Bedless in Bratislava, and at Home in Budapest

Bedless in Bratislava

A lot of things in life require very careful planning; without it you can often end up stuck out in the cold, so to speak. Some people take this issue very seriously, these are the people who won’t leave home without a retinue of translators, guides, organizers, and pack-mules, all prepared to follow a pre-defined itinerary between pre-booked hotels and pre-planned activities. Some people, including me, aren’t able to think this far ahead. What follows is a story of how my lack of foresight caught up with me in Eastern Europe.

It all started when I chose to leave Vienna one morning. The decision may or may not have been clouded by a minorly massive hangover, but the prime force behind my leaving was that I had forgotten to reserve my bed in the hostel for that evening. In China, which is by no means a particularly travel-convenience-oriented country this would not have been a problem. In fact, a good friend of mine managed to stay in the same Beijing hostel for three weeks straight without ever reserving his bed, or paying for it for that matter (he paid up in the end, because he felt obliged, not because the staff forced him to). However, Western Europe is a wholly different matter as I should have known.

Not to be deterred by my peaceful eviction, I was in fact happy to move on to a new city so I packed my bags and headed to a small bus station on the outskirts of the city. And by
“bus station” I mean a small office tucked away somewhere inside an abandoned mall next to a highway. The bus was heading towards Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia which is surprisingly close to Vienna even by European standards. I had heard big things about this small city, it was supposed to be a beautiful place that still managed to hold onto its medieval charms.

As the bus crossed the Danube the old town suddenly appeared. The castle loomed on the opposite side of the river, just beside the bridge, and just below it sat what looked like a perfectly arranged and preserved village straight from a fairy tale. Perhaps it was the fact that I was visiting on a bright and sunny morning, just as the spring was beginning to take hold, or perhaps Bratislava is just a perfect town, I’ll let you decide that for yourself. At the time though, I was practically beside myself as I finally felt as though I was exploring an unspoiled part of Europe. I don’t mean to deprive Paris or London of their glory, but it feels entirely different to be exploring a place that you had not seen a thousand pictures of before your left home. Bratislava looked brilliant, and it was completely new to me, so I felt as though I was really exploring the world again.

Enough of the sentimentality though, and onwards with the story. The bus pleasingly dropped me off in a practical place that right next to the old town and the castle (unlike the bus station in Vienna which was in the middle of nowhere) so I grabbed me oversize bag and walked straight into the center of town. It was still early so there weren’t too many people about just yet. Waiters were setting out tables in chairs in the streets, quite literally in the middle of some of them, ready for the crowds of sun loving locals and day-trippers. I managed to grab a half decent photocopy of a street map, plus a couple of hostel addresses, from a tourism office and using this I started exploring the streets. I figured I’d find a bed, drop my gear, and then wander the endless cobblestoned alleys.

The old town of Bratislava is rather small when it comes down to it, a collection of maybe twenty rambling alleys completely filled with old buildings. Outside of this small central area the city quickly becomes a collection of green and leafy suburbs intermingled with modern thoroughfares and offices. I hastily headed to a likely hostel and asked for a bed, hopeful that I would be back into the old town in just a few minutes.

Unfortunately they were completely full.

Undeterred for the second time that day I headed out again and walked across to the second hostel I had been recommended only to find that they too were full. The third hostel was also full, as was the fourth. Pretty soon I was wandering the streets quite some distance from the fun parts of the town as I headed to the very last hostel I knew about. This was starting to get frustrating, but it was still only 11am so it was by no means the end of the world.

The last hostel was also full, but thankfully the owner suggested I try a pension on the hill behind the castle so I still had one option left to me. I hiked up the hill, steep as it was, with my vastly oversize bag (yes, I should have thrown some of that junk out before this) and after a sweaty half hour I finally found the pension. It was just a small house on the hill, nestled in the ritzy part of Bratislava with al of the mansions and swimming pools. They had a small sign out the front advertising their beds, so I politely asked if they had any room.

Unfortunately they were completely full.

Well, my chances of finding a bed were becoming pretty slim by this point, so I walked back down the hill and into the old town to try one more time to find a hostel. I searched around the alleys looking for some small, tucked away, place that wasn’t on my map in the hope that I could find a bed by virtue of its anonymity. I did find a couple of places, but they were all full as well, until finally some luck began to shine on me.

I walked into one last hotel, up a spiral staircase covered in nice carpet and at the top I found a pretty, young concierge behind her desk. I asked her what their room rates were, fearful that even if they had space I wouldn’t be able to afford it. Given that I was standing in front of her with my backpack on a day that was clearly very popular for people arriving in town, I figured she’d understand what I was after. She was very quick to pull out a list of their room rates and showed me their cheapest price: 1500 Koruna (about $100 at the time). This was a little steep for me, but given my options I figured I could handle the expense for one night, especially as I was enjoying the city so much.

After a minute of hard thinking, I decided to go for it, perhaps the luxury would be good for me. As I looked up to accept her offer, the concierge politely informed me “but if you’re looking for tonight we’re full”. “Good on love” I thought to myself, what did you think I was doing there?

At that point I gave up and headed into an internet café to see what my options were. I could always head back to Vienna if I had to. Looking up hostel websites I found the cause of all my woes: it was the Saturday of a long weekend for the May Day holiday and every bucks party in England had decided to use the three days to get drunk and stupid in Eastern Europe. The hordes of bleary-eyed English hooligans that were beginning to emerge on the streets made sense all of a sudden. I had simply come to the city on the worst possible day of the year.

Checking around, I found that my bed problems were worse than I had feared. Bratislava was completely full. . . not a bed to be found. Vienna was also full, so I started to look further afield. Had I been in a larger continent I could have caught an overnight train somewhere, but when cities are only an hour apart that plan doesn’t really work. Prague was full, Munich as well. In fact, everywhere was full including Paris. Was I going to have to sleep on the street? Italy? No, it was full too, Strasbourg? Linz? I was starting to have to look at maps to think of new cities to look up. Eventually I found a bed, just one of them, and it was probably the last available bed in all of Europe. It was in Budapest, so I booked it and then tried to think of how I intended to get to Budapest. Exactly how far away is Budapest?

To aid my thinking I sat at a café in the middle of a street, looking up at an ancient white gateway crossed with a bell tower, ate some local food, drank a local beer and enjoyed the sunshine. Compared to the other people I saw about me - an eclectic mix of drunk Britons and package-tourists from the USA - I really was a hobo. Do hobos really drink Cappuccinos?

After lunch I decided to get a move on so I walked back across town to the train station, asked for a ticket to Budapest and finally got a stroke of luck: the slow train was leaving in five minutes. As I boarded, finding myself what I hoped was the cheap kind of cabin I had paid for (it would appear that Slovakian trains have very little differentiation between classes, I felt like I was on the orient express), I felt a pang of sadness that I was being forced to leave Bratislava. It had appeared so beautiful at the outset, it was exactly the kind of place I wanted to relax in for a day or two, and here I was leaving before I’d even been inside the castle.

More Mixed Fortunes

The train ride was lovely. At the beginning I had a pair of companions who very promptly found themselves another cabin as soon as the train started moving, so for the most part I was left to my own devices. Just a book, a window and me. The scenery began very plainly, the usual rolling green fields interspersed with communist era farm buildings, but after an hour or so the train turned down towards the Danube again and we travelled along its steep and verdant riverbank. Every now and then the forest would be broken by a castle or other fortification guarding the river; relics from the distant past. It was as though I was travelling back in time at some points. When we crossed the river and headed into Hungary the scenery became even more impressive.

Unlike Western Europe, Hungary still feels to some extent wild and natural. The endless forests have not been replaced with unending fields, and there are mountains and hills to break up the landscape. To speak plainly, I found Hungary’s countryside to be infinitely more interesting than the lands to its west. Perhaps this day wasn’t going to be so bad after all, I had seen a beautiful city, passed through some beautiful countryside, and I was going to have a bed at the end of it all.

The train was supposed to take two and a half hours to reach Budapest, but I got the feeling that we were travelling slower than we were supposed to be. I got up and moved around the carriage, having a look at the other passengers. It appeared that only about ten people were actually still in the carriage, and somewhat surprisingly, they were all wearing white. Nothing but white actually. They all looked to be about 18 or 19, speaking what sounded like Russian to me, and they were all dressed the same way. To say that it was a little bit creepy would be an understatement; they looked like a bunch of kids pretending to be in a gang, and a very conspicuous one at that.

I didn’t investigate further, I thought better of it, so I left them to their devices and I sat back in my seat. A little while later on, at about the time we were due in Budapest, the train stopped somewhere in the middle of nowhere. It looked as though we might be in the outskirts of the city, but it could have been anywhere for all I knew. I didn’t mind though, trains stop from time to time, that’s normal. After half and hour I was a little frustrated at the delay though, it had been a long day after all. I got up and looked around only to find that most of the people on the train were unloading their luggage and walking off into the suburbs. People were calling taxis and trying to hitchhike on the road next to the train. Was this, perhaps, the end of the line? I asked the people around me if they knew what was going on, but they either knew nothing or spoke very little English, it was hard to tell which. Looking ahead down the line I could see no reason why we had stopped, but I had few options but to stay put. After some time a man appeared who did speak English and he was able to tell me that something had happened to a freight train ahead of us and the line was blocked, so it appeared that I was stuck in the middle of nowhere. Now I had a bed, but I was unable to get to it.

What does one do when a train is stuck? By now the train was practically empty except for me and the Russian gangsters who were getting edgier every minute. The scenery wasn’t exactly pretty anymore either; we were sitting in a grimy industrial district.

Eventually, after a couple of hours, the train began to move again. Slowly creeping forward at a snails pace, and eventually, about 15 minutes later we arrived at the train station. I had just spent two hours waiting for the train to move when I was less than five kilometers from my destination. . .

Revelation of the Russian Gangsters

It was half-past nine when I got off the train in Budapest. The day had been long but interesting, although not without some boring and frustrating parts, so I was happy to be near its end. Immediately upon my arrival I found Budapest to be my kind of city. Before I’d even left the platform touts had run up to me trying to exchange money, get me in a taxi, or take me to a hostel. I felt so much more at home in a city where people try to jump on you as quickly as they can; these are the places where you can get things sorted out without any worries. It seemed less like Europe and more like Asia, just the way I like it.

I took the subway to my hostel, which turned out to be a school. All of the students had gone home for the long weekend so the matron was renting out the beds to make some extra money. It suited me perfectly; it was cheap and available for that night. I would have to move to a new place the next day, but that would be easy as everyone would have gone home by then.

As I opened the door to the room I was greeted with the one sight I was expecting least: another all-white Russian gang.

Four of them in all, wearing white running shoes, white trousers, white shirts and white caps, stood around the room. They weren’t looking particularly tough or dangerous, just a little weird. As I dropped my bag one of them ventured a sentence in English, “Are you here for sensation white?” I looked at myself, half expecting my clothes to have been secretly bleached while I wasn’t looking, and I realised that I was in fact wearing a white T-shirt. Heaven forbid that I get mixed up in a white supremacy march in Eastern Europe; I quickly explained that I was in fact just visiting. They all looked a little disappointed by this, as though they had been looking forward to dragging me along with whatever hate crime they had planned, but they explained what they meant.

As it turned out, the world’s greatest, largest, most profound and most exciting touring trance party was in Budapest that night and young people were flocking from all around the continent to be a part of it. All you had to do was wear nothing but white, buy a ticket, and jump around like a loony for an evening. Sounds like fun doesn’t it? Thankfully for me, white doesn’t match my eyes so I wasn’t compelled to join them.

I did find it interesting to note that despite being completely full, every hostel bed in Hungary would be empty that night while their occupants danced the night away. Had I thought ahead, planned just a little, and perhaps looked at a calendar I could have been sleeping soundly in Bratislava after a relaxing day in that marvelous city followed by a crazy night surrounded by drunk Englishmen, instead I was sleeping in an empty dorm room in a school somewhere in Budapest after a frantic day of worrying about where I was going to sleep. Did I learn anything? Well, no, I still didn’t book ahead that week.

It certainly was an interesting welcome to Eastern Europe though, and it was just the beginning of what turned out to be a fantastic couple of weeks.

Budapest

Budapest is a wonderful city. I’m just going to come out and say it. From the very first moment I set foot in the city I felt at home in so many ways; I guess that Western Europe just isn’t for me. Let me, in my own long-winded and poorly worded way, try to explain what it is about Budapest that so captivated me.

From the front door of my hostel I stepped out onto one of the main drags in Pest, one of the two major cities that make up Budapest (anyone want to guess the name of the other one?). My hostel was a small apartment on one of the upper floors of a fairly standard communist-era building - very reminiscent of my lodgings in Ulaan Baatar - that looked out on the street in one direction and onto an interior courtyard on the other. It was one of those purely functional buildings yet it still seemed to have a style to it; the lush green courtyard shared by all the tenants, with its mix of laundry and overgrowth that so very poorly mimicked an au-natural Laundromat in a jungle, a place where the whole world seemed more quiet and the air so much fresher than outside the walls; the understated decoration on the eves and around the windows that was so minimalist that you barely noticed it, yet did so much to offset the grim reality of the plain stone exterior.

This building was very much the same as all of the buildings on the street. Five storey block monoliths, the communist version of the row-house, lined the street without a gap or break. Like two enormous walls they loomed on either side of the streetscape, imposing. However, very much unlike what I would have expected, these buildings seemed neither ominous, nor boring. Little touches here and there, such as a small decoration below each window, or the subtle changes in hue from building to building (Pest is mainly a very faint yellow, like an old gum tree, if you want to know), combined together to make the apartments seem very homely, quietly peaceful, and graceful.

At ground level things were very much alive as well. The street buzzed with a spattering of small cafes, fruit stands, and local stores. Down the middle ran a quaint little streetcar. The people around me had the look of friendly people (although looks can be very deceiving, I subsequently found the people in Hungary to be exceptionally friendly) and, all-in-all, I felt as though I was somewhere nice to be. That is the best way I can describe Budapest: it has all of the trademarks of being a plain and boring city, yet the people there have managed to make it beautiful. It looks pretty, feels good, and oozes history.

Wandering in the Pretty City

After a day of catching up with myself (read: relaxing and typing one of these journals in an internet café) I finally set out to explore Budapest properly. I started by wandering towards the Danube and soon I found myself at St. Stephen’s Basilica. This tall and thin building stands back from the river all by itself and is hidden amidst a labyrinth of old streets. If I hadn’t known where to find it I probably wouldn’t have seen it as it really does appear out of nowhere as you round a corner. From the outside it is not the most enticing of structures, but on the inside it is an entirely different story. As soon as I walked through the old wooden doors my head was pulled upwards. Way upwards. Above me the dome simply disappeared into the distance; gold, blue and glowing, that is the only way to describe it. Somehow the light permeated the entire dome making it stand out from the darkness below where I stood, lighting up every glorious painting and every golden image. From everywhere within the basilica I could see the dome as it appeared to cover almost the entire floor plan; looming above me, constantly demanding attention, it was more distracting than a girl in a red bikini could ever be.

More intriguing still was what I found hidden in a small room towards the rear of the building. Had I read up on the history of Budapest before visiting I might have been prepared for this but, being me, I was discovering the facts first-hand. Sitting in a sealed case, surrounded by gold and velvet, was the mummified right hand of the first King of Hungary.

Now, I’m undecided about the whole preservation of important people. I’ve seen Uncle Ho in Hanoi, and I wanted to see Chairman Mao (he was on holiday when I visited Beijing, seriously), so obviously I have some weird subconscious desire to see dead people, but old King Stephen’s hand caught me off guard. Mummification didn’t happen a whole lot in middle-ages Europe, so I really wonder who decided to keep the king for posterity. And furthermore, who decided that his tomb should be opened, his hand removed, and that it then get put on display in perpetuity? He was later cannonised for his good deeds, so presumably the man was a good fellow, but isn’t it a little morbid to keep only his right hand?

I left the basilica with mixed feelings, I looked at my own right hand trying to think if it had every done anything noteworthy without me, I decided that I could never know what it got up to when I wasn’t looking so I dropped the whole notion and reminded myself to never get mummified, pickled, or plastinated. I continued on my walk about the old parts of Pest. The intricately interwoven streets were full of old buildings, pedestrian boulevards and cafes. It really did feel like a nice place to hang out on a warm and sunny day. Unfortunately I would have to wait to explore it more thoroughly as I had arranged a meeting with an old friend at the university across the river.

Way back when, let’s say about seven months prior, I had met a newly wed couple in Mongolia. Sari and Sanyi were one of those couples that just looked right together, their feelings for one another were so clearly written across each of their faces. I had shared a great ten days or so exploring the countryside of Mongolia with them, traveling in a claustrophobic van without its full complement of gears but with more than its share of good humour. Back then I had promised to visit my friends while I was in Europe and, even though my plans had been skewed beyond all recognition, here I was in their city and there Sanyi was in his own office, in his hometown university, on his own turf.

It was great to see Sanyi again, he had not changed at all in both appearance and personality. It was just like visiting an old friend (something that I was starting to miss a lot after 15 months away from home). I always feared that friends I met on the road would be completely different after they stopped traveling. After all, traveling is such a completely different lifestyle that in itself it brings out a different side in most people. I also feared that once I stopped traveling (which, sad as it is to say, was inevitable in at least a temporary way) I would also become someone else. I quite liked my traveling self, I felt confident, excited, happy and just ever-so-slightly out of control while on the road and wanted to keep that feeling forever. Seeing that Sanyi was still his calm, happy and downright hilarious self after months of being home renewed my confidence that everything would turn out alright when I found myself rooted to a single city for more than a week.

IKEA is Swedish, No?

There are many ways to explore the world, as there are many disparate things to see in this world. When you think of traveling you may not think of the same things as I do, and there is nothing wrong with this. For example, some people can think of nothing better than relaxing in a five star international resort for a week, swimming in a heated pool that is less than twenty yards from the crystal clear ocean, eating continental buffets instead of local fare (it should be noted that the author thinks that these people should be corrected in their ways because they are wrong). Some people like exploring history, some only want to see the modern world. My point is this: you might not be exploring everything there is to see, we all have our blinkers and none of us can claim to be into everything, so sometimes it is a good idea to try something completely new and different.

This is what I did the following day with Sanyi. Together we did something that to most people is nothing out of the ordinary, but to me, a young guy from the middle of nowhere northern Australia who had been a hobo long enough to not even know the names of some of his best friend’s children (who can all probably talk by now), actually turned out to be very entertaining: we went to IKEA. Sure, go ahead and call me what you will, but IKEA was cool. I guess you never know the true pleasure of designing a kitchen until you haven’t had one for a bloody long time. The best part though, was taking it back to Sari and Sanyi’s house and trying to put the damn thing together. . . it was like a regular home project like those I used to do with my dad, but all the instructions were in Hungarian.

To restore the balance we did stop to see one other interesting thing that day: the communist sculpture park. I’m not sure where Marx actually wrote it, but at some point he must have said “Oh yeah, we need lots of sculpture too, and no smooth lines!” for everywhere I’ve been that was ever touched by communism I always see the same public art. There is probably a very good reason for this, and I’d love to be enlightened, but I really don’t have any idea how a socio-political ideology ever managed to direct artistic thought in such a singular direction. I could accept that within a communist country the art could become very standardized, but why is it that the sculpture of the people’s heroes in Tiananmen square looks the same as the proletariat fighters in Budapest which in turn are the same as the facades on the Vertical Runway in Vientianne?

The park was filled with all of the old sculptures that had proliferated Budapest during communist times. Unlike elsewhere, where anything to do with those times had been destroyed or hidden, the Hungarian people had decided to keep it all as a reminder, and I think that this is a wise move. Given, it was hidden way out of town, but it was there. I wonder if the same is going to happen elsewhere? Has anyone saved the statues of Saddam Hussein and put them somewhere safe so that future generations will have cause to remember and learn from their past?

Further Wanderings

I spent most of my time in Budapest just wandering about. Compared to where I had been in the preceding months the city was a reprieve. I can’t express how much I felt at home in this city. It had a lot to do with the people as well. The Magyar people intrigued me to no end. You see, I had always thought of Europe as a roughly homogenous place. Sure the landscape must change a lot, but the land had been populated for such a long time that surely most of the races had intermingled, interbred, and formed something akin to a “European” race. This most certainly is not the case, and this came as quite a shock to me, particularly so in Hungary. Here, tucked away in a relatively small enclave, almost entirely surrounded by Slavs, the Magyars have managed to hold on to their identity for thousands of years. The concept that a tribe of people moved from the Urals to Hungary a couple of thousand years ago and managed to maintain their uniqueness ever since simply amazes me. Their language is completely unlike any other that I’ve heard, they are friendlier than any other people I’ve met in Europe; they just seem to be completely unique from everyone around them. How is this possible? It’s not as if there are vast mountain ranges hemming them in and preventing travel and trade.

Or perhaps I was just in a really good mood. Whatever the cause, I had a brilliant time wandering though the city; eating in small cafes on cobbled streets, climbing the hill into the castle at the top (which afforded a wonderful view down across the river, and where I had a good look around the very ancient Matthias Church), and just generally exploring as many backstreets as I could. I also spent some time wandering through the extensive gardens in Pest and the House of Terror (no, not a haunted house, it is a museum made in what used to be headquarters of the secret police during the communist era, and which serves to educate about the horrible events of the fascist and communist governments in Hungary. It had, without a doubt, the most intensive audio/visual displays I’ve yet seen in a museum. Had I been able to understand Hungarian I’m sure I would have gotten a lot out of the experience).

Moving Onwards

Even though I did love Budapest, I did have to move on at some point. It had been fantastic staying with Sari and Sanyi (thanks guys!) and they had really given me the chance to know a lot more about their city than I would have otherwise. Not to mention all that I learned about Hungarian food while in their house (those are some good sausages). They even took me out to the Ballet one night (something I had never done before, but most certainly will have to do again if only to understand the storyline). There certainly was something about Budapest that captured my heart and I feel as though I could spend a whole lot more time there. I think I will have to return someday.

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