A crisis at home in Ohio - the gas company would not reconnect for heat (I have electric stove and hot water, so couldn't see paying $20 a month for nothing all summer) for my niece and her two toddlers, without a phone call from me. Nina helped me find a calling card but I only got busy signals for the toll-free number. In the end the company relented but it was a stressful time in Cracow, haunting the phones to no avail.
Across the bridge is monumental Wawal Castle, high above the river, with a spiral staircase leading to the dragons den cave. There is a dog statue; he waited for years for his dead master to return at a busy roundabout. Castle tours are by appointment, but I was meeting Nina for lunch. She arrived chic in high velvet heels on her bike and we ate at a typical cafeteria.
She is vegetarian but I tried bigos and on the third day gave up trying to swallow the remaining concoction of meat, wine, plums and cabbage. Salted smoked cheese from a street vendor had dulled my appetite.
I went on to a portrait gallery upstairs from the cloth guild arcade in the center of the square. A bunch of Swedes in red shirts serenaded the city from the balcony. The cabbage had me running for the WC!
The Old Town - every city has one - features a medieval square, a church tower where a live trumpeter holds forth on the hour, horse drawn carriages, sidewalk cafes, souvenir stalls, a grim reaper on stilts and a man singing opera like a castratto to taped music.
I talked with Nina about visiting Auschwitz, which is a train ride away. She had been there recently with couchsurfers a few weeks ago and didn't recommend the experience. I have a lot of ambivalence about it, I should go but I don't want to. In the end, I visited the royal castle, the Jewish quarter and Oskar Schindlers factory, with exhaustive exhibits and recreations that kept me there past dark.
Another day, her best friends Peter and Ralph, who are building a wooden house together, drove us ninety minutes into the country to visit another open air museum, old houses from different regions, churches, where the Polish pope lived, a guided tour kindly translated by Peter. Then lunch in a country restaurant. Sick of cabbage, I chose a Greek salad and mulled wine to warm up with.
Nina has lived in her flat for nine years and divested most of her possessions. She hopes the boys will take the cat for a while when she leaves. She wanted to see some of my thousands of photos and the Russian icons and churches captivated her, made her want to go to Russia NOW. Before I left for the sleeper train to Budapest, the next couchsurfer arrived, an Australian Adonis...
There were three cots in my couchette but no other travellers. I met a South Dakotan on a Eurailpass who paid $20 more for the sleeper. Not a bargain. The noise and motion of the train did not induce a good nights sleep. I even left Martin Amis MONEY book behind, too.
But when I got off the train in the dark cavernous station in the morning, a smiling older Hungarian woman welcomed me with fried pastries from her bag. I changed my paper zloties to Hungarian florins, found the sleek modern Metro and emerged across the Danube from the Parliament, where my next hostess, Petra, in a big hat and a big smile, and her two whippets, Boris and Motzi, were waiting for me. Boris is a champion and Motzi an elderly rescue dog. We all four boarded the bus to join her white cat in a beautiful two story flat with huge picture windows on a back garden and balcony. Petra prepared a breakfast of cheese, sliced sausage, bread, tomatoes, turkish coffee in tiny cups. I brought out my whole wheat bread. The dogs enjoyed her apple peels. The cat shocked Petra by warming up to me (I fed her.)
Petra, a divorcee of 47, has worked in film production and now does market research on some days, interviewing the public. Bruce Willis filmed another Die Hard over the summer, Budapest standing in for Moscow, and elderly people thinking the Soviets had returned when they saw red stars and tanks in the street.
Petra has a rare Citroen Deux Chevaux (two horse power) no longer made, and attends annual rallies of enthusiasts in Europe. She loved Greece but found they are not kind to their animals. She is a doting mother! She lives high in the hills of Pest (Buda, the city center across the Danube, is flat) in a millionaires quarter. She bought her flat some years ago, and her gas stove, like Nina's needs special treatment to stay lit. She sometimes rents out her bedroom to visitors through a site called airbnb. When she works she drives the whippets to her mothers house and washes their paws as soon as they get home.
We walked to a nearby shopping mall up the hill with the dogs. Later without them, we took the bus and tram into town and I got a three day transportation pass. Petra took chances no controller would be on the rush hour bus but you cannot get on the Metro without showing a ticket. I am getting more used to the very long and steep escalators in the Metro.
We went to another train station to see about my ticket on to Split. Round trip is cheaper than one way, so I might return to Budapest. We walked past theatres on fashionable Andrassy Street, Petra noticing passing celebrities. Ornate buildings with classical statues abound. We visited a picturesque bar, an old loft decorated with mobiles of rushing rabbits, and had celebratory beers. I noticed many second hand clothing stores and a slightly dark air of desperation in the population I hadn't felt in Poland. Her last guests, two African American girls, had to change their plans when one had her passport and visa to India pickpocketed on the Metro. They took walking tours but didn't pay.
As in Porto, Portugal, there are free walking tours of the city of 2 1/2 hours, tips encouraged, so the next day I joined seventy or so people, divided into three groups for a lesson in Hungarian history. The language comes from Mongolia and the alphabet has 44 characters! Theirs is a long history of losing battles. Famous is the image of a horseman directing his bow and arrow behind him. Last names come first: Liszt Ferenc.
I met couples from Michigan and Manchester. The Brits had been to Budapest the winter past and planned to come again. They reckoned flying here with 3 nights in a hotel with breakfast was worth 250 quid each. I kept my opinion to myself. We crossed the Danube and some climbed, some rode to the top of the hill opposite to see palace ramparts, churches and souvenir stands.
Studying my map I finally made my way to the central Market, a huge enclosed building on three levels. In the basement were huge fish crowded in tanks too small for them, gulping desperately. Upstairs I found gulash soup and a glass of wine at a cafeteria, then bought veggies and eggs. I had asked the tour guide where second hand books in English could be found to replace MONEY and found the Tony Curtis autobiography, (a Hungarian Jew from the Bronx!) on sale and a massive paperback of The Forsyte Saga to keep me occupied. I hadn't known of Petras Jack Kerouac collection, her incentive to learn English, but found the shortest book, Doctor Sax, distasteful.
Petra would be staying late at her mothers house to celebrate her name day. Back home I set out again for the supermarket for milk, yogurt, cheese and cookies. Petras car was leaking water under the windshield in the rain and we drove with the boys to a mechanic to assess the repair. He told her Citroen parts was going bankrupt but she found out otherwise. I went into town to visit the National Museum. A special exhibit was Beethovens piano, given to Franz Listz, and earphones to hear Polonaises and other beautiful piano music played by Bela Bartok and others. I joined another walking tour of the Communist era. I saw bullet holes from 1956 and restored ground floors while the upper levels continue to crumble. There was a large circular fenced hole Petra didnt know about, many assume it is part of the Metro, but it is the exit of a Communist bunker against nuclear war. We ended our tour in the same bar with the rushing rabbit mobiles and Communist artifacts.
Online I couldn't find any couches in Split, Croatia, my next stop, though an acceptance I had missed appeared in Budapest. Margit, a woman of my age, lives even further up the hill in Pest and we three met in the city at a cafe my last day.
They lapsed into German and Hungarian sometimes. Petra had a work appointment and Margit took me to the station to buy my ticket to Split and sent me off to the end of Andrassy road where massive art museums are, I couldn't see it all before closing time.
She was very sweet in our short acquaintance, and I am tempted to return to visit her. Petra kindly set her alarm for five am the next morning and drove me, with the elderly whippet in the back, through the predawn empty streets to the train for a fond farewell. I sat all the way to Zagreb with Chris, 53, from New Zealand, on a nearly empty train. He has taught English in Japan and Korea and had a Lonely Planet guide to Eastern Europe with him. He got tired of Japanese hiring him for $70 an hour to speak English with him in posh cafes to show off. He stayed at relatives in London during the Olympics and hotels on the road. I wonder what he will find to see in Zagreb.
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