Buda & Pest

We had all been for a Turkish Hamam the last time we were in Istanbul but I couldn’t persuade Theo or Rosa to come again…

Theo was concerned one of the big blokes would hurt his knee, they had been pretty brutal the first time round, and Rosa pointed out that she hadn’t ever really wanted to come. ‘I’m not doing it twice mum!’

I told her that I felt a bit scared to go on my own, and was met with a smirk ‘it’s okay mum, you don’t have to go!’

That was true, she had me there, but I did actually want to.

I arrived at the Hamam we had been to in August to find it had doubled its prices in the nine months since we’d last been here and I didn’t have enough money, and actually I was a bit shocked by the price hike so I went back to the hotel. On the way I searched for another Hamam online and there was one just round the corner from our hotel.

It was cheaper, cleaner, more modern and the power had been off all day until the exact moment I showed up, so I had the place all to myself.

By the end of that hour I was clean, thoroughly scrubbed down, all my skin removed, none too gently, and it felt good…like part of my preparations for going home.

We left our hotel later that afternoon and went for a last meal in our favourite restaurant (can you say that about somewhere you ate at twice?!)  We did more cat stroking on the way through the city and found the International bus station easily enough.

Our coach, named the ‘Lillian Express’ was  leaving at 19.00 and arriving at 6.00 in the morning. Quite short for us. The drivers were super friendly and chatty, gave out loads of water, tea and snacks – maybe, just maybe, I could get used to this.

Theo had a double seat to himself, Rosa sat next to the window and I prepared myself for another night of nearly no sleep.

Bulgaria passed us by in the dark, the second time we hadn’t given it enough of our attention. (…next time we go to Australia overland we will have to stay for a few days).

We arrived into Bucharest at 6.00 in the morning with a fifty minute walk ahead of us to get to the station. We had five hours until we needed to be there though so we took it pretty slowly.

Our gentle walk through the city was interesting and pretty in the early morning light. We were walking in a part of Bucharest we hadn’t seen last time – past the (massive!) parliament building and through a large park, where we had to stop and feed the locals. (…and just in case you have images of us whipping up a vat of ‘Hong Dou Zhou’ for the joggers and dog walkers – it was actually sunflower seeds and peanuts for the crows and pigeons).

We walked down wide, and winding streets, and eventually the smells we had been waiting for came to meet our hungry noses. A small bakery selling pastries, cakes and bread. We stocked up on whatever looked delicious and went to find somewhere to sit.

There were a couple of benches inside a small children’s play park – a mum and her little girl playing on a slide. I remembered getting up this kind of early with Rosa before teenage-hood got her and anything earlier than 9.30 a.m. was grounds for referral to the European Court of Human Rights.

Both mum and daughter smiled at us as we walked in – the little girl, Eva, asking her mum ‘why do they talk like that?’

Mum asked us Eva’s question and I took a bite of puffed breakfast and walked over smiling at the little girl. Mum explained to Eva that we were from England and then taught me how to say ‘Bună dimineațan Eva’.

Roughly translating to: ‘can you get off the slide now Eva, it’s my turn’…or was it ‘good morning Eva’?

Eva and I played on the swings together and mum, Anna, asked us questions about why we were there and our big adventure.

It was a lovely way to spend half an hour and when we left Anna gave our girl a brightly coloured windmill on a stick. Rosa thanked both Eva and Anna, reddening slightly, the wind catching the windmill a little as we left the park… making a rainbow to take us home.

We got to the station in plenty of time and went in search of a toilet.

Payment was required so I offered a Euro (eight times the price in Romanian money) but the short, orange haired woman collecting the cash made it very clear that only Romanian Lei was acceptable.

I looked back at her in my slightly sleep deprived state, saying nothing, which she interpreted as me being a bit dim, or perhaps she’d had one two many coffees that morning ‘change money’ ‘change money’ she said very loudly – all slightly stupid people are deaf it would appear.

She then did my favourite ‘shooing’ motion with both hands – I was in the way, I wasn’t getting into the toilet without my Romanian equivalent of 10p and she’d already told me what I needed to do…and then a man behind us leaned round and gave the woman some money – he was an elderly gentleman on his way to the toilet himself.

He didn’t want our Euro, or our thanks, it was just the kind thing to do…

I resisted the urge to stick two fingers up to toilet money lady – who had been telling off our kind stranger for helping us…and went and had a pee.

On the way back to our bench I heard English accents – a couple of women were buying water in the little shop.

The women were part of a group of four couples in their sixties heading to Bulgaria to stay in a holiday cottage for a week.

It felt like home coming to meet us, hearing their voices : )

The two woman were genuinely interested in our journey, asking Rosa and I so many questions, they both had tears in their eyes – they couldn’t believe we had done this as a family,  marvelling at just how far we had come. Both of them knowing what it was like to travel through Europe on trains.

It was so lovely to see their emotion and be asked intelligent questions about where we had been and what we had seen. I loved listening to Rosa’s answers, and heard her longing to be home and back with her cat in her arms.

I gave Rosa a hug as we walked back to our seats…not long now sweetie.

Our train arrived and we found our compartment but all was not well on the RJ 1079 to Budapest.

The train guards were throwing their hands in the air a lot and striding up and down the corridor with a small group of passengers trailing behind waving tickets and trying to get them to stop. The whole lot of them came to our door, the guards checked we were in the right place, told us there would be six of us in here eventually and the arm flailing and raised voices continued down the corridor.

Where were six people going to sleep? There were only four beds?!

For now though we had a compartment to ourselves, and some fabulous on board entertainment continuing up and down the corridor with no signs of slowing down. Theo said he was going to see if there was any hot water, but we knew he was really wanting a closer look at the unfolding drama.

An hour into our journey the final shouts were fading away and calm descended on our train. Our journey was shorter than many of our train journeys in China and was taking three times as long – I liked the atmospheric slowness of the train.

Our last.

I stared wistfully out of the window at the lush rolling green hills of Romania with its familiar flowers and bird songs. I could feel the grief of our journeys end coming to hold my hand when Rosa piped up.

‘It’s not our last train, we’ve got another one tomorrow.’

Oh yes, so we did… I could feel sad then.

We only had one man join us in our compartment in the end. Johannes was German and we were able to communicate a little – maybe I should learn German rather than Mandarin? I already know a bit of that…

Rosa and Theo both claimed the top bunks (…top bunks do freak me out it’s true) but Rosa fell asleep on the bottom one just as the light began to fade. I went up the ladder trying to be a good mum but I took one look and knew I wouldn’t sleep, so I curled up in the corner of the bottom bed making myself as comfortable as I could without waking Rosa.

Around midnight a particularly loud train rattle woke her and she insisted she wanted to go to her bed so I got to lie down.

We really have taken care of each other on this trip…I love that about us xXx

Border control came and went twice in the wee hours of the morning interrupting my interrupted sleep – I was so, so glad I had a bed coming in Budapest.

The clocks had gone back another hour in the night which didn’t really help with the 5.00 o’clock arrival time.

My cheery ‘It’s really six in the morning for us’ was largely ignored – thank god one of us is a morning person, I thought.

It was twenty five minutes to our hotel, and the Budapest we walked into had a uniformity to its glory that I loved. Every building was five or six storeys tall, made of similar coloured stone or brick with some graceful arches or intricate stone carving at the tops of the buildings, inviting us to look skywards as we made our way along the straight streets…which sadly was not a great idea because early morning dog walkers didn’t seem the best at picking up their dogs gifts to the pavements.

We made it to the Silver Hotel without the addition of any ‘dog’ on our shoes and were met by a grumpy man at the end of his night shift.

‘Check in time is at 14.00.’

My attempt to lighten the mood, ‘and our train arrives at 5.00 in the morning’, was met with…nothing. He didn’t even look back up.

Our last hotel was not going to be our best…I missed the Stanislavskiy!

We asked ‘Groucho Pest’ where we could put our bags and he pointed to a door with the words ‘luggage room’ on them. Our bags were the only ones in there so we left everything except a bag for water and snacks.

Theo asked about tea and a finger emerged from behind the counter and pointed to two kettles perched precariously on a ledge near the sink.

Rosa and I flopped down in the lobby area, we had seven hours until we could lie down…I did a ‘ten best things to do in Budapest’ search and forwarded the link to Rosa.

She was interested in exactly the same things I was and Theo added his ten peneth to our plans. He went out to see if anywhere was open for breakfast and ‘Essan Buda’ arrived, the hotel day manager.

He was not in the least bit grumpy, advised us the best way to get around the city and gave us a discount on the buffet breakfast in the hotel.

Theo had found somewhere to eat but the hotel was way cheaper so we headed up to the fifth floor in their glass lift in the central courtyard, which I’m sad to say needed a bloody good clean. It was tempting to get the marigolds on myself, it would have been so nice if you could have seen out of the windows properly.

Breakfast was basic but plentiful – lots of scrambled eggs and toast, a few interesting pastries and weird looking cereal.

We ate our fill, filled up our water bottles and set out for our last day of adventure.

…and what did Theo and Rosa spend most of their time doing?!

Everywhere we went there were posters of candidates for the upcoming European elections and we stopped at every one for their personality assessment/character assassination. Occasionally someone would meet with approval but most of the candidates looked a little suspicious to the eyes of our crack team. …the main task being trying to spot the ‘far right’ and the ‘two tailed dog party’ candidates.

It was fun and we were in no hurry to be anywhere.

We had decided to give the ‘terror museum’ a miss, although it did sound interesting Theo suspected it would be a bit biased and it turned out to be closed.

We walked past the parliament building and saw a small underground museum dedicated to the uprising in Hungary in 1956. Testimony from survivors and photos lined the walls – speculation about who fired the first shots during a peaceful march in Budapest that led to the deaths of hundreds of protestors, Hungary’s history was coming alive for us…

There was an art gallery up on the mountain and John Seed’s mum, our very own Wizard of Oz’s mum, had emigrated from Hungary and  become a famous artist in Australia, maybe the gallery had some of Judy Cassab’s paintings…

Judy was Jewish and had had to flee Vienna in 1939, changing her name and coming to Hungary to find factory work, using her artistic skills to forge papers and passports in the evenings. When her husband had returned to Hungary from a forced labour camp in 1944 they had started their family before leaving for Australia.

I had seen in my tourist guide to Budapest that there was a memorial in the form of shoes along the edge of the Danube to honour the Jews who were massacred there during the Second World War. I wondered if Judy had known any of the murdered people, had she lost friends and people she loved, had she been terrified they were coming for her…?

The massacre happened right near the end of the war – Jews were rounded up and ordered to bring all their possessions with them. They were taken to the rivers edge and told to put down their bags and take off their shoes before being gunned down with their bodies pushed or falling into the river. The shoes and possessions were redistributed.

I sat on the wall by the shoes…contemplating where a decision to kill the citizens of your own city for their shoes could come from. What it would have been like to wear those shoes…

I was sitting near a tour guide explaining the history of Hungary to some American tourists…in a strong clear voice he was saying how the first anti Semitic law was made in Hungary in 1920 – limiting the numbers of Jews who could access higher education. Justifications were given at the time but it was the first law defining Jews as a race not a religion which he believed helped pave the way for the holocaust.

This young Hungarian man refused the conciliatory words of the Americans around him. ‘No, this memorial is not about Nazi Germany killing Jews – it was Hungarians killing Hungarians’.

Listening to his history of what happened to 600,000 Jewish Hungarians during World War Two was devastating.

I walked along the line of shoes and saw, lying inside a pair of small child’s shoes, a necklace saying ‘bring them home’ which brought tears to my eyes. Was that referring to the hostages in the Hammas terror attack on October the 7th? …was the little sticker asking us to  love not hate, there to remind us of the thousands of Palestinian children killed by Israeli attacks since that day?

I tried to think, to understand, to love.

The shoes a symbol of the grief I could see on all the faces around me.

We walked on over the Danube river and stood listening to the strains of a Disney song being sung in Hungarian – letting the water claim some of our feelings before we walked up the hill to the art gallery.

It was good to be reunited with steps again – we still miss you Huangshan mountain! (…actually I think it may  only be me who likes steps but we climbed them anyway : )

Judy Cassab did not feature in the art gallery and they charged a lot of money to go in so we contented ourselves with a look around the gift shop and playing with the ‘Mary Poppins’ picture in the foyer.

There was a Houdini museum, a ‘hospital in a nuclear bunker’ museum, a grand old church, and a lovely view we couldn’t afford to go into either, but the walk was lovely and when we arrived at the ‘changing of the guard’ – Hungarian style, Theo whispered, none too quietly, that we should all clap and throw money at the end. Rosa hissed ‘no dad’ and I couldn’t resist. Not very loudly, only our immediate neighbours in the audience would have heard me, but at the end I cheered a little. A couple of our fellow audience laughed and Theo couldn’t believe I’d actually done it – I thought it deserved some applause and a ‘whoop, whoop’, that was some good synchronised marching those two soldiers did.

Rosa tried to pretend she wasn’t with us…

We took some silly photos close to the views we couldn’t afford to see and decided it was time to eat. We got nachos, a beer for Theo …and Rosa and I shared a mojito. A much better way of spending much less money we decided (although me and Theo will be coming back to the Houdini museum one day).

It was time to stop and rest, it had been a long couple of days and we needed to come back to each other – it was our last day.

It would take two more days travelling to get home but this was a chance for us to look back and reflect on literally, how far we’d come.

I had thought for a while that it would be great to share what we had loved and noticed about each other on our trip. What we were grateful for and proud of, both for ourselves and for the other two. A chance to say thank you and big each other up.

We spent an hour there saying lovely, honest things, soaking up the praise and the sunshine, sipping our first taste of alcohol in months – it was fun and a lovely way to begin our ending.

We all wished for the bus journey to be a bit less hellish than it sounded like it might be …and I had a secret.

At 3.30 a.m. the day after tomorrow, we would arrive into Cologne and have to get off the bus and wait in the cold and dark for two hours …but I knew we would not be alone!