08-IX-1999.

Last day of our vacation in Budapest. We went around buying things, as Greg left us with a thick wad of forints he didn't use. Went to the OTP bank to pick up the dollars accumulated so far (about two grand, which we thought was huge). The Zserbó cakeshop was nearby*, so we had a leisurely hour with fruit salad/icecream and a very good house brand of very dark beer.

In the afternoon bought some T-shirts, suitcases (our suitcases were crap, some of them actually cardboard), probably some umbrellas as it began to rain at some point. And an alarm clock.

In the evening we went for another dinner in the neighborhood restaurant, this time alone. Some russian sailor was getting wasted at the bar, still holding to his barstool by some miracle. We ordered something fancy, our wallet being a bit thick with all the forints we couldn't spend. We sat on the terrace, with a good view of Pest across. It was getting a bit chilly, but they had those gas heaters, where the burner is on top of the pole and it reflects heat downwards.

We even tipped the waiter generously, which was something we actually never did before. The cash did change the mood to an extent.

And then we went back to our rooms and packed everything. I even shaved - with the stuff Greg got as a complimentary set from his airline, as his plane was delayed somewhere. I flew a lot later, but never got any complimentary stuff (not even the smelly plastic duffel bags he gave us later, another such set), probably because I alwas took a different airline and never bothered to collect them frequent miles.

We set the clock to 4:00 and went to sleep.

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* twenty years later, everyone tries to pretend that it was never a Zserbó, it was always a Gerbeaud. Yeah, right. Even now (2022) I can still find recipes for zserbó szelet (a layered cake).


Mentions: Greg Reubenthal, in serbian