To Siófok...

---

There are few things in this world more irritating to me than being hella late. I was hella late, and then some.

After the nearly four hours of waiting in Frankfurt, I'd gotten on the flight to Ferihegy and promptly passed-out. No, really, I was out before we even took to the sky. I vaguely recall the flight attendant smiling at me as she got up to do her, "this is how you unbuckle your seatbelt, and if this is news to you you really need to get out more" routine, but only vaguely.

I did wake up just long enough to confuse the hell out of the purser, who kept trying to push a cheese sandwich on me. I'd take the steps (as usual) of booking a kosher meal on my flights, both because it's passover AND because when you get the kosher meals they're usually served first, always have something hot, and generally are usually chicken. I was on a roll with this whole passover thing, and I knew I'd break it by the time I found myself starving and exhausted in a country that had no clue what a meal without bread was, but I wasn't there yet. When the purser finally gave-up on me, she somehow conveyed to the attendant passing around drinks that I should be ignored. It took a moment, but I remedied that.

I fell back asleep for a little while and when I awoke I felt the landing-gear coming down as we were about to land at Ferihegy 2. When I got back on land I bolted through the place, got some money exchanged, and made for the BKV bus stop. Within 40mins I was in Kispest getting on the Metro. Some 20mins later I was on another Metro, almost to Déli pu., the Western train station. Of course, by then the next train out to Siófok was about an hour away, and it was the slow train. So, I got döner and some baklava, made a couple of calls, and eventually found myself on the right train.

Two and a half hours later I was telling myself not to fall asleep again, because I'd fallen asleep 8 times by then. That's when the train stopped again and I looked out the window to see that we'd arrived in Siófok. Being that it was already past 23.30, I went as quickly as I could to the apartment/hostel to find that nobody was answering. I thought I should find a payphone, so I wandered around the NW part of the town until I came upon a hoidy-toidy spa/hotel where I could use their payphone and steal some internet. The payphone bit didn't work so well as nobody was answering, but at least I got to check my email.

I was about to give-up. But, I thought a walk around the city might do me well, perhaps a hotel would be open or something. Or not. I must have walked some 8km before heading back to the apartment/hostel I'd booked. As a last-ditch effort I went back, thinking that I could curl up somewhere outside until they opened, or repack my bag on one of their outside tables and prepare my brain for crashing on the beach. As luck would have it, at that moment, I saw out of the corner of my eye a little doorbell-button that had been installed into one of the railings of the meter-tall fence/gate. I buzzed it about six times, and finally someone came down, let me in, and show me a room.

I can't possibly describe how good it felt to get a shower and curl up in a bed after more than 24hrs of aeroplanes, airports, buses, metros, trains, and walking.

---