The Hungarian Chronicles

 Hungarian Chronicles

 (plot immediately follows the Bulgarian chronicles)

 

The day after I had decided to leave Bulgaria  and had spontaneously bought a train ticket, I went to the train station and bought a 64 ounce of malt liquor for my train journey from Sofia to Budapest and boarded the train.  I had my own cabin and had could blast music on my computer, read, enjoy the scenery and drink beer.

  At the Serbian border the police searched my whole cabin thoroughly.  After the search, the train conductor told me that I could smoke outside my window in my train cabin, but that I didn’t hear it from him.  The scenery riding through the Serbian mountain villages was gorgeous with the lush green hills and the quaint houses.  I was searched again by the Serbian polices when I got to the Serbian-Hungarian border.  After that I went to sleep. When I got into Budapest  I went to the hostel had booked and I was greeted by a very friendly girl with dreadlocks from New Zealand.

    The next morning, I went outside and walked along the Danube River. Budapest is a city divided in half by the Danube River.  The Buda side is the more urban side with all the major commercial sites. The Pest side is dominated by the hills that straddle the Danube. It is more residential and in some places even rural. The Presidential castle was also on the Pest side. It was a stunning example of Austro-Hungarian architecture located on the base of the hills.  It was a foggy and misty morning as I walked along the river and through the city and drank mulled wine.  It was late November and the Christmas markets were open.

  In Budapest, there were really a lot of amazing things to do.  One day I went to an old Ottoman Bath house and soaked in the beautiful Turkish baths and one day I went to an old catholic church on top of one of the hills on the Pest side facing the Danube. I ate langos, which a soft Hungarian bread covered with cheese and garlic, almost all of the time. 

 One day I decided to go to a traditional Hungarian folk dance on the Pest side because I had been really interested in folk music of Hungary since I heard Márta Sebestyén and Muzikas as a teenager.  Hungarian folk music was influenced by the music and culture of the Roma people and has a haunting and ecstatic quality.  I learned that there would be a Hungarian folk dance on the Pest side. When I got there, it was in an old Hungarian community dance hall.  The people there were really friendly. I ate some vegetarian Goulash and drank red wine.  The music started playing; it was free spirited, wild and beautiful.  Everyone then got in a circle dance and I joined in.  Some of the steps were pretty complicated but everyone was really patient.  After the dance I went back to the hostel and everyone started watching “Hostel.” I can tell you that watching “Hostel “in a Hostel is an experience in itself.

  During the day, I would write the squats in Berlin and ask them if I could stay there, I would walk around the city a bit, go to the tradition Hungarian Market, and hang out in the hostel and watch scrubs and drink with the people in the hostel..  It was a really cozy and friendly hostel and sometimes I would go out with some people from the hostel. It was always fun but the places we went played music that wasn’t really my music.

  I looked on MySpace for a listing of punk shows in Budapest and found there was a ska show and a punk show the week I was there.  Both of those shows were in a left wing community center which had a big bar and café, a concert room, and rooms for numerous other activities At the ska show, everyone was dressed up in Doc Marten's, Fred Perry's and Ben Sherman's and everyone was skanking.  At the punk show, I meet a group of anarcho punks and we sat on the stairs and talked about punk, politics, Budapest and travelling.

  Although loved Budapest, I was still broke and I was living off of sporadic Western Union payments from my family.  I knew I could not afford to pay to live in a hostel for a long time and my best bet was to stay in the squats in Berlin.  I kept writing the squats and I finally received a response from the Kopi and a response from the Schwarzerkanal saying that I could stay at each of them for a couple weeks.  Kopi was the most famous punk squat in Germany and was first squatted immediately after German reunification. Schwarzkanal was a feminist and queer wagenplatz (kind of a German version of a trailer park) located just outside of the Spree. I was excited and decided it was time to travel on.