I'll be missing you

Recently, Chicagoans have had to mourn the loss of several historic treasures, including Marshall Fields, the Berghoff, and the smell of chocolate in the air.

Vienna must now deal with an even greater shock: the loss of the Opera Toilet - a bathroom in the Karlsplatz U-Bahn station that allowed you to pee into toilets shaped like women's lips while opera music played overhead.



Apparently, some stupid feminists spoiled all the fun, as per usual. Supposedly, urinating into women's mouths is "sexist." Whatever.

For the last few weeks, they've been counting down the number of days left to use the toilet. I finally went in today, as the "1 Tag" sign had been put up. I paid the 60 cents entrance fee and found...

...a cleaning woman inside, pointing me toward a stall. Some old cleaning man was also standing blocking the way to where the lips were supposed to be...but they were already gone! I must have been just an hour too late.

I was so upset. In fact, you might say...

...I was pissed.

---

Die Wiener Kompilation

• Ween - Mutilated Lips
  from The Mollusk (1997)
• Johnny Cash - Flushed From the Bathroom of Your Heart
  from At Folsom Prison (1968)

Do I have to spend the Bucharest of my life without you?

Before getting on the train to Bucharest, I was served pizza in Braşov by the most beautiful girl I've ever seen in my life. That is all.

The train ride was once again beautiful, but there was no interesting conversation to be had. I got very confused and lost when I got out of the train station as the hostel's directions made no sense. After stumbling around for 20 minutes, I finally found a tram that took me where I wanted to go. I settled into the hostel and started to get hungry. I got a recommendation at the front desk for a nearby restaurant and headed out. It started to pour on my way there, and of course I had no umbrella. I had yet another awkward cosmic lonely eating experience. Not wanting to waste any of their tables on just one guy, they placed me sopping wet self at a table with some man who seemed to have ordered eight or nine courses. I tried to do a better job ordering than the last time, but I pretty much ended up with the same lame meal, minus the french fries. Meanwhile, a bass, accordion, and dulcimer trio played "La Vie en Rose", of course.

It was late at this point, so I stayed in the hostel for the rest of the night. For a while, I sat in the little den area on a couch with a bunch of people watching Lord of the Rings. Well, mostly I watched the old man with an indeterminable accent watching the movie. He had put on his comfy clothes and was sitting barefoot in a weird position with his legs crossed near his ankles. He held the remote (or, as he would say if he were an American old man, the "clicker") in his right hand and obsessively fine-tuned the volume throughout the duration of the movie.

While sitting there, I met PJ, who was to become my good friend for the next two days. He was a Londoner in his 30s. He was some sort of free-lance economist for the British government, which allowed him to travel contantly. He'd been to over fifty countries so far. It's hard for me to capture his manner of speech here, exactly, but it was pretty distinctive. He talked fast, mumbled a bit to himself, and would say things like: "America...wonderful country...really fantastic..." and would ask lots of hypotheticals: "When I say 'Chicago,' what do you think of? Lake Michigan, winter, pizza..." or "If you were stranded on a desert island and could only eat one kind of food, what would it be? I really like Italian."

The next day, we would really bond when we discovered we were both huge fans of The Prisoner.

---

Die Wiener Kompilation

• The Shangri-Las - Train From Kansas City
  from Shangri-Las-65! (1965)
• Seam - Stage 2000
  from The Problem With Me (1993)
• The Prisoner - Main Title Theme
  written by Ron Grainer (1967)

Girl, I'm just a vampire for your love

I reached the hostel, which was a much more happening, youthful place than the Budapest hostel. I was in a room alone with a bunch of bitchy Australian women (they're seriously everywhere) who were constantly hogging the one computer in the place. I walked to the Braşov city center, which turned out to be a really pretty little square. Well, except for this one street that led to it. It had entirely been dug up (hopefully to be renovated?) and the streetlights were all out. Stray dogs were wandering everywhere. A dark shadowy figure suddenly emerged and started walking towards me. I definitely wondered if it was a vampire for a second.

But anyway, the city center. It has a lot of cool restaurants (including a KFC!). I ate lasagna at a nice little Italian place while having to endure two American couples in their 50s having the kind of obnoxious conversation that all American couples in their 50s have while tipsy. Outside, all the pubs had set up big tv-screens so everyone could watch the big Romanian football match. I watched some of it, while eating 20-cent ice cream.


Oh, and I should mention the best thing about the town. In a hill visible from the square, they've put up a super tacky Hollywood-style sign.


Back at the hostel, I sat and watched Click with everybody else before going to bed. The less said about that film the better.

The hostel had planned a bustrip the next morning to a few local sites, so I signed up and tagged along with a crew that included a few of the bitchy Australian women, some bitchy Australian teenage girls, some Canadians, an 18-year-old English boy, a German girl, a couple of women from London, and a weird American and his Russian wife. The first stop was the Râşnov Fortress, built around 1215. Not much to say about it. There were some ruins. Pretty views. They were setting up for some kind of archery contest too, I'm not sure what was going on. But, yeah, it was nice. Didn't take too long.


The bus took us next to Bran, Transylvania's biggest tourist trap. Everybody refers to it as "Dracula's Castle", but really, he never lived there. There's a slight possibility he spent one night there while fleeing from the Ottomans. Outside, a bunch of people hawk ridiculous Dracula shirts.


While I was at Bran, I got to practice my German talking with that German girl. She seemed to really light up at the opportunity to not speak English. She was an environmental law student from Bremen. We had the usual conversation that people who don't exactly speak the same language do, describing in simple terms the pros and cons of our respective hometowns. Exciting.

The finally destination was the one that was really breathtaking - Sinaia. We were given a tour of the Peleş Castle where the royal family used to live (the Romanian government actually just announced that the castle is being given back to King Michael). Both the exterior and interior are just amazingly beautiful. The best part is that there's actually a hidden passage accessed by opening a fake set of bookshelves in the library. There was one room made entirely of something like 40 different kinds of wood. And then, for some reason, one room has a Gustav Klimt frieze. I really liked how the tour guide would introduce each room, by saying, "We now enter the Large Ballroom," bowing down real low, and saying, "Puh-lease."


When we returned to Braşov, I headed off to this restaurant that my guidebook referred to as one of the best and most famous in the town. Of all my cosmic lonely eating experiences, this was perhaps the most cosmic, lonely, and awkward. I sat completely alone in this long, sterile white room with no decorations on the walls. It was also completely silent. "Oh well," I thought, "at least I'll be getting a nice traditional Romanian meal." Then the waitress brought my plate. It was a couple small pieces of chicken and french fries. When I was able to flag her down to bring me the bill, I took my credit card out of my wallet. She immediately gasped and jumped back in shock and fear, as if she had seen...well, a vampire. So I paid in cash instead and left quickly.

I ran into the German girl and the English boy, who invited me to hang out in this Irish pub with some of the others from the hostel. We sat and talked about...school...music...American foreign policy... The English boy said that Radiohead is much more popular in America than the UK. He also said that he always defends Americans because he knows that the majority of us don't agree with Bush's policy anyway.

Our plan was to go downstairs to the lower level of the pub, where karaoke night was going on. But all of the tables were occupied or had "Reserved" signs on them. Everybody down there were locals wearing some kind of factory uniform, who just stared at us until we left.

We decided instead to go to the next best thing to an Irish pub - a Scottish pub. Along the way, I started talking a lot with the two Canadian couples with us, who were both really cool, one set from Toronto and the other from Vancouver. We talked about the Canadian music scene, and I got some recommendations for good alt-country bands, among other things. I gave them all my sightseeing advice for Chicago, which some of them were planning on visiting soon. I made the two British women feel more at home by reminiscing about British television shows that I, too, grew up watching while living in Hong Kong. These included such gems as Bananaman, SuperTed, Captain Pugwash, and Postman Pat.

At some point a very strange drunk old man at the table next to us tried to talk to us. "You speaking English!" The English women replied, "Yes...that's because we are English." He mumbled a lot of gibberish and finally said, "I am Welsh!" He mumbled a bit more, and it took his Romanian friends to tell us that he was from Cardiff. I'm not sure if he was just completely drunk, or if he had really forgotten how to speak English.

I don't think this necessarily came across, but Transylvania is really a very cool place. It's beautiful. I just don't know what to say about it. Just believe me.

---

Die Wiener Kompilation

• Xiu Xiu - Brian the Vampire
  from Fabulous Muscles (2004)
• Future Bible Heroes - I'm A Vampire
  from Eternal Youth (2002)
• The Treats (aka... me) - Ketchup Vampires Theme
  An awkward song with awful out-of-tune vocals that I wrote for the soundtrack of a classic dubbing, recorded in a dorm room in NYU (2004)

Broadway, you've done it yet again.

The best part is Rosie O'Donnell's "WOW!!!!!" at the very end.

A real post later today, I promise.

---

Die Wiener Kompilation

• Bob Dylan - Like a Rolling Stone (live)
  from The Royal Albert Hall Concert (1966)
  
  (unfortunately, this mp3 does not include the infamous lead-in to the song, where a member of the pissed-off folk-audience yells, "Judas!" and, in response, Robbie Robertson yells to the rest of The Band, "Play fucking loud!" before launching into it.)

Stars Are Blind...at Four Corners!

So when I'm tired and lazy, I like to write about local west suburban news instead of Europe. So, here goes:

While I earlier reported the amazing fact that Stephin Merritt will be in Downers Grove on November 1, that has been quickly eclipsed by something even bigger:

Paris Hilton will be literally a couple hundred feet from my house in Woodridge, Illinois tonight.

Yes. Her new film National Lampoon's Pledge This! is having its US premiere at 7:00 at Hollywood Blvd.. Why is any movie premiering in Woodridge?

The line starting forming at 3:00pm, so everybody in town better hurry out there.

I remember when that used to just be the "clock tower theatre". I used to walk across the street to it all the time. Much of my early film education came from there. In sixth grade, I remember going there, buying a ticket to Toy Story 2, and sneaking into American Beauty instead, and having it blow my mind. The theatre in the other direction by Toys R Us was classic, too, especially that weird cross-eyed semi-retarded ticket-taker, who I believe works at Loews now?

Ten bucks says Paris Hilton is going to drive the wrong way down that one-way alley behind Kohl's and Hollywood Blvd on the way to my house, like every other asshole.

---

Die Wiener Kompilation

Sorry, I can't bring myself to post any Paris Hilton tracks.

• Claudine Longet - Guess Who I Saw In Paris
  from Sugar Me (1973)
• Grandpaboy (aka Paul Westerberg) - Silent Film Star
  from Mono (2002)
• Okkervil River - Song About A Star
  from Down the River of Broken Dreams (2003)

Another quick break for The Gothic Archies

I just had to point you all in the direction of the greatest local morning show appearance ever.


Special thanks to Mike Squeo for showing this to me.

Transylvania 6-5000

The plane from Budapest took me to a small Transylvanian town called Târgu Mureş - which also has multiple other spellings, none of which I know how to pronounce. Immediately, Romania was a much more difficult country to get around than tourist-friendly Austria and Hungary. It took a while to find someone who spoke English to show me where the bus to the town center was. I didn't have enough Hungarian florints to pay the busfare, and the driver couldn't make change for my 10 Euro bill, and there was no ATM. Fortunately, a nice Romanian man gave me some of his florints, saying he needed to get rid of them somehow.


Târgu-Mureş
There were more obnoxious Australians on the busride - this time, a pair of girls who loved ponies so much that they would have seizures every time they saw someone driving a horse-cart out the window. The bus dropped me off someplace. None of the streets seemed to be labelled. Even the buildings I saw that looked like they ought to be clear landmarks, I couldn't identify. They were pretty, though. I headed in the direction of the rail ticket office listed on my guidebook's map. It should have been about 5 minutes away. I spent an hour and a half getting lost in this tiny little town, walking through sketchy underpasses and alleyways, circling the streets that should have had what I wanted, luggage in tow. Finally, I went inside this hotel that should have been right next to the ticket office. The guy there told me there were no tickets nearby, I had to go to the train station, and he gave me a map. I didn't know the train schedule, so I decided to head there right away to buy a ticket, and come back to the city if I had time.

My guidebook calls the journey to the train station a "fifteen minute walk." I think it took at least 45 minutes, and at some point I wasn't able to read street signs anymore, so I just searched for a train track and followed it. The next train to Braşov left in an hour and a half, so it seemed pointless to go back to the town center. I just sat around and read. A lot of Roma/Gypsy families sat there with me waiting for their trains. The station itself was pretty filthy.

The train was, however, very nice and comfortable, if a little slow - it was about a five and a half hour trip. My seat was in a compartment with just one other passenger - a pretty girl who looked roughly my age. For the first hour or so, we both just sat there reading. Then, the girl offered me some chocolate. I gladly accepted. We got to talking. She was a native Transylvanian, and her primary language was Hungarian rather than Romanian (Transylvania became part of Hungary in the 11th century.) She had learned English in high school, but hadn't spoken it in years. She was fluent in French though. I wasn't. She gave me some bread. I smiled. We went back to reading.

After a while, she asked me what I was reading. I showed her.

Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham.

A funny look came across her face. She held her book out to me. The title was written on the front, but in Hungarian. I opened it to the title page to figure out what the book was.

The Moon & Sixpence.

by

W. Somerset Maugham.

Her name was the Romanian equivalent of Deborah, I believe. She was twenty years old and studying medicine - plastic surgery, specifically. She told amusing stories of interning at a hospital in Budapest and having to simultaneously deal with one doctor who spoke French and another who spoke English. We talked about the landscape of our respective homelands and other stupid things. Maybe the weather came up. Who cares.

A few hours later, a 40-something woman entered the compartment. There was something very Jan-Heiteen-on-a-nice-day about her. She talked really fast in Romanian with the girl for a while. The girl told her I was American, so she switched to English. She said it was the first time in twenty years that she had spoken English. She told me about her sister who was a teacher in Los Angeles and hated the city and hated the kids because they were so rowdy. She was surprised when I told her that not all of L.A. was wealthy.

I don't remember that much more. The woman was going all the way to Bucharest and was sad when I got off at Braşov, because she hates to travel alone.

Yes, traveling with company can certainly be nice.

---

Die Wiener Kompilation

• Wilco - Venus Stop The Train
  from the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot demos (2000)
• Annette Funicello - Train of Love
  from Annette Sings Anka (1960)
• Tom Waits - Train Song
  from Franks Wild Years (1987)

Budapest - Part 4

The last day in Budapest was pretty relaxed and uneventful, and especially since I'm incredibly behind in blogging (I've already taken a trip to Prague since the Budapest/Romania trip) I'll try to deal with this one briefly. I also don't remember it that well, so that helps.

In the morning I went to Castle Hill in Buda on the other side of the Danube. I got to take a funicular up the hill, and, indeed, it was fun.


Funicular!
I spent a while exploring the Hungarian National Gallery inside Buda Palace. When I got out, I was starving, so I decided to get food from a restaurant recommended in my guidebook before heading back to explore more of Castle Hill. It ended up being an incredibly far walk, but the food was worth it...even if it was cosmic lonely eating. Unfortunately, when I got out of the restaurant, it started pouring, to the point that it was really impossible to explore anymore.


Fisherman's Bastion on Castle Hill!
I took a tram back to Pest and had a marvelous afternoon sitting in an old coffeehouse, eating tiramisu, drinking cappucino, and reading. Meanwhile, a man played "Embraceable You" and "La Vie En Rose" on a piano...seemingly just for me. ("La Vie En Rose" for some reason followed me everywhere I went on the trip - and in Vienna, too.)

The rest of the rainy evening was spent in a movie theatre watching Thank You For Smoking, which was fun, if flawed. It was a very small theatre, and much of the time, the young Hungarian couple sitting next to me, surprise surprise, made out. Since my flight was early the next morning, I went to bed soon after.

---

Die Wiener Kompilation

• Ella Fitzgerald - Embraceable You
  from Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Songbook (1959)
• Édith Piaf - La Vie En Rose (1946)
  I tried to find Taco's cover of this, but failed.

Budapest - Part 3

The third day in Budapest was possibly the most ridiculous.

First stop - the Szechenyi Bath, where I hung out with a hundred old Hungarian ladies in the warm spa water. A bunch of old men in Speedos, meanwhile, played chess in the water. There were three main outdoor pools - a warm thermal bath, a regular pool for swimming laps, and a jacuzzi. You're only supposed to be in the thermal bath for 20 minutes or else it's bad for you, so I kept on going back and forth between there and the jacuzzi (you had to wear a silly looking bathingcap to go into the regular pool). The jacuzzi was hilarious. In the center there was a circular wall with jets shooting out. A bunch of old ladies and I would go into the circle, and the jets combined with the momentum of everybody going around, made a super fast current that you'd instantly be sucked up in. I bruised myself a bit being thrust against the walls.

I was a little nervous about going beforehand, but I must say, it was an incredibly relaxing experience, standing neck-deep in warm water, listening to a fat old half-naked man singing "Only You" in a terrible accent.



After I dried myself off, I went to the nearby Budapest Zoo. I have no idea why, but the place was teeming, and I mean teeming with retarded people so it was like two zoos for the price of one. It took me a real long time to find any animals. I also got lost in some kind of hedge maze somehow for a while.


Elephant House at the Zoo

After a brief lunch at the mall (I don't remember now why I ate at the mall, but it was probably for a good reason), I took a tram over to Margitsziget, a really nice little island in the middle of the Danube between Buda and Pest. I sat and read in front of a magical fountain that played music. Oh, and everywhere around me were more young Hungarian couples making out.


Wondrous fountain on Margitsziget

Back at the hostel, i ran into my Canadian friend Luke for the fourth time that day. He only had about an hour before he had to leave to catch a flight, so I went with him to get a quick bowl of soup at this out of control restaurant down the street called Sir Lancelot's. It's kind of like Medievel Times only with more firebreathers. At night, a guy stands outside wearing a suit of armor. It takes a while to realize that he's actually alive, but believe, after a few jabs to the belly he'll prove it to you.


Sir Lancelot
After Luke departed, I headed off to see a screening of the Coen Brothers' Blood Simple that I had read about in the newspaper. When I got to the "theatre", however, I got really confused. It was really just kind of a big bar with a screen. I couldn't figure out where you were supposed to buy tickets anyway, so I just gave up and went back.

I really was in the mood to see a movie that night (and they're much cheaper in Hungary) so I just headed to the cineplex in the mall to see what was playing. My options: The Lake House (filmed in Chicagoland, but still too much Sandra & Keanu), Tristan + Isolde (reminded me too much of a certain "Tristyn" Watson), Volver (the new Almodovar movie that I really do want to see...but it was in Spanish with Hungarian subtitles). I decided to wait until 9:45 to see United 93 as a sort of belated September 11th event.

I never thought that I'd ever actually see it, and I was very surprised by how much I liked it. I thought it was going to be some sort of over-the-top patriotic thriller, with the heroic Todd Beamer screaming, "Let's roll!!!!!" as the rousing John Williams score swells and the infidel Mohammedans are stopped. Actually, it turned out to be done in a pretty convincing pseudo-documentary style, directed by a British filmmaker. There were no ridiculous subplots invented, they didn't make up the backstories of any of the passengers. Even the "let's roll" line was just sort of mentioned with no fanfare in a whisper. As to whether there was any real purpose to making the movie, however, I don't know about.


United 93 sheet music

I was one of the last people still in the mall when I left. The movie had thoroughly depressed me, and it had begun to rain. I walked back to the hostel sad and lonely. But when I got inside...it was pandemonium!

Four people were sitting in the kitchen watching television. A secret tape had been released earlier that day where the Hungarian prime minister had admitted to lying to the country about the economy. As a result, just a few blocks from the hostel, people were rioting at the headquarters of the Hungarian state television. We all were watching the riots live on the TV.


Budapest was a lot of fun.
In fact, it was a riot!

Now, it's time to introduce the cast of characters.

• Amy - a stereotypical middle-aged Manhattanite. Physical therapist at NYU and yoga instructor. Frizzy hair, glasses, and some weird necklaces.
• Jude - a short young British woman from Nottingham. Straight black hair, 60s-style black dress with white polka dots.
• Chris - average looking British dude. Jude's bf.
• Hungarian girl - employee at the hostel. I forget her name.

Jude was totally insane. I'm not sure how to describe it all. She was just talking really fast and all British-like and saying weird things. Really, I guess they all were pretty out of control. They all kept on drinking more and more beer as the night progressed, except the Hungarian girl, who was watching the riots intently with a scowl. The conversation was all over the place. We talked about American foreign policy (Amy, of course, launched into your typical left-wing Bush-bashing). We talked about education and tuition for a while. They asked me what I studied. I told them literature and philosophy. (AMY:"An American intellectual. One of the only ones left.") Jude started talking about working-class Brits and the insufficient financial aid for school that they get. Apparently Chris didn't agree with what she was saying, because he kept on violently throwing grapes at her.

When they ran out of beer...they wanted more. Jude was scared to go out during the riot alone, so she wanted the Hungarian hostel girl to go with her. She, like me, forgot her name, so she just decided to call her Beyoncé.

AMY. While we were gone, we decided we're going to call you Beyoncé, cause we can't pronounce your name.
"BEYONCÉ". (offended) But I am not black.
JUDE. But Beyoncé is beautiful! I'd kill to be called that.
"BEYONCÉ". But she cannot sing.
AMY. No, no, Beyoncé is actually really talented. That girl has pipes.

They did go out to buy more beer. Then they returned.

JUDE. Share with me, share with me, share with me.
ME. Nah, I'm okay for now.
JUDE. No, come on, share with me. I take a sip, you take a sip.
ME. All right, fine.
(I take a sip.)
JUDE. No, no, I took two sips. You have to take two sips.

AMY. Let me ask, how tall are you?
CHRIS. I'm 6'4".
JUDE. And I'm 4'11".
AMY. I dated a guy who was 6'4" once. He was a high-jumper, so he had really long legs. His hips were at my boobs. But when we were horizontal, it all worked out.

Chris and Jude wanted to smoke, so the three of us went out into the courtyard. We could hear lots of sirens going by as the riots continued. There was a huge pile of bricks and concrete and stuff in the middle of the courtyard.

JUDE. I'm going to start a business selling concrete to rioters. We have to bring capitalism back to Hungary!
CHRIS. If you ever have an idea for a business, go to England. Seriously. They'll pay you to start a business.
ME. Sure, I'll start brainstorming.
JUDE But I'll flog you if you're selling concrete.

JUDE. Share this fag with me, share this fag with me, share this fag with me.
ME. No, that's okay, I'm all right.
JUDE. No, come on, come on, come on. You take a trag, I take a drag. Back and forth.
ME. I really don't smoke at all.
CHRIS. Oh, you're such an American.

CHRIS. So what do you in Chicago?
ME. You mean, to have fun?
CHRIS. Yeah.
ME. Oh, I don't know. I guess I go to a lot of shows.
CHRIS. Shows? You mean like...
(He bends over 90 degrees to make the lifting-up-the-back-of-your-skirt gesture while making a "whoop!" sound)
ME. No, no, I mean like... rock concerts.
CHRIS. In England, you have to say "gigs." If you say "shows," that's what they'll think you're talking about. What else do you do?
ME. Well, Chicago has this really big improvisational comedy scene -
CHRIS Oh, is that where you got your glasses? See, we can be funny too.

JUDE. "Evan." That's not a very typical American name.
CHRIS. But if you went to Wales...
ME. Yeah - my brother's name is Griffith.
CHRIS. (screaming) YOU'RE FROM WALES! YOU'RE FROM WALES!

(A Hungarian lady comes out from an upstairs apartment)
HUNGARIAN LADY. (mumbles something in Hungarian)
JUDE. (suddenly with a scared look on her face) What'd she say?
HUNGARIAN LADY. Shut up, please.

CHRIS. You know, if you shoot crack into your cock...
JUDE. Chris, shut up.
CHRIS. That's what everybody does in England.
JUDE. Don't listen to a word he says.
CHRIS. If you have a single vein left in your cock, you're not a true Briton.

---

Die Wiener Kompilation

• Harry Nilsson - Bath
  from Aerial Ballet (1968)
• Iron & Wine - Love Vigilantes (New Order cover)
  from the iTunes Live Session EP (2006)
• Linda Scott - Blue Star
  from Starlight Starbright (1961)

Budapest - Part 2

The next morning, I woke up and had some really gross berry-flavored tea in the hostel while watching the video for "Dead Ringer For Love" by Meat Loaf and Cher on VH1 Classic. Then I headed out to take the Metro to the Museum of Fine Arts.

The M1 line of the Budapest Metro is the oldest subway line in continental Europe. It's pretty efficient. My favorite part about it, however, are these little musical jingles that they play whenever the train is approaching a station. The subway fare system is really confusing, as the fare depends on how many stops you go and how many transfers you make. I just bought all-day passes so I wouldn't have to deal with it. Like in Vienna, buying tickets is pretty much on the honor system most of the time. I was only checked once for my ticket in Budapest and it wasn't on the train, but by the escalators leading out of the station. I thought he was some man trying to sell me something, so I brushed him off with a wave of my hand and tried to walk past him. He moved laterally and blocked me, and then I saw his badge. A couple of gay men laughed at me. I kept on seeing them over and over again throughout the night. Boy, was my face red.


The Oktogon Metro Station
The Museum of Fine Arts is pretty sweet. It's located by the Heroes' Square which is a nice monument to a bunch of dead Hungarians you've never heard of. The museum, for some reason, has lots of Spanish art - the largest collection outside of Spain. My guidebook told me to look for a sculpture of an Egyptian priest that looked "uncannily like Julia Roberts." He wasn't lying.


After a stroll through the nearby city park, I decided I was feeling too cheerful so I headed toward the House of Terror. The museum is in a building that used to be the headquarters for the Arrow Cross Party when the Nazis controlled Hungary, and later it was used by the secret police under Communism. Both regimes used the basement as a prison. It's really dark and grim with crazy atmospheric music playing all the time, while you learn about all the atrocities committed and watch videos of executioners describing their duties and whatnot. It was a blast!


House of Terror
Back at the hostel, I ran into some friendly young German ladies who, like me, had purchased tickets for the opera that night and were about to go out to eat dinner. They asked me to join them, along with a Canadian guy named Luke who was leaving the next day for England to start graduate school. We asked the hostel owner for a good cheap place to get Hungarian food. He led us to place which was good, yet not cheap. I had a delicious duck thing. We were starting to get nervous cause it was taking so long and we had to get to the opera on time, but luckily things worked out. Luke didn't have a ticket but decided to tag along - though he was embarassed cause he was wearing shorts. He was able to get a ticket, though, and we all had a rollicking good time enjoying two ballets and a one-act opera (The Wooden Prince, The Miraculous Mandarin, Duke Bluebeard's Castle) by Hungary's own Béla Bartók.


If you look closely, you can see me
in the third row by an aisle on the top ring.

---

Die Wiener Kompilation

Meat Loaf (featuring Cher) - Dead Ringer For Love

• The Go! Team - Hold Yr Terror Close
  from Thunder, Lightning, Strike [US version] (2005)
• Petula Clark - I Couldn't Live Without Your Love
  from I Couldn't Live Without Your Love (1966)
• The Small Faces - I'm Only Dreaming
  from There Are But Four Small Faces (1968)

Budapest - Part 1

Sorry for the dramatic pause after that last post. The whole trip was in fact a lot of fun, both before and after a vampire stole my camera. This last week was the beginning of real classes for me, and that combined with the daunting prospect of having to write about ten full days of travel kept me from the blog. I'll do my best in the coming days to update you as much as possible.

Since I have no pictures of my own, I'm going to be supplementing this with photos taken by friends I met on the trip, as well as with pictures stolen from Flickr and Google Image Search.

So let's start with Budapest!

On Saturday the 16th of September, I took the 3-hour train ride to Budapest. I spent about 5 minutes staring blankly at an ATM at the train station, completely clueless as to what the exchange rate was in Hungary and unsure how much to get out. Then I semi-successfully bought a ticket from a trolley-driver who spoke only Hungarian and found my way to my hostel.

As soon as I arrived, I met the first of the many obnoxious Australians that I would meet this week. He looked kind of like a skater-dude and would only talk about how crazy the night life was and how he didn't get back until 5 that morning. I asked him where a good place to eat was, and he paused and stammered for a second...and then heard somebody else say something and used that as an excuse to get away from me.

I headed out to the Museum of Applied Arts, which is really better known for its architecture than its exhibits. And, well, it is pretty cool looking.


Next it was off to the Hungarian National Museum where I learned all about the Hungarian nation.


It wasn't really snowing in September, but
I thought this picture looked real pretty.
In the museum lobby, I happened to find a brochure for the Budapest Jazz Festival that was going on that night. I sat on the steps figuring out my plan for the rest of the night, while the first of many young couples in Budapest made out on the steps in front of me.

The Jazz Fest was really nice. They had set up a stage with rows of chairs alongside the banks of the Danube. It kept raining on and off, so we had to keep on running to the bars on the side for cover. The first act was an okay band led by a British trumpeter and a Hungarian-Gypsy (Roma) pianist. The next group was a trio led by this young, black American woman who played bass while scatting. She was pretty good, but her encore confirmed what I suspected: she was only this far from being Norah Jones.


Approximation of my view of the Danube from the Budapest Jazz Festival
Starving, on the way back to my hostel I stopped by a 24-hour Burger King. It was a strange American-themed restaurant. All the pictures on the wall were of Arizona deserts, football players, and electric guitars.

Today's musical selections come from three amazing new albums that contributed to me breaching the strict 5GB bandwidth limit at my dorm, causing my internet to be shut off for the end of September.

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Die Wiener Kompilation

• Bob Dylan - Workingman's Blues 2
  from Modern Times (2006)
• Yo La Tengo - Beanbag Chair
  from I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass (2006)
• Joanna Newsom - Cosmia
  from Ys (2006)