24-V-1976.: The long trip to Budapest and back
The day before we took no bus but took the škodilak. Drove it to Novi, left our stuff and then we drove north to meet Đenđi at her place. The plan was to sleep some at her place, then get up around 2:00 and drive on. So we agreed to her idea to first visit a disco in a nearby village. Village disco could be anything, but this was magnificent - they had a good strobo light, and the effect of watching my hand seemingly stay in place while cigarette ember floated on exactly to the next image of my hand was just surreal.
We didn't stay long, drove back to town and had coffee on a terrace smack downtown, main square (with the international road whizzing just meters away, no beltway yet; they never really got a beltway, the road moved instead). Then she had the bright idea that we should just go now, we can't catch more than a couple of hours of sleep anyway. So we had one more strong coffee and moved on. It was past midnight anyway.
The drive was uneventful. I don't even remember crossing the border (probably still at night). At about 40km before Budapest I was seriously sleepy, so I just pulled over and laid my head in her lap. Slept like that for some fifteen minutes, then lit a cigarette and drove on. It was around 6.
The south entrance to Pest was, as usual, under construction in some places, so we got diverted. The temporary path wasn't quite marked, so we got kind of lost - the weather got cloudy and I couldn't orient myself, no north no south. At some point we got surrounded with crowds of people, and just drove slowly with the flow. Suddenly, in front of us there was a factory gate. We were in Csepel, where they make trucks.
Got out of there somehow and finally got downtown too.
We mostly went to buy books, for study. Them being medical students, they were looking for anatomy atlas, and who knows what else. The atlas they found, in russian; the rest in hungarian. I found a bunch of really cheap russian books on maths, some of which really helped me later with the studies.
For a while we couldn't find a good place to park; I drove perhaps three circles down one of semicircular avenues on Pest side, then ended up crossing to Buda side, then crossing back on some bridge, and couldn't find the place where to jump out of that circle, until about the third time. Once I even did a U-turn just after the bridge, to go immediately back, which got me some honks but then the natives noticed yugoslav license plates and let me go. They knew in what kind of trouble I may be, they live in it, so they had some understanding. Found a place to park in some backstreet, mostly on a half-flattened heap of sand left by some unfinished remodeling. I thought I knew how to drive - had more than two years of experience - but that day I learned to park and to maneuver through seemingly impossible spaces.
We went for dinner to Mátyás pince - king Matthew's cellar - which is a posh historic place. I knew the stories of how the Budapest waiters and cabbies are, full of all sorts of tricks to get as much money from you as humanely possible, and to still have you come again, perhaps. We did attract attention - two good looking girls, specially with Đenđi's looks of a bit more makeup and unnatural hair color (I guess the red beet it was again), with the cute little jacket and elegant wide trousers. (... 17 words...) I was in my usual old jeans, dark shirt, corduroy dark green jacket, shoulder length hair, split beard. So yes, we did stand out :).
The attention was: one waiter just for coffee, another one for drinks, third one for food, and fourth one offered stuff to smoke - I gook one havana in aluminium tube but as a takeout, didn't light it on the spot. We did some menthols, though. I drank fruit juice, the girls drank some wine, probably some tokaji or szürkebarát (gray pal).
The food was perfect - the exactly right fish čorba (an exception, usually it's much better south of the border). It was properly hot, there's a very good picture of my distorted face as I went for the next spoon. The main dish was a gulaš, of course. She asked the waiter for permission to steal one coffee cup with its saucer, and he told her to wait until he turns his back. We got accompanied by the regular spy, who just wanted to check whether this was yet another case of two city girlies trying to skin a foreign mark, 'cause they spoke perfect hungarian and I spoke none. When that turned out not to be the case, he stayed at our table for a while and then just went on to the next case, if any. It was fun, altogether.
The way back was very long. The plan was to drive all the way to Novi, but as we approached Đenđi's place, I started seeing various creatures looming over the road, miraculously turning into trees when near enough, but then there were new ones coming. I managed to drive to her place by sheer power of will over body. Once we went in and the head touched the pillow, the world vanished. I was driving or walking for some 40 hours in one piece, save for those fifteen minutes in the morning.
Mentions: čorba, Đenđi Ujfaluši, Novi Sad, škodilak, in serbian
17-XII-2019 - 12-I-2026