April 14, 2004

Brasov, Budapest...

I had a small world experience in Brasov the other day that will be hard to top. While sitting in the hostel consuming a large can of Ursus (the local beer), I met Justin who had an obviously American accent so I asked where he was from... Wisconsin... where? Madison. It gets better. He graduated last May with degrees in Economics and Russian, but his freshman year (mine too) he lived in Chadbourne Hall where I often visited friends. It turns out that he knows Susan, Rachel and Jodi and the whole Chad crew. In fact we realized that we had both been drunk on the roof of Chadbourne on the same night at the end of freshman year because of a mutual friend (Jerry). So I probably met this guy at least once and here he is in a hostel in Transylvania. He's just finishing up an internship at the US Embassy in Chisinau, Moldova and was spending his Easter break in Romania.

Despite discovering a story as great as that, Romania was otherwise a letdown. Though Brasov is nicer than Bucharest, the entire country seems quite dirty and the people, though they had their nice moments, were not nice enough to make up for the problems.

On the overnight train from Brasov to Budapest I was put in the same compartment as two English guys (Adam and Damian? Damien? Daymeeon?) who taught me to play Trumps with the deck of cards they had brought. We also shared a few beers and they had a bottle of cheap Romanian gin that we mixed with the juice I had bought. We discussed lodging options in Budapest and after surfing guidebooks and brochures we decided to try the Museum Guest House when we arrived at 5:22AM.

I could tell immediately that Budapest was nicer than Bucharest by the high ratio of pigeons to stray dogs (about 200:1 for Budapest, about 1:2 for Bucharest). The city just has a nicer feel to it. The buildings are attractive and there are no piles of garbage. In fact, they hire people to sweep up cigarette butts off the street. The hostel has a nicer atmosphere than others I've stayed in (despite the lack of a large common area) and the people in general seem quite nice. Unfortunately the language here is a larger problem than in Romania or in other past countries. Magyar (Hungarian) is not at all related to English or Romance languages and there are many oddities. One funny example: the informal way to say hi is pronounced "seeya" and the informal way to say goodbye is pronounced "halo".

Off to see some sites in Budapest and try to figure out how long I want to stay here. Halo!

Posted by Peter at 08:46 AM | Comments (5)