Sun, July 27
Not gonna lie, this morning was quite a drag. We had to pack and say goodbye. Breakfast was still great, though. A driver arrived to take us to the train station at 10:30, giving us a lot of time to catch our 11:39 train. It turned out to be too much time, especially after our train was delayed by 40 minutes. We were left standing in the middle of the train station waiting for a platform to be posted for almost an hour. Finally we headed to platform 4, and that's when the bizarre events began to unfold. We were some of the last people to get on the train, and two girls were pushing behind mom and cutting jack off from getting on the train. There was little remarkable about this event (we were used to pushy tourists), and the only thing I noticed about one girl was her polka dot scarf and something green in her hand. It took a while to settle in: we had to kick people out of our reserved seats, the hallways were stuffed, and our huge suitcases were a pain to stow. Our seats were in a cabin of six. Our cabin mates included two Germans, one old and the other no more than 21. They weren't traveling together but spoke some German among themselves. Then a guy approached mom and asked, "are you Leslie?" It was totally bizarre because we had never seen him in our lives, and he really didn't look like a guy who would know Les for any reason. Seeing her confusion, he held up a New Mexico ID and her green wallet. He explained that he had found it thrown on the platform. Emotional Leslie was totally in shock and incredibly grateful to this stranger who had spent time walking up and down the cabins looking for a Leslie. He left and she checked inside her wallet-- not surprisingly the cash was missing, but that was it. In all the pushing to get into the train, someone must have slipped her wallet from her purse. Then I remembered stupid polka dot girl who I had thought nothing of at the moment, but who definitely had been holding something green in her hand and who was unnecessarily close to mom. The ride was long and we didn't have a lot of cash since the rest of mom's crowns had been stolen. We sent jack and Patrick to look for lunch and see if they accepted credit card. They returned an hour later, after they had a sit down lunch. The train accepted US dollars which was wonderful news for us, because otherwise we would have actually starved. Mommy and I went, then, to have our lunch. She had a beer and I had some chicken paprikas. It was pretty good for train food and I really liked the experience because I'd never been in a dining cart in a train. There were lots of rowdy Europeans on the train. The hallways were also littered with people not sitting in seats whom we had to climb over. It's all an experience right? The train ride wasn't bad at that point, but then it started stopping unexpectedly. At one point we were stopped for an hour, in the middle of Slovakia. Jack and I followed the example of the weird European backpackers and stepped outside.
There's no doubt rough experiences bring people closer, and in this cramped cabin, our old little German friend finally started talking a bit after we offered him one of the sobaos jack had stolen from the breakfast in Spain (yes, really). The little guy was dressed in a suit with suspenders and all. I can't even begin to imagine how bored he was. He had boarded the train at 6 am, and stared out the window the ENTIRE time. He didn't even sleep.
Our train pulled into Budapest at around 10:30, a whole 4 hours later than it was supposed to. We were tired and hungry, and we couldn't find out driver. We figured he knew that our train was delayed, but he just wasn't there. That left us with the task of finding a taxi. We first had to leave the station and go to an ATM to get cash for our taxi driver. We saw a taxi pulled over to the side, and knocked. The driver was possibly homeless and most definitely "out of it" (drunk or something). Weirdly enough, he told us he wouldn't drive us, and believe me, we didn't want him anyway. A much more respectable cab driver pulled up and we got in. Our hotel was beautiful-- modern, luxurious and elaborate. We checked in with a girl who spoke perfect English. After explaining our missing driver story, she asked how much we had paid the taxi driver, fearing that as it so commonly happens in Budapest to tourists, we'd been ripped off. Our cab had been a fair rate, and was actually cheaper than what we would've paid if our original driver had taken usz We settled in and went out in the search of food. All the kitchens of the restaurants were closed, but we saw a tiny gyros shop run by a really nice guy and we got take away gyros and ate in our room. Goodnight Budapest
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