ON THE ROAD: Travel to Budapest by Mriam Feder, Oregon

Travel to Budapest
by Mriam Feder, Oregon

We were seasoned travelers by the time we reached Budapest by overnight train. My daughter was much fresher than I was. She slept for most of the ride from Salzburg, while stern-looking guards from B-list World War II movies burst into our compartment at each border, waking me to show our passports. After each entry I worked hard to re-settle my blood pressure and to banish the ferocity of their knuckles on the metal compartment door. The young Englishmen we shared the compartment with seemed to have no such struggle to resume sleep and my ten year old never heard a thing. We gathered our stuff about us and entered a steamy Budapest. I let a taxi driver adopt us as soon as our feet touched the platform. He grabbed our bags and claimed to speak English. We didn’t do so badly between his few words of English, mutual bits of German and much hand-waving.
The will to communicate is everything and Hungarians have plenty of that.I sailed through lesson two of Language in Hungary when we met our hostess, an elderly woman who rented her bedroom very reasonably. We chatted about her arthritis, the doctor, the shot she got that morning, her late husband, her children, their education and languages, and best of all—the grandchildren—all those things two women can talk about for at least half an hour with only ten common words between them.

After a shower and a nap, two great friends of the traveler, we set out to find dinner in our neighborhood, a local business area with few foreigners. Now, what could I suggest to a ten year old with a travel-lagged stomach? As we came to the busy street, I saw a bright blue and white border around the large doorway of a building several blocks down. A Greek restaurant?

“You like Greek food, Honey. Remember the lemon soup with little round noodles, moussaka, circles of squid?” I talked it up, the way one does when trying to keep a ten year old moving forward instead of
complaining. “Only another couple of blocks.” Greek food sounded good—better and better, in fact. Now, just one more block. The blue and white tiles continued their promise and could almost smell the warm bread. The sign in Hungarian didn’t help or hurt. It was an impermeable language.
A deep anticipatory inhalation filled my head with perchloroethylene, not olive oil. Suddenly I was people streaming out of the doorway with pants and skirts on hangars. Oh no! It was a dry cleaner.
What a betrayal.
“I’m so sorry, Honey. I’m hungry too. How about pizza?” Language in Hungary needed a lot of hand waving.. Signs just didn’t work. The pizza, however, was great.