Hungary and Austria

Hajduboszormeny, Hungary, 14 Sept. 2007

Deep in eastern Hungary, nearly to the Ukrainian border. I'm accompanying an old friend who lives in Budapest, as he participates in a corporate PR/Habitat for Humanity activity here. I'll get the full report later about what exactly he's doing, but it appeared, when I left him and his comrades, to involve digging a hole. It's a gorgeous day, the kind of day that makes any town look eminently liveable (it was a day like this, a fair August afternoon in 1996, that tricked me into believing London was liveable). Since I'm only here for an afternoon, there's no way of really getting to know the place. But I imagine that around, say, mid-January, when virtually no part of Europe north of Rome is fit for human habitation, the quaint towns of eastern Hungary become as sluggish as can be imagined, with the consumption of television and alcohol for most people the leading escapes from the relentless dreariness. But that seems far away at the moment. The sky is mostly blue, and only the noticeable drop in temperature that occurs every time a cloud skitters across the sun serves to remind the skeptic that it isn't always gorgeous and happy here.

Surviving in such a place requires integrating rapidly into the local "scene" -- there's no cafe, no movie theater, etc. -- just a hotel restaurant with which one would quickly grow tired, where bad old pop music is played remixed and too loud, I grew up in such a place.

Budapest, 15 Sept. 2007 -- It's wonderful to be here in this city, long among my favorites in Europe. I first came here in March 1989, on my first European journey. This was about one week after the Iron Curtain started to physically come down. My then girlfriend, Cathy, and I visited my brother in Graz, Austria, then went to Vienna and on to Budapest. We arrived late, after a long delay at the border, and thought we had a place to stay, with the sister of an American woman that we met on the train. But no, the older sister was not happy with the prospect of two unannounced guests, and she sent us packing, after midnight, to stay in a state-run hotel. The place was filthy and inhospitable, the staff sullen. I remember waking from a poor night's sleep and going to the common male bathroom for my shower. Rubble was strewn around the floor of the locker room style shower from an unfinished construction project. We were at our limits, wasted from exhaustion and the shock of being in this srange place where things were going very badly. But the shower was hot, I remember. And things took a decided turn for the better when we called a man we'd met on the train, whose family owned a private guest room. Sure enough, it was a great place, with all the comforts of home, and the woman of the house served us up a phenomenal chicken cordon bleu, complete with good local wine.

I've tried to come back to Austria and Hungary every year since. An American friend in Seoul tries to visit Kyoto every autumn with his Okinawan wife. These kinds of little traditions give our lives continuity and perspective, and run up our travel bills.