Budapest

With no one signed up for Friday afternoon and fine weather predicted I decided that this would be the weekend to go to Budapest. At the last minute my British colleague and friend Penny Johnson decided to join me. The train journey east takes about six hours. There are two possible routes to take: either through Vienna or crossing into Hungary directly east from Graz. I assumed (wrongly) that the latter would be quicker. Our train turned out to be something of a local, stopping in nearly every station along the way. No matter -- we weren't in a hurry and the turnip express afforded us the opportunity to see more of the country. The train didn't go northeast as we anticipated, but it zigzagged from one town to another. Eastern Austria is quite pretty with rolling hills, the end of the Alps, and prosperous villages. We watched for the border crossing, but there was virtually no trace of what had once been the fiercely guarded Iron Curtain. Things in Hungary looked like (in Penny's words) they needed a bit of TLC. The terrain in Hungary flattens out. The area is surprisingly sparsely populated. The vast expanse of nearly featureless farm land looked like what you might see in rural Illinois or Nebraska, that is until the train stops in a place like Nagytétényiszemlöhegy (I made that up) and you know you're not approaching Omaha. We got stuck in one station for a long time. Announcements were given repeatedly over the loudspeakers, but since they were in Hungarian we had no way of knowing what was going on. Perhaps it was something like: This train will be running off a cliff after leaving the station. Have a nice trip and thank you for traveling with Magyar Rail. It turned out to be a malfunctioning engine. Once that was fixed we were on our way. It was blazing hot and the train was not air conditioned (very little is in Europe). We arrived at Budapest Keletli Station an hour and a half late and somewhat fried. The first thing that hit my eye upon leaving the station was a huge sign for Burger King. Good grief -- is there no escaping American culture? After sorting out our hotels (both relatively new and quite nice) we stumbled upon a street that had something like 45 restaurants, all with outside seating. We found something to our liking and had a fabulous dinner among the Magyars.