant 1800s, but to an American youth, especially a Californian, all of Europe is ancient. The place was managed by a guy named Tim. He gave me the tour of the place standing in one spot and moving his hand around as he talked. There wasn’t a woman to be seen in that attic. Just Tim and his boys, mostly students from other countries. So this was what it was like to be Oliver Twist.
The boarding house aspect of the place was just a little wack. I was in Budapest, for chrissake. I had just graduated from college. I was here for fun, not the Boy Scout Experience. A few hours after arriving, while smoking a hand-rolled cigarette with one of the boys in what seemed to be an old, personal Sauna — the "smoking room" — I resolved to leave. I asked Tim if I could get my money back for the nights I booked. He said, “Sure, but why?” I scratched my neck. I said I needed to catch a flight somewhere — last minute. He refunded me and I picked up my bags and headed for the door. All the boys watched me go.
Budapest by day was beautiful. The language was strange. It was hot. I saw bridges and buildings with elaborate facades and of course churches. Churches and churches and churches. They love their churches in Europe. I saw the Danube river, where Elias Canetti, one of my Gods, had travelled so many times to and from his birthplace, (Romania) and his home (Vienna). Once, when traveling the river with his grandfather, the older Canetti thwarted a murder plot. Through a porthole, Canetti Senior heard the voices of two men in the cabin next to theirs. One of the men knew a guy with a lot of money at the next stopping point. They agreed to get off the river boat, kill the rich man, take his money, get back on and sail away. Off they’d go with their bags of cash, undetected, the river carrying them to freedom. Grandfather Canetti alerted the authorities. When the ship docked, they searched the men in question and found a blade and a piece of paper with the rich man’s name and address. The two would-be murders were hanged. This was that river.
Budapest by night was a different story. I went out with the girl and her friend and some other Aussies (sadly, yes). They have these things called “ruin” bars there. They’re bar/club setups in half-destroyed and abandoned buildings, places for designated debauchery where, in the past, surely, lots of human suffering took place. They have no ceilings, just the night sky. Usually, they’re multilevel, including second stories where the floor suddenly drops off leading to cave-like basements with tunnel networks. How did they become ruins? Beats me. I’d like to believe a bomb was dropped on them during some war, and the bombers, thinking they wreaked havoc on the city below, did nothing more than clear a space for dancing. That would be nice, to ignore the probably deaths of whole families. In any case, they’re great places to get sloshed. That night started auspiciously. The girl and I made conversation, we laughed, we got drinks. But I was still a plaything. She left room for Jesus between us. If she caught herself giving me more attention than befits a fast woman dealing with an overly romantic dude, she’d cut it out. Eventually I got tired of her shit and went off on my own. I met some nice people in the basement, and from there the night went swimmingly. No black-haired blue-eyed Australian girls to speak of.
Problem was, we all returned to the same place at night: that musty hostel. Now she was drunk and betraying her fast girl act, but now I was playing fast boy.
Checkmate.
I was busy. I was tired. I had things to do, like sleep.
“What do you want?” she said, out of the blue.
“Want?”
“From me.”
“Nothing,” I said.
“Not even a kiss?”
She leaned her head on the rail of her top bunk. I was standing. Our faces were level. Somehow she made her lips look even more kissable than they looked normally.
I moved towards her.
She flung back onto her pillow. “Well you’re not getting one. Goodnight!”
Stay away from Australians.
Next day, I found this alleyway. It starts dark and scary, but opens up and gets brighter. There was a guy selling old pins and trinkets from the Soviet era in the dark and scary part. I bought a switchblade with Lenin’s face on it. I liked that about Budapest. Every stage of its history was visible. Here a Roman rampart, there an opera house from the days of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and over there some monument commissioned by Stalin. This was a city that never took the middle ground. It was communism or bust, baby. Expand the empire or die trying. Extremes. The train system was fantastic and made up of little boxy cars that seemed to belong in a theme park. It was neutral-colored, slow, and loud, but effective. More importantly, it was cheap. Imagining what it was like to live in the later stages of Soviet Union is hard for propaganda-laden Americans. To us, it’s all executions, parades, trucks carrying missiles pointed at the blue sky. Who can say but the people who lived it? To be precise, these people: the Hungarians. The traces left behind didn’t look all that bad, and from what I heard a lot of them missed those days. But the American’s got their way. The civilian-centered ways of the U.S.S.R. are gone. In its place: ruin bars.
At the end of the alley, a breakfast place. I dropped-in and ordered an Americano and an American breakfast, eliminating all doubt as to where I’m from, which was obviously Canada. Who showed up as I slid a sausage link into my mouth? The girl. She sat with me. We ate. It was her last day. She was leaving in the morning. I was too. She looked good. Very good. But apparently she didn’t feel good. Might be coming down with a cold or something, she said, which sucked, because she was headed to London next and she wanted to be able to go out and have fun. I read this as: I want to go out and toy with more boys like you, but I can’t if I’m sick, darn. I told her to drink orange juice. We made plans to go out again that night, immune system permitting.
Ruin bar. The girl. Beer. Cigarettes. Fast girl act? Obliterated. It was on. Good times ensued. All of it ended again at the hostel, her in the top bunk, me standing, a repeat of the night before, except this time, it would be different.
We kissed.
And what a disappointment it was. Three day’s effort for that? Ten seconds of mediocre lip smashing? I saw her in the morning, leaving for London, and wondered what attracted me to her in the first place. I’d gone completely cold on her, and she was the one with icy blue eyes. I put it behind me, except I couldn’t. That day I took a bus to Krakow, Poland, one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever seen, and as night fell, I started feeling ill. I was sick. I laid in my top bunk, drinking tea and thinking about the damn Aussie chick that did me in. It was better than acknowledging that I did myself in.
I wanted to visit Auschwitz the next day, but I couldn’t because I was sick. I spent the next day sore and achy, blowing my nose, taking Advil, looking at the street from the window by my bed, watching documentaries about the holocaust. After day and a half, I was better.
I went to Auschwitz, and there every problem, every complaint, every illness, every unhappiness, every suffering I’d ever felt or perceived melted away. How the people that died here would have loved to live again, their stolen lives returned—refunded. How they would have loved to be a part of this world again—to eat, to drink, to dance; to ride a train, to smoke a cigarette, to buy a switchblade; to be rejected, to be accepted, to be loved; to kiss someone, even if it meant they’d be sick for a few days after. ♦