Tales from Wroclaw: Arrival

Jaro and I step off the train, and look at our bleak surroundings. Besides the fact that its after midnight, drizzling, and homeless bums are pandering around the train station, we have no idea where our hostel is.

Let’s see. What did Ewa say? Just look up a map in the city center… Find our street, and go from there. Sounds simple enough.

But where’s the city center? Is there even a city map in the city center? And what if the hostel is on the outskirts of town? Crap. We are completely unprepared for this.

Ok, Jaro is saying. First things first. We find the nearest non-stop and buy a beer. There is no way we are doing this sober.

Agreed.

Two blocks later we enter a non-stop with an old lady behind the counter. She starts talking in this completely non-intelligible language. Oh my god, what is that? That’s Polish, stupid. Oh, right.

At the point that she pauses, when it’s clear she’s just asked both of us a question, I just stare at her, thinking maybe she can read minds. Jaro, on the other hand, has another idea.

Zsu-Zsa-Zsu-Zsa-Zsa-Zsa-Zsa-Zsa-Zsa-Zsa.

The lady is staring at Jaro like a frightened child, and so am I. What are you doing dude?

I’m speaking her language, he hisses back at me.

I wait for the meltdown. C’mon, he just made complete fun of this woman’s language. We’re fucked. I’m watching behind me for the skinheads that are surly going to come to their mama’s rescue.

But the atoms never smash together. Instead, she gives him a wry smile and keeps talking to him. Oh Christ, can we just get out of here? I’m saying. Grab the beers and go before we get into some real trouble.

We pop the tops out in front of the shop, and I’m shaking my head at Jaro. Nice. Just smooth dude.

What? Their language is insane. Might as well make fun of it.

This coming from a guy who’s lived in Hungary for three years, and speaks a fair amount of Hungarian; arguably one of the most difficult and ‘insane’ languages on the planet.

We both take swigs, and then look at each other. Now what? We’re stuck in Wroclaw, with no idea where we are, or how to get to our hostel.

Hmm.

Let’s just start walking that way. I’m pointing up what looks to be a main street, and praying the city center is down that particular way.

We start walking and talking and looking at the architecture, which, as per Central/Eastern European status, is always fun to look at (nevermind those Soviet blockhouses).

After about 20 minutes of walking, with no sense of let-up, I’m worried. This is not going well.

And suddenly, Jaro stops, and says, I have an idea.

Well what is it? It better be genius or we’re in big trouble.

He points to something behind me.

I look over my shoulder and see it: Holiday Inn.

Oh thank god for American chains.

The most important lesson I’ve learned while traveling through Europe: if you ever get lost, get to a hotel and ask directions. No matter how posh the place is, they will help you. And they absolutely will speak English. And since Holiday Inn is in just about every city in Europe (not to mention the States), it makes life easier when you run out of ideas. Plus, they usually have free maps of the city.

It turns out I’m the designated direction asker this trip. You go in, Jaro is saying. I’m going to stay out here and people watch. There’s a small club around the corner of the Holiday Inn that looks to be a teenie-bopper affair. Everyone looks like they’re 12. But they’re all drinking alcohol.

Umm, ok, you do that.

I walk in to the hotel, and don’t even try to act like I know Polish.

Hello, I’m lost. Please help me.

That’s about as clear as it gets.

The guy looks at me, and then whips out a map of the city, and asks in crisp perfect English, Where are you trying to go?

I show him the street name and he nods and bends over the map. Here’s us, he says, pointing to the red dot on the map that looks to be in a central location. It must be a Holiday Inn sponsored map.

Then he starts tracing his other finger from the Holiday Inn red dot on the map, moving farther and farther away from the warmth of the dot. Uh oh.

His finger finally stops. Here we are: Grunwaldzka Street!

I’m staring at the length between his two fingers and it reminds me when Calvin and Hobbes decide to go to the Yukon, and look on a globe and think the couple inches between the Yukon and their home will be no sweat to travel by foot.

Shit. No way are we going to walk that, I’m thinking.

What? He asks, eyes arching.

Umm, that’s far. Do you have night transportation to there?

He blinks, obviously thinking, and then, Of course! Just let me look up the correct line.

This guy is good.

So for the next 15 minutes, the Holiday Inn Front Desk Man is diligently looking up my route. It seems difficult to get there, because it takes him so long to find the line. He’s on the internet, calling people, talking with another attendant. And I didn’t even pay this guy.

Jaro comes in, goes straight to the bathroom.

That’s my friend, I’m telling him, when he gives Jaro the death-what-the-fuck-do-you-think-you’re-doing-using-my-bathroom-when-you’re-not-a-guest look.

Finally: Ok! You walk up this street, get on the first tram. Take it to the bus station. Get on this bus. And it should take you to your street.

So it’s pretty far from here?

Yes.

Damn. Oh well. Jaro finally comes out of the bathroom. So? We know how to get there?

Yup. Let’s go. I turn around to the attendant, and say, Köszi szépen, thanking him in Magyar and forgetting I’m in Poland. He just looks at me with a confused look on his face. You’re welcome? Is all he can say.

Outside in the cold, as we walk towards our fate, Jaro is asking, So what took so long?

We had trouble with the exact night transport route.

Oh. So it’s pretty far huh?

Yeah. Just remind me to kill Ewa the next time I see her.

Snow Falls

There's just something about snow.

I'm standing in my room, thinking about something, and I get a call from Jaro. Have you seen it?! Look outside!!! I look, and sure enough, light snow is falling into the courtyard. The first snow.

I walk to Burger King, because they have these chili cheese jalapeno nuggets. They sound disgusting, but actually are an amazingly tasty snack. The BK employees are all lined up on the opposite side of the counter, looking out the windows. I try to make an order but they are all laughing and pointing behind me, to the snow falling on the streets of our city. One girl is jumping up and down with a big smile on her face. I can't help but watch her and wonder what else makes her this excited.

I walk to Jaro's flat and I see a young mother and her daughter walking along the street. The daughter, no more than 3 years old, has snow caked to her little snow gloves and is beaming, looking directly up at my face. She's so happy that I smile back. Her mother smiles, but I move on. No matter how happy the people are around me, it's still freezing. Snow is falling. This isn't summer. It's winter. And it's time to move on.

Tales from Wroclaw: The Beginning

Jaro, Tamas, Ewa and I step out of the car, and stretch our legs after the seven hour journey. Before we had left from Budapest, Jaro and I had bought two small bottles of Unicum and promptly drank them in the car out of a Subway cup. It was only after we had started the second bottle that Tamas wondered aloud, ‘Why does it smell like Unicum in here?’

We had neglected to tell him.

Oh that’s nothing, I’m saying, eyeing the back of his head while he drives. Do you want some Coke? And I hand him the cup.

Ahhh!

He finally realized where the smell was coming from.

C’mon Dad! Drink up!

We had been calling him Dad the whole trip. He’s such a dad.

Now we’re stretching our legs in some little town just south of Wroclaw. So wait, why don’t you just drive us up there? Jaro is asking.

Because I would have to drive all the way up there and then all the way back to Ewa’s house!

All the way? I’m squinting at our map of Poland. The blip that supposedly is our current location is directly underneath, and close, CLOSE, to Wroclaw.

All the way? I keep asking.

Five minutes later we’re all standing on the train platform. Ewa is explaining to Jaro what we have to do. Just take this train up to Wroclaw…

What the hell are you talking about? We don’t even know where we are right now!

Just then, we all hear the approaching train. Sure you don’t want to just take us?

No. Get on the train.

Fuck.

We say our goodbyes and board the hulking metal beast, but Jaro has a funny look on his face. What?

I just totally grabbed Ewa’s tit.

What do you mean, you ‘just grabbed Ewa’s tit?!’

He’s laughing hysterically now and I probably look horrified.

I went to shake Tamas’ hand right when she went in to kiss you goodbye!

He’s practically on his knees, he thinks it’s so funny. I’m just shaking my head, but smiling, because I can imagine exactly what happened, and how utterly embarrassing it was.

You fucking idiot.

Well, he’s shrugging. What can I do? They ran in to me!

Obstacles Ahead

I’m walking down the street with Szilvi. I’m stumbling along on the sidewalk, and she’s parallel to me on the street. It’s 1 in the morning and I am tired. Ten minutes prior to this moment I had been sitting in a bar with Szilvi, Dave and his new girlfriend, to which I have now completely forgotten her name. We all order drinks. They come. I take a gulp. And get up to leave.

Where are you going?

Home. I can barely keep my eyes open.

Dave just looks at me, half smiling the way he always does. What about your beer, he asks.

Drink it. I don’t care.

Szilvi accompanies me, probably understanding once I left it would just be her with the happy couple. She caught the whiff of freedom and jumped on it. I can’t remember if she also left a beer behind. We probably left them with two extra drinks. I didn’t care. I just wanted my bed.

So we’re walking along Múzeum körút, talking about something. I can’t remember, because of what happened next.

I said something to Szilvi that made her laugh, and I looked down at my feet. Right at that moment I blinked, but it didn’t seem like I was blinking. The darkness was too long. My mind was engulfed in darkness, and I thought insanely: Maybe I just went blind.

But then pain shot through my right side, erasing any thoughts of blindness. Arghhhh, I remember hearing. My forever blink ends and the lights of night come back to me. I look around and see where my pain had originated from: I had run right into a pole. To my right are a group of five girls, completely silent and watching the confused idiot who just ran into a pole.

Um. Where is Szilvi, I’m wondering. I look past the group of girls, who are giggling now as I massage the right side of my chest. Ow damnit. She’s nowhere to be found. Vanished. What happened?

And then I remember.

Szilvi had gone back to Jaro’s a while back. She had gone right at Kalvin tér, and I had gone left. Yes, we had been talking and walking down the street together earlier, but that was then. She left and I continued towards my home, my bed, and from everything I can tell, I continued the conversation as well.

I had fallen asleep while walking down the streets of Budapest, and had a vivid dream while doing it. Something akin to reality, but not quite. Still, I can’t be certain. It felt real. But then, I was actually walking on that exact same street in my dream, as in reality.

It made all the sense in the world that it was a rigid jolt that brought me back, brought me back into my conscious self. I’m still walking down the same street, but I better watch for those obstacles ahead.

Medically Challenged

I'm sitting there at the stadium, with warm beer in one hand and a hot dog loaded with condiments in the other. Jaro is munching down on his hot dog so fast I'm waiting for him to choke. But not to worry. There are medics directly to my left so I'm not too worried about his state of health.

We're there to watch Lodzi play his American football game. Yes. American football. They actually have this here. And it sure looks like the same thing too. But Lodzi is sitting on the bench, looking bored out of his mind. The minutes stretch into months. Christ, I'm saying, since when was this game so boring?

There's a big hit, someone topples over. He doesnt get up. The coach runs out to assess the situation. And starts screaming for the medics. But no one with a stretcher runs out, like usual. Where the hell are the medics? People are looking around.

Sometimes, in this crazy city, you can have a shitty day and one beam of shining light makes up for all the bad stuff that happened before. This was one of those moments. The game was a disaster. Really. We didn't care about it. We were there to support Lodzi, and carp about the Americans chasing skirts in the stands. And then...

Medics! The coach is screaming for someone to help his injured player but no one comes out. Jaro and I are looking at the medics now, the exemplary Hungarian medics that should be out on the field. They're sitting in the ambulance, backs turned toward the field, smoking cigarettes and talking like it was a Sunday afternoon in the park.

We start to laugh as the coach has to physically run over to the ambulance and grab the medics. They stub out their cigarettes and look confused. What do you mean someone was hurt?

It's times like these that you remember where you are. I mean, really remember. That shit just would not fly back home. And certainly no medics would be caught smoking inside an ambulance. I'm not saying this is only the Hungarian's fault. This might happen all throughout Central Europe. But I'm not all throughout Central Europe. I'm sitting right here, munching on my hot dog and grimacing at the warm beer (where the fuck are the coolers?!) and watching the way the Hungarians do business in the medical services.

I can't even imagine what surgery is like here.

Later, after the top-notch medics haul this big mother of a guy in full football gear onto a stretcher, they can't seem to figure out how to get the stretcher into the ambulance. They're fiddling with switches and the stretcher and just looking at the back of the ambulance with a deer-in-the-headlights look. Jaro can't even believe what he's seeing. Do you see this dude? He's asking. Yes. They're fucking retards. It takes 5 minutes for the medics to figure out what they're doing. And the football player is just laying there, sometimes waving at the small crowd, sometimes watching the medics do there thing. This is a total clusterfuck, I'm saying.

I get up to piss. And stop. There on the ground is a 9mm shell casing. Just sitting there. Holy shit! Look at this Jaro...

There is a funny aspect of gun culture in Hungary. Guns can be bought in stores all over the place. There is a shop with all types and sizes across the street from Jaro's flat. But none of these places sell bullets. Its like the NRA's personal hell. So many guns. But no bullets. They have to be procured by other means (I'm sure the Mafia have their ways - open Schengen borders help a lot).

This is why the bullet casing sitting on the stone bleachers in a diminutive football stadium in Budapest was such a surprise to me. You could even see where the hammer snapped into place and started the chain reaction to send the little bugger on its lone journey through the air.

What happened here? If there was someone here with a 9mm popping someone you would see other casings, or dried blood, for that matter. But none of that is around. Just one casing. Just sitting there. Waiting for me to pick it up. The last journey it will take.

I still have it now. Sitting on my desk, collecting dust. I want to remember that moment, the medics, the warm beer, the guy on the stretcher waving to the crowd. It's all part of the Budapest experience.

...and the streets will run red...

Last night I’m sitting with Dori on a pedestrian lane, on a park bench, a stone’s throw from her old secondary school (high school in American-speak). She’s telling me how weird it is we are sitting there on this bench, the only bench on this lane; that she used to sit on for four years, with her friends and talk and chatting and laughing and gossiping. I’m listening and thinking about my own high school experience. How long ago was that? What’s changed? Who’s still back there…living the same lives that they were when I was still there, struggling with adolescence and drugs and alcohol and sex and girls and wondering if this was really what I was going to amount to in my life. But then I remember.

I got out. I left. I changed my life. For the better.

She’s looking at me. Those eyes. We go in to kiss and it feels good. I’m aware of someone walking up the pedestrian lane, but I don’t look who strolls past. But they don’t stroll. It’s shuffling. I can hear the shoes scraping along the pavement, dirt crunching and moving beneath the feet, exchanging a mutual touch with the hard stone beneath. I ignore the moment, thinking only of the kiss, but the sound still touches me somewhere, somewhere back in my mind. Something I should be listening to. Something I know I need to listen to. But I’m not. I still have that fear of someone walking behind me, that I have to stop and let them pass, and watch them walk ahead. Its not a fear. Its…something else. Like I’ve known it before. Like I was a spy in a past life, during the Cold War, and I felt the blade enter my back as I walked, irresponsive to the sound of footsteps behind me. Maybe I was a bad spy. I don’t know.

I won’t ever know.

Now I see the person. It’s a woman. She’s standing, back turned to us, with two bags in her hand. Dori is talking now, and I train my attention on her. She’s speaking about the differences between our high schools, why she feels high school was the best point in her life. Its because she never left her home. She never left for college. She’s been stuck in this city her whole life. A sobering thought. I think back to the debauchery of my college experience. And smile. The memories come through, jagged, but still there, still real, like I was there yesterday. She will never understand the feelings. The first day. When I turned away from my mother and sister, choking back tears, but wanting them to go, to leave me alone. I wandered around the dorms, watching people but not saying anything, still not understanding that everyone was in the same position as I. Alone. And then I met a Russian, chain smoking in a place clearly marked ‘Non-Smoking’. And I lit up too, and began speaking with him, me stumbling over my words, he with his thick accent and racist appeal to the masses. It was only later I understood he was a bad guy. But he introduced me to a friend, Nick, one of the best.

I guess the bad sometimes do good.

Now I’m speaking to Dori but I can’t remember about what. You can be sure it was about life and what the point of all it means. I tend to do that. But now my eyes are drawn to the woman. She’s sitting down the lane, maybe twenty feet away. Just sitting there on a ledge. I can’t see her face.

She begins to talk, in a low voice that booms. Dori stops and listens. I stop too. Did you hear that, she asks. She’s speaking broken English. But that’s not what I heard. I heard the words ‘reszeg’ (drunk) and ‘absolutemont’. Which are both Hungarian words (the latter was totally stolen). She just spoke Hungarian, I’m saying. No, that was English, Dori is trying to convince me.

What a sweet girl. But I’m right.

Now the woman stands, and I think she’s talking on a cell phone. I see her face for the first time, and it looks normal. Middle-age, but nothing too craggily. Completely, utterly normal. Nothing seems to be wrong. She just said she was absolutely drunk. Which would make sense if she’s talking to herself on a deserted pedestrian lane. But its not deserted, I’m thinking. We’re here. Watching her. Listening to her.

I don’t know it yet, but she’s about to put on a show.

She starts to walk away, with her hand next to her face. Yes, definitely a cell phone. Just talking with one of her middle-aged friends. And then she turns around.

There’s no phone.

I can see her face. Something has changed. It’s contorted and her burning eyes are staring right at the lovely innocent couple sitting on the bench. Uh oh.

When she starts to speak, a hollow voice that does not seem to come from her throat, I automatically know something is wrong. I’m the only one watching her. Dori has been staring at me the whole time, probably wondering how she got so lucky (No Taryn, I’m not vain). But her face changes instantly when she hears the voice. Something bad is happening. And I can’t understand a word.

What is it?

Shh! She shushes me.

I hate getting shushed.

The woman is speaking, staring right at us, at me, I can feel her stare, and she’s gesticulating with her fist. Where the phone should have been. But no. This bitch is crazy. Dori’s face isn’t helping the situation either. She hasn’t turned around to look at the woman, not yet, but I can see on her face that it’s not good. Whatever she’s saying it scares her. I don’t see that look too often.

Finally the woman says her share, turns around abruptly, and walks off. She turns around again way up the lane, but now its not clear whether she’s looking at us anymore. She’s speaking again. To someone. I fight the urge to yell after her, ‘Speak up!’, but the look on Dori’s face diffuses that urge.

What? What did she say?

She said…and she looks back, behind her. She said…

What? Tell me!

She turns back, and looks at me, eyes glinting in the light thrown down from the lamp above us. I won’t ever forget her look.

She said she would kill the both of us, and that our blood would spray across the pavement, and the streets would run with our blood.

I’m staring at her like she just socked me in the nuts. WHAT?! Are you sure?

Yes. She’s very sure. I can see it.

We stayed there on the bench for some time, but the thought never left my mind. Why? Why would she say those things?

And will I see her again?

Crash

I’m sitting, like many nights before it, on Jaro’s couch listening to the convoluted conversations erupting around me. English and Hungarian intermix, but I’ve stopped listening to the people around me. I’ve just heard a loud bang outside, and my ears are perked up.

Car accident.

Jaro is listening too. Did you hear that?

Yeah.

We both run to the window at the same time, knocking people over unlucky enough to be in our way.

It’s like that Dane Cook joke: ‘You’re sitting around and you hear a car screech on its breaks – SCREEEEAAAAAAAARRRCCCCHHHHH – and then, Damnit! So close!’

People love car accidents. Just a fact of life.

We’re leaning out the window, searching for the culprit. I don’t see any debris. But there’s a car idling at the end of the street, Pál útca, just sitting there. It looks like a nice car. Black. Sleek. New. Renault? I can’t tell the make. This is a first.

The passenger door opens. A guy in shorts and t-shirt jumps out and inspects the front end quickly. He looks at the driver’s side, shrugs, and jumps back into the car. The door slams shut and the car takes a sharp right, jumping the curb, and driving up the sidewalk, out of sight behind the opposite building.

What the hell was that?

Did he just make his getaway on the sidewalk?!?

We’re both in hysterics, because of the sheer stupidity (genius?) of the events around us.

Only in Hungary, dude! Only in Hungary!