Sleeping around in Budapest

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Budapest Andrassy Street July 22



It is awhile since I slept with so many young people. First it was two Japanese girls, then some Swiss guys and finally some svelte Frenchmen en route to the Sun 'Trance' festival. One of the Frenchmen apologies the next morning because he had peered at me up close in bed when they had returned at 4am. He had thought I was one of them. I told him that I took it as a compliment!



Jane and I had got to the Home Made Hostel (www.homemadehostel.com) at 10.30am last Thursday. At 4am Jane was in the taxi heading back to the UK for Laura's wedding. I went back to bed. I had three days to aclimatise in Budapest before Jane returned with Angela.



The hostel was very good, for me anyway. It is not a 'party' hostel. The dorm rooms, including the six bedder I occupied, had no bunks and I had got a kind of free corner with a comfy chair by my bed so it was more than acceptable. There was an offer for free ear plugs. They might have been useful on the Saturday night where outside, and with the windows open because of the heat, the party seemed to go on until 6am. I slept well in general, Hungarian wine probably helped, and the final bill for four nights including the first one in a private double room was £64. Pretty good for Europe these days.



The only real objective I had for the three days was to start the Letter of Invitation (LOI) process for Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. We could not do this before because there is a time limit before which you can not apply. We are using the services of StanTours who I was glad to see were still getting good reviews on the ThornTree forum. So this is now complete. We should get the LOI's emailed to us in about a month. We can the get the visas in person when we are in Ankara.



My initial wanderings from the hostel identify a good supermarket - I was rather pleased with the goulash I produced, an Arts Cinema next door and Magnum photo exhibitions in town. The Arts cinema was very friendly. It had a number of small screens with some showing either English/US films or Hungarian films with English subtitles. I was a little isolated when in 'Finding Vivian Maier' the language moved to French for a few scenes and the subtitles stayed in Hungarian. The Magnum exhibitions were both historical: one a replay of a 1955 exhibition which included an amasing sequence around Gandhi's assassination and funeral by Robert Capa. Other showed the contact sheets in association with final picture with background by the photographer. Classic shots of Che Guevara and Khrushchev and Nixon stood out.



Now Jane is back with Angela we have moved to an AirBnB apartment (see 'Perfect Location, Civic Atmosphere' in District IV) just up the road. And I know I recommended the hostel whole heartedly, this apartment, on the other hand, is in a different league. On a per person basis it is actually cheaper than the hostel and could accommodate 5 instead of 3 with ease. The main room and bedroom are massive with big wooden doors and mile high ceilings. The hosts, Andre and Margo, have been so attentive. Andre has been back twice to check the washing machine even though they live 30 minutes drive away. We had a well stocked fridge when we got here and Andre gave us a full orientation with the map so he could practice his English. He was the Dean of the department handling teacher training at the University before he retired a couple of year ago. This apartment used to be the family home. It turns out I still prefer sleeping with someone I know.

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Photos

The main lounge in our apartment in Budapest
The upper floors of the big building next door burnt down 4 days ago so the occasional worker passes the window in a cherry picker