07-IX-1999.
Homemade and embroidered sweater
Finally, our day at the embassy. There was a huge crowd in the park across the streets, mostly from Serbia (or rather, the FRY). I met a colleague from college - her husband is some microbiologist and got an H-1B like I got. The crowding was unnecessary, though, as this was by appointment, and they didn't give out numbers, they had a guy come out and call a few names. We got in after an hour or so. Lena had to stay outside (regulations, regulations), but we had Greg to keep her company. We later heard he had absolutely no experience with children, and she was bored, and they didn't have a common language to speak (she maybe knew 20 words of english), and she kicked him a few times. At least he took some nice photos of her.
Inside the embassy, it was our first close encounter with american bureaucracy. We got some 4-5 pages of forms to fill each, which we did to the best of our knowledge, just guessing at some points. We had the visa approval in our hands (the copy that Greg brought) and that's what mattered. We submitted everything within less than an hour, and were told to come at 16:00 to pick the visas.
Went for a pizza somewhere - so much for the national cuisine - and Lena had fun with the fishes in the aquarium they had. Then we went and picked the visas.
Greg had to go - his plane would take off from Vienna that evening, and he had a train to catch, so he took off to the hotel, to pay the bill, pick up his stuff and go home. I guess „see you on the other side“ has several meanings, but we didn't care, it was said. We bought some 40 sandwiches - 4 of each kind we liked. They had proper boxes for them so we could carry them without any damage.
We strolled down the city a bit more, then took the two boxes of those tiny sandwiches, perhaps thirty of them, to the hotel. That was our dinner, much better than any restaurant. There's excellent cuisine in Hungary, just don't look for it near a hotel in Buda. She moved to my room, now that the other side of the big bed was free. Later I discovered it wasn't one big mattress, it was two regular ones, as I found my knee between them.
Mentions: 24-II-1978., 05-X-2023., Greg Reubenthal, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), in serbian