7/6/15
Vienna, Austria → Budapest, Hungary

Ash and I were traveling by way of the Euroline bus to Budapest. Euroline was no FlixBus, but it felt like a Lamborghini compared to the Polish piece of shit we’d taken to Kraków. It was only a three-hour drive, so I chose to write rather than nap. By the time we left the station, Ash was on dream number four.

With no Wi-Fi and no music on my phone, I had limited options for drowning out the noise around me. Ash had one album on her phone, Taylor Swift’s 1989. I “Shook It Off” and “Bad Blooded” all the way to Budapest.

We arrived in Hungary rather hungry. You can imagine how long I have been waiting to use that stupid joke. We could only afford croissants and coffee this morning in the very pricey Vienna—fifteen euros at that. We were excited to be in the land of forints and out of the euro zone. It was only one dollar for both of us to take the metro to our stop in downtown Budapest.

The first thing I noticed when entering the train car was the change in scenery from Vienna. The metro train looked like it was going to fall apart any second as we careened underground. Our train rattled to our stop, and we left the hunk of metal happy to be in one piece.

When we emerged from the metro and onto the street level, we were welcomed by an oven-like humidity. My first thought was that Budapest was … rustic. It was also very apparent that Budapest definitely didn’t have the money that Vienna did. Perhaps this was the result of the post-Soviet years as the country emerged from half a century of totalitarian rule.

I checked the e-mail our host, Ceci, had sent me with a PDF attached titled Check-In Instructions. I had glanced at it briefly on the bus but only skimmed to the point of lockbox. We walked half a mile through the grimy streets of Budapest, dodging homeless people and pee-covered walls, and arrived, unbearably hot, at our address. I opened the PDF and got to the step of the lockbox. The only problem was there was no code in the instructions to the lockbox. This was literally the most important piece of information in this scenario: the code to get in.

This is where traveling gets tough. Being hot, sweaty, and grumpy are all manageable conditions with an air-conditioned Airbnb light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. But once that light disappears, the mood hits the fan. We didn’t have Wi-Fi to get the code from our host, so we had to walk to the closest restaurant that offered Internet. The café around the corner had the three essential w’s of traveling: Wi-Fi, water, and WC [water closet, or as we call it in the US, bathroom). A ham sandwich, two beers, and a mojito later, Ceci responded nonchalantly with the code, as if it were normal for her to forget the only piece of check-in material we needed. Our annoyed mood was lightened when the bill arrived and it was seven dollars, generous tip included.

With the code cracked, we entered one of the quirkiest apartments yet: a small studio with fifteen-foot ceilings. There was a set of stairs leading from the living room to a loft over the living space. The kitchen, living room, bedroom, and bathroom were crammed into about 250 square feet. This is what Europe starts to feel like the more you travel around. Everyone does more with less. I was still pretty salty that we’d had issues getting into the apartment, but the box of chocolates Ceci had left on the table made Ash forgive her instantly. Providing chocolate to get out of the doghouse? Touché, Ceci. Touché.