|
Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 12:28:15 -0700
To: fishbreath@somewhere.net
From: ef
Subject: back from vasarhely
X-Originating-IP: 212.108.194.234
well, i'm back in budapest, came back last night from vasarhely... was there for 2 days or so... had to go back to, you know, finish things, polish them up a bit... affect for effect... and now all i can do is hope for result.
i travelled there with my friend petra... the woman whose appartment i am staying in in budapest... so the trip up there was a bit of an adventure... the bus had left... intentionally or otherwise, budapest businfo gave us the wrong info... so then there we were stuck at the bus-station at 7pm, the bus having departed for vasarhely at 8am or something... its a 12 hr plus trip up there and i really needed to go cause i didnt have much time before i had to leave for amsterdam and home... doing that on saturday, in fact.
so then there we were stuck at the bus station... in the back, the only place where the non-hungarian buses are allowed to park... on second thought i am sure that the wronginfo was intentional... anyways, there were buses but all to the wrong transylvanian towns... did you know that transylvania is bigger than hungary itself and that without it romania would be just another pisspoor balkan country...
okay where was i... yah, the buses... so all the wrong buses... also some vans that bus people eight at a time... they wait till they gather up eight going to the same place and then they're off... notice i have found the ' on the fucking hungarian keyboard haha... aaanyways....so the driver for one of these vans sees us lurking despondently says he is going to nagyvarad, looking for 2 more people and that he can drop us off at the trainstation there... 1st class waiting room he says, couple hours waiting and then train he says... and that the train from there would be cheap cause it was already halfway, across the border and stuff... we thought for about a minute... why the fuck not, adventure etc... so we get in the van
there were a buncha guys, romanians having come to work in hungary, mostly... i offer them grapes... one of them takes some... but then, when we stop for a rest, i notice that he had surreptitiously dumped the grapes on the ground... i notice cause i had stepped in them... i hate being sticky, yuck
so then drive drive drive coffee piss drive drive drive piss drive try-to-sleep lurch drive... then border, pay nice dollars for visa othervisa having expired 2 days previous, fuck... then drive drive... then 1.30 am, nagyvarad, the driver drops us at the trainstation.
hell on earth. the trainstation at nagyvarad at 1.30 am. sleepy infowitch through dirty infowindow mutters 7.30 am. train to vasarhely. transfer in kolozsvar. then transfer in some village in can't remember name.
hell on earth, the trainstation at nagyvarad. firstclass waiting room is purgatory, homeless people sleeping on dirty plastic chairs vehicles to the inferno of the secondclass waitingroom occupied by those rejected ejected even from entire gypsy families with little children i am watching a youngmother nodding off babeinarms two others beside her curled up into dirtyrags father leaning against wall watching protecting as i watch he suddenly hurries over she has leaned too far in sleep baby in danger of slipping he wakes her a little and settles her back.
there is nothing nothing i can do.
shit... this was gonna be sorta a funny account of my travel adventures...
lots of other things also happened.
anyways, more later about vasarhely. that was great. seeing janoska and the others again.
today, back in budapest, i bought a storybook to send back to the rev. noemi who will hopefully be teaching the kids to read. if all turns out as i have tried to plan it. more on that later too. anyways... you have no idea how difficult it is to buy a storybook for kids who have, for example, never been to a zoo. or seen animals other than mangy dogsandcats. that don't know what a princess is, for example.
so i bought a book of stories about some magic dwarves and and the adventures they had for every month of the year. that's what i am going to send.
i promised the children that i would be back in the spring.
-e
HOME | CHILDREN | FAMILIES | | CONTACT