Oh The Places We’ll Go

This post is long delayed, I’ll note that immediately.  In fact, how delayed this is I won’t even begin to recount to anyone because it’s so completely and utterly embarrassing that I’m only just now getting around to ending my traveling backpacking blogs, I should be tarred and feathered.  Of course, since I’m doing this from memory, obviously my recollections of things aren’t going to be quite what they would have been should I have done this immediately following the adventures.  Instead I’m left struggling to recollect, my own fault of course, but I’ll do my best to conclude so that years from now, when I absolutely don’t remember anything, I can read these and pick up on fuzzy, far away images from adventures of long ago.

After the island night, with crazy Gaycob, Kurt being “Rocky and shit”, Sam and I hilariously creeping up the 105 stairs to the hostel nearly exploding with laughter, there were 2 notable arrivees to the hostel, though which one arrived first I don’t really remember.  The first was Connie, a 5 foot nothing American girl from the Bay Area (go figure), who I clicked with immediately.  We’re from the same area studying abroad, share the same obsession with good tequila and margaritas, and were both greatly disappointed in the unattractiveness of Italian men.  The second was an Australian named James, otherwise known as Curly Jim.

Now, I know for a fact that Saturday night was our Cinco de Mayo streetparty night, full of margaritas that were WAY too strong for anyone to handle unless they had years of experience with tequila crazed people mixing margaritas for them.  Luckily, my mother taught me well, and the margaritas were nothing short of extraordinary.  The lot of us showed up to the street party on Saturday night buzzing with excitement, especially the few of us who were Americans.  Mexican food in the middle of Hungary?  Give me a nacho and I’m sold.  The band on the street was great.  We got little flowers for our hair, more than a few drinks in our hands, and headed out to the middle of the crowd to dance the night away.

Sunday I know for a fact was park day.  Initially I wasn’t sold on going to the park.  In fact, I wanted to be nowhere near an outside, grassy, hot climate with nothing to wear but a t-shirt I’d worn 500 times over and a book that I needed to finish.  The Pillars of the Earth, my book project since purchasing it in Krakow, was taking forever.  It was sucking the life out of me, and it needed to be killed.  It’s an addictive, long, complex novel that is fantastic (once you’re finished) but at a certain point drones on and on.  It’s especially long when you decide that reading it while extremely intoxicated is a wise idea, then having to go back and re-read what you drunkenly read once you’ve finally sobered up.  Who gets drunk and reads?  Me, apparently.  The point being, I wasn’t enthused about going to a park in the least bit.  I went for a mini-walk around the Buda side, got back to the hostel and realized no one was there, and instead of being anti-social and reading I decided to meet up with everyone at yes, the park.  Once I got there, I realized everyone had their cheap Hungarian beer in hand and, after getting hit in the head with a soccer ball (Thanks, Kurt), I went to the local stand to get me a beer of my own.  Sunday marked the arrival of Curly Jim, more commonly known as James, an Aussie surfer straight of out high school and direct from Sydney.  Kurt and Jim had become buds the last time he had stayed at Carpe Noctem, a few days before I arrived for Cinetrip, the massive rave in a Hungarian bathhouse, and he’d made it a habit of leaving and eventually making his way back to Budapest.  It’s an addictive place to stay for most people who have a lot of time for traveling.  Why would you ever want to leave a place that is so cheap, beautiful, accessible, and full of a constant and revolving door of attractive young travelers?  James and I hit it off right away, since his cousin goes to UCSB (small world, eh?) and he was coming out to visit California at the end of his trip.  I’ve never quite understood what this whole gap year thing is about, but these non-Americans have the straight up right idea.  Traveling when no one else is, seeing Europe and then getting back to civilization to do the boring and tedious work of university.

Back to the park.  Drinking drinking drinking, sun sun sun.  After a few hours of killing time and dragging myself back to the hostel, I was met with a challenge.  ”Try to actually look like a girl, for once, Cat”.  Ugh.  Fine, I’ll check and raise you buying me a pint later.  Deal?  Luckily, Sam is you know, a girly girl and lent me a shirt to wear for the night.  I’m not some butchy non-makeup wearing manly girl or anything (not that there’s anything wrong with any of that), but I’ve been known for my affinity for wearing t-shirts and jeans on a daily basis.  Especially while backpacking.  An actual shirt-shirt for once?  A nice change.  Once I got ready to go, walked out into the main hall and saw a jaw actually drop at the shirt I was wearing, I knew mission accomplished.  We headed out to Morrisons for some shenanigans and it was probably my favorite night of the whole Budapest experience.  Drunken dancing, drink after drink, shot for shot, PLUS B-City Pub?  Perfection.  Plus the dance moves to that crazy African-American weight lifter videos?  I’ve heard “Get it”, “Yeah Budddyyy” and “Nothin but a peanut” enough times to last me a lifetime after that night.

Kurt left on Monday for sailing in Croatia, that bastard.  It was one of those, wake up, “Hey I’m leaving in an hour for Croatia” and then boom, he’s gone.  What the fuck.  Australian James became my new shenanigans buddy until Wednesday when I, too had to leave.  The next two days went so quickly for me since I had such a hard time figuring out how I was going to get to Frankfurt Hahn to fly out on Ryanair back to Glasgow on the 14th.  Initially I had planned on leaving Wednesday, spending that night in Hahn or whatever city it is, and then just getting up and bussing it out to the middle of nowhere airport for my flight on Thursday.  Not going to happen.  Turns out there are NO hostels in that city, and, to make matters worse, I had to pay for whatever train I was going to take since my pass expired on the 13th at midnight.  Devastated.  I didn’t want to miss Mongolian BBQ on Wednesday and I would’ve had nowhere to stay anyways on Wednesady night, so I bit the bullet.  I bought an overnight seat on a train from Hungary to Germany leaving at about 7 that night, so I wouldn’t miss Mongolian BBQ and I could make it to Frankfurt Hahn with plenty of time.

Monday and Tuesday night were pretty uneventful from my recollection.  Sure, they were fun and had plenty of crazy, drunken shenanigans but compared to earlier I don’t remember much.  Most of my time was spent hanging out with Samantha and James, cuddling with Kes, finishing the book, and sleeping.  Oh, and drinking of course.  Once Wednesday finally rolled around I was so upset at the thought of leaving I didn’t even want to go.  Thank god I got to go to Mongolian BBQ.  Otherwise I would’ve been crushed.  Mongolian BBQ was epic.  Unlimited drinking and eating for 5 whole hours.  I’m sold.  We had such a great time, such a great event for my send off, it almost made it even harder to leave.  Once I was solidly drunk and left at 5 that night, I got back to the hostel and signed the guestbook, grabbed my bag and headed down the stairs for the bus to the train station.  I was gutted.  Emotional and drunk, even.  All of this great traveling, all of the meeting and craziness was over, and I was devastated.  I got on the train and was in a compartment with a nice Hungarian woman who spoke no English, but all she could say was “no cry” since I was yes, crying, and once she smiled at me and I smiled back, I stopped.

That’s not to say I wasn’t happy to see Nicola, Liz and Erin back in Glasgow.  I couldn’t wait to go back out to Curlers and hang out with everyone, drink a bit, see my brother and get into some madness with him, but I knew that it would be a long time before I could go out and hostel it up again, meet some more new and crazy travelers.  I was so unbelievably happy I went to Carpe, and that’s entirely thanks to Tess and Johnny, and could only hope that someday maybe I’d run into one of them again.  James in Sydney?  Kes in Brisbane?  Brian in Boston?  Double-A Ron in Santa Rosa?  Who knows.  All I know is that as I’ve said a thousand times over, the best things in life come to you when you least expect them to, and for Budapest’s sake I’m glad it came to me when it did.

I got on the plane to Frankfurt Hahn in the nick of time, flew back to Glasgow, and was antsy with anticipation just WAITING to see the girls again and wanting to tell them everything that had happened.  Once I finally got back to the flat, I was happy to be back in good ol’ Glasgow, knowing that just as my days were numbered for backpacking, Glasgow and I’s short but passionate love affair had its’ days numbered as well.