If only I could do that when I'm awake

I fell asleep last night with the radio on. Before I woke up this morning I was listening to a guy on the radio with a heavy accent talking about beautiful China and something about how the Chinese need to get their act together.  Then I opened my eyes and realized they were speaking only in Hungarian and that it was an all-Hungarian station.

könyv és bor

Books and wine.

Use a headlamp in the bathroom.

I tried to use my clippers today for a haircut, but forgot to look at whether they will accept 240 volts. It turns out that they don't.

All the power in my apartment disappeared with a loud pop. As it was just getting dark out I hurried up and searched for the breaker panel. Found the one fuse for the place, so everything came back on -except for the bathroom lights. Did I fry the electricity in there?

So I guess I should get a hold of the guy who maintains the building. The last time I needed him (for a key to the roof on behalf of the internet installation), Zsuzsanna the property manager hung up the phone with him with her eyes bugging out, "Well that wasn't the most pleasant man!"

Terézváros

In the two blocks from the store to home, I must pass at least eight sidewalk restaurant/pubs. That's not counting the take-aways, the sexy-dancer club and other places I can't figure out yet. I mean places where people are sitting for a long time with one foot up on their chair and lemon and lime slices rest with the ice in the bottom of their glasses. There's work to do at home, but it's so hard to keep walking, especially as it seems much more common here to sit by oneself with a beer and a journal/sketchbook. 

Getting home

My first day in town was spent walking around the inner city of Budapest with Zsuzsanna, a rental property manager for a local real estate company I'd emailed from New York, to look at a number of apartments I'd chosen from a list she'd emailed me. I settled on the first one we'd stopped at in the morning (and have so far been thrilled with it). 

Most of that afternoon was spent going over the rental contract and then trying to figure out how I'd pay first month's rent and deposit since, come to find out, they only take cash or bank transfer. (I've since learned quite a few places here only deal in cash -Hungarian Forints or Euros.) So I spent a while walking from bank to bank trying to withdraw enough cash, then on the phone with my bank in New York to find out there's a limit on what I can withdraw in a day and they won't do a bank transfer unless I'm there in person (in New York). Thankfully, I'd just opened an online account a week earlier with a worldwide bank with whom I was finally able to transfer the money and move in! Let that be a lesson. I'd felt bad hogging almost a whole day of Zsuzsanna's time, but she admitted that one of the perks of her job is that she gets to walk around the city so much like that. 

The photo is in Erzsebet Ter (Elizabeth Square), a few blocks from home. This spot always has a lot of people hanging out at all times of day and night. A booth selling beer, etc. is out of the frame to the right, and on weekend nights it seems the place is packed like a giant outdoor club. The other night I was walking through with some groceries and stopped for a while to listen to a band that was playing, when I realized a lot of other people were doing the same -sitting with a beer or a glass of wine next to their work bags or shopping bags, as if hanging out and enjoying city life is just a looong pause on the way home.

Ferihegy Airport Arrival

Never mind the symbol.  It was a smooth arrival.

The Approach

Somewhere over central Europe in the morning, coming into Hungary.

At risk of sounding like a commercial...

Lufthansa always makes me double check whether I'm still in coach. My answer comes when I bang my nose on the seat in front of me. But still, always steaming hot towels, as much water as I want whenever I need it, more food than I could eat, and I've never been charged for a drink. 

What you're looking at here is my thirsty Campari and soda next to my water. After dinner they always come around asking whether you'd like a cognac or Bailey's. That brown one's cognac.

North Atlantic

Flying east on a course far to the north in mid summer means nighttime lasts about three hours. 

As short as that was, a nearly-full moon lit up the North Atlantic Ocean. 

How does anyone not like flying?

The tarmac view put me in my place.

The Newark Airport is separated from Manhattan by a vast flat expanse of marshes, so I had a perfect view of the distant skyline across the tarmac as I waited for my flight. In the foreground was an enormous herd of towering cranes feeding on the container ships arriving from across all of the oceans of the world. 

New York

My trip to the airport required a train down the Hudson, several blocks on foot through New York, and a bus trip out of the city to the airport. Each segment gave me a chance to recognize where I was leaving.

The train was full of all types of people as usual, including a buzzing asian family of four, a couple of older black women talking the whole way to work in Yonkers, and a white schoolmarm in her 60s who cross-stitched herself into a gaping-mouthed slumber.

Making my way to the bus stop from Grand Central, I was given directions from one bus driver who was chatting up another. The flamboyantly gay black man in his 50s told me my bus was "around the corner at the end of the block, daaarling."

My bus driver, a Cuban-looking man with a mustache and a smile that only went away when he'd bite his lip concentrating on the darting traffic, made sure I knew that Lufthansa flies out of "Tal-mee-nul Bee!"

My last several days upstate also brought reminders of the area's dynamically migrant culture. There was the group of Dominicans who came to buy my car. They're in the business of exporting used cars to Santo Domingo for resale, so while Mr. Torres and I were negotiating our final deal, the four others scoped out the condition and appearance of the body.

Then there's the new family that moved into the apartment below mine the week before I left. I met them one afternoon when I pulled up with a few groceries and their father, Geraldo, rushed towards me from heating up the grill.  He rather expectantly asked me to join them in the yard for food in a half hour. The four types of meat were served with lots of lime and chili sauce. Geraldo's wife, Eva, spoke no English but quickly warmed up to me asking lots of questions about the neighborhood through their three grown daughters and two young grandkids.  They'd been living elsewhere in Kingston for 8 years after moving from Mexico City.

All this diversity reminds me of the attractive energy New York has, seemingly weighed (by my current experience) to the Americas (Hispanics, West Indians), and makes me wonder in turn what I'll find in Eastern Europe. How will the enormous amount of human migration occurring right now in the world be represented in Budapest, not long ago tightly controlled under Communism, and now an emerging economy looking for new opportunity in its very recent induction into the European Union?

Marathon packing

The result of several marathon sorting/tossing/packing days (compare to July 8 pic).

High send-off

A big goodbye-wave to the Hudson Valley.

Night owls.

Another radio to keep me company this time of night. I'm not feeling much camaraderie with the people out there, though. Night time brings out the ghost/alien/conspiracy stories people have been harboring. Modern times haven't done anything to lessen the threat darkness brings, I guess. 

Eyes getting heavy...

Up late.

It's wonderfully creepy trolling the radio at 2:00AM and finding evangelist broadcast ministries with their angelic choirs singing in Latin (horror movies) and deep whispery sermons about end times (again, horror films). Especially when the reception isn't great.

Trust lives.

The blog will be maintained whether or not I have anything interesting to show or tell. The fact that my departure from the hemisphere is ramming at me has me a little distracted.

Posted my car on Craigslist yesterday and got about four calls within a couple of hours. The first caller in the afternoon agreed to buy it late last night based on photos I emailed to him (he lives 3 hrs away on Long Island). I'll remove my posting after his deposit arrives in the mail. I'm surprised at how much trust someone is still willing to place in a stranger. Or, I'm being suckered somehow. The eager amount of responses to the ad left me feeling like my price was too low. I guess that's the cost of needing to get rid of it so quickly.

Moving

Last week was my last week at my job.  I'm leaving for Budapest next Wednesday, so I'm trying to wrap everything up with my life in New York and hoping a week will do it. I don't fully know what that means, to be honest. I guess I'm just feeling my way through this decision and lapping up the consequences.

My wife is spending the summer with her family in Michigan, so it's been pretty quiet around here.  A little too quiet considering what I've been putting off.  I have a week now to finish going through all our accumulated stuff, put what we're keeping in storage, sell my car, spend quality visits with friends, set up a new bank account, disconnect utilities and finalize arrangements for an apartment overseas.

Despite all the nerves and worries, I'm drowning in excitement. I could get addicted to this.