A Tale of Two Ex-Soviet Cities

I wrote this a couple of days ago while killing time before my train left for Sofia. My 26 hour long train. Yes, it was waaaay too long for a train ride, and I am a train lover. No, I’m not going to do it again. I’ll fly, thank you.

I’m sitting in a bar not too far from the train station but far enough to not be in the “train station” neighborhood, if you know what I mean. It’s away from the wealthier part of Budapest but not a dump – kind of normal, really. Budapest has become quite expensive compared to when I was here nearly a decade ago, which of course, is to be expected, given the whole entry into the EU and all. It’s still cheaper than Washington, of course, but given my limited budget, paying over $3 for what is the equivalent of a medium latte (they called it a large) was a pretty steep price. I needed the coffee, though. I’m running on fumes here, what with the jet lag and the lack of sleep.

I stopped at the bar because I’m freaking exhausted and I don’t want to walk around for another step. This is my travel style – just wandering aimlessly with a camera and a lot of thoughts. I don’t stick to the tourist sites – in fact, I try to spend as little time at them as possible, unless they are simply incredible and warrant the time. Some of them are, of course. Today I had no real destination. I wanted to go to the Statue Museum where they placed all of the old Soviet statues they took down after the USSR’s collapse, as I am fascinated by the CCCP, but I decided since it was pretty far out that I would wait until December when I return to this city for my flight home. I’m kind of paranoid about missing flights and trains and stuff, especially trains that cost me $100 more than I had anticipated. Very, very bad.

It would be interesting to spend more time in this city – both of my trips have only been a couple of days. I hardly remember my first trip, as it was for school, although I do remember the ballet Gizelle at the Opera House. I feel myself very fortunate for getting to see a show inside. I took several photos of this beautiful building today and tried to capture as much of the amazing blue sky behind it, though I was having some trouble with my camera or my eye or something and had real difficulties with the lighting. I may end up adjusting the brightness on some photos before I post them, which I really hate to do.

I am thoroughly impressed with how nice Hungarians are. I mean, you stop and let someone pass you on a narrow sidewalk, and they thank you! My kind of people! And this is in the capital city, of all places. Imagine what it is like in the smaller towns. In fact, the only bad experience with any Hungarian at all was at the train station, where the woman who was tasked with selling international tickets did not speak English and took her good old time processing my request to the point where I wondered if she had just left the office for the day.

The language thing was rarely an issue except in choosing restaurants, as Hungarian has very few cognates to any of the languages I have studied and I had no clue what the dishes were. As someone who has a certificate saying I am a certified “linguist” having once been fluent in Arabic and French and having some proficiency in Spanish, I am very interested in language and really tried to decipher what I was seeing and hearing. I’m an adventurous person, but I was embarrassed to pronounce things because I don’t even know the sounds except that SZ is an English S sound, and I know that because I saw signs for “Szex Shop” and “Szalon.” It’s really interesting to me because I can get around in many countries without knowing the language like Germany because as a native English speaker I speak a Germanic language and can figure things out, and I’ve also had some exposure to it through traveling. But with Hungarian, nothing is remotely similar and I was getting frustrated with not being able to figure anything out. Believe me, I tried. I think the only word I learned was Sor (with an umlaut) because bars that I passed said “Sorhaz” (beerhouse!) and there were beer signs outside. I also recognized the word “Kave” as coffee, and believe me, I needed to know that! I saw “bolt” on a lot of signs and assumed it meant store. And then the word for restaurant, which I thought was universal, is something totally different that starts with an E, and it took me awhile to recognize restaurants as I passed them. I am not sure, but for some reason I have the impression that the word is similar to the Greek word. Something like Etteram? I could be wrong. And I guess if it is “etteram,” restaurant could be a derivative of it. I could figure out enough to buy spring water rather than gas water, but not without taking gas water to the register and turning around to find the plain water. Still, there were enough Hungarians who had studied English that if I couldn’t communicate something, someone was around to translate. I hate not even knowing how to say thank you, but it is something long that I keep forgetting. Guess I’m not as young as I used to be, eh? (And my body tells me so, too.)

…And today – contrast that with Bulgarian, which, with the exception of the alphabet, is much closer to the languages I am familiar with. The best thing I did before I left was learn the alphabet and a bit of the language. Makes it a heck of a lot easier to get around. I know the things on the menu, at least. For example, “potatoes” is kartofi, and the German word is kartofen, so I knew what it was when I saw it. Lovely. I feel great amusement in trying to decipher this language and great triumph in succeeding.

I find the contrast between Budapest and Sofia astounding. This has a lot to do with the fact that Budapest was once an imperial city and modern Sofia was pretty much built in 1879. I learned today that in that year, only 12,000 people inhabited the city. Now, there are over one million people, not exactly a huge city, but big enough. Yes, there is the development going on, and maybe in another five years, Sofia will be where Budapest is now. That is to say, there is still a long way to go, but they are definitely getting there in terms of restoring their cities after a half a century of Soviet apathy.

You will see a lot of crane shots in my journey, for I am fascinated by the commie cleanup that Eastern Europe is undergoing. My fascination started on a post-graduate program on the European Union I took the summer after my graduation. We traveled to six European capitals, including Prague, which was not in the EU at the time. What was most interesting on the trip to me were the Berlin cranes. If only they had had digital photography back then – I’d post some of my cranes at dusk photos. Potsdamer Platz – a virtual city within Berlin – was barely under construction at that time, the Reichstag had just been completed, and the song of the city was played with the jackhammer and the cement mixer. I felt Budapest was that way. And I feel Sofia is what Budapest was when I visited it nearly a decade ago.

Here are more photos of Budapest. I would like to post more, but it really does take a long time to upload them, and I've been in this internet cafe three hours now. Found out today the time difference is seven, not six hours from home, so I thought I had more time, but I'd still like to explore some more of the city with some light out. Besides, I promised a guy he could upload his photos and burn them to CD back at the hostel I am staying at, so I need to get going.