Szeged - Paprika Capital of Hungary

Mea culpa times three. There I said it and I am truly sorry. For years now, I have been saying that once you have seen one Hungarian city outside of Budapest, you have seen them all - the Deja vu experience I called it. One more time for good measure, mea culpa. Ron and I took the 2 1/2 hour train ride to Szeged today so I could do some research for my upcoming book. The section on Szeged is small as is Eger, but still there was a burning need to refresh my memory of these smaller cities. According to http://www.citypopulation.de/Hungary-Cities.html#Stadt_gross, Szeged ranks number four in size, but Eger is not even on the top eleven list. On an IC train, we were surprised at how crowded it was. Why weren't all of these people going to Balaton instead? With Mr. M on his own adventure, I could not keep him from popping up in my mind. He had to catch a train at 6:30 this morning. We reached ours at 9:30 am. He had a seven hour train ride ahead of him to reach his destination, we had two and a half hours. He had two to three hours at his destination before returning again, we had all day. He had another seven hour ride to get home, we had two hours and fifteen minutes. Oh, life is good. It also occurred to me that with a perpetual mantra of "What should I do? What do you think I should do?", he reminds me of a remote control toy with the toggle controls in someone else's hands. He just goes where directed, without much self-control. When he crashes into a wall, he can certainly blame others. He did not direct himself there; someone else set him on that course of action. Back to Szeged. This is another city we have not trained to before. The last time we visited, we came by bus with Fulbrighters. The train station is beautiful, but like Eger away from the city center. A full day transport ticket was 750 Forints and the tram directly outside took us to one of the main squares from where we walked most of the day. A healthy person could easily become a sugar comotose mess here; there are more pastry shops than there are restaurants. Each of them have similar versions of all of the basics, so it is vexing why one would choose one over the other. Checking hotels and restaurants for the book, we allowed ourselves to take in some sites too. We found architecture, which I had web researched for the last edition, but had not seen in person. Stunning!! Szeged is lovely in parts, but it is spread wider than Eger, so to get from interesting point A to interesting point B is not as compact. Being a Saturday, everything was closed by 1:00 pm, even the little convenience stores that we rely on in Budapest for when the grocery stores close for the day. Interesting! Also, we were hard pressed to find a hotel in the heart of downtown, with one exception, but its looks were so unappealing from the lobby view, I could not bear to walk in to offer a reader recommendation. They will have to deal with the two that I have. The weather was congenial. Not a drop of rain fell from the sky, though I did pack an umbrella, which I would have shared with Ron had the need arose. All in all, we had a delightful and productive day, home again lickety split by 10:00 pm.

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Eger Busted

Michael and I were at the train station in plenty of time to catch the train to Eger; I had bought the tickets the day before with Balazs's aid. When we looked at the departure board, there was no train to Eger listed, including the sub-stations that the train would travel to. I saw the town Fuzesabonyleaving from track 3 and since it was on our ticket along with Eger, we went to track three. Now at Keleti station, there are guards who only allow ticketed passengers through. No problem, we had tickets. When I confirmed with her that Eger was track three, she said no, track eight. Okay, we went to track eight, but first I looked at the departure and arrival sheets that are behind thick plastic making them as readable as a newspaper in a sand storm. Eger 8. She was correct, but I checked again with the ticket inspector on this side, who pointed to the train on track eight and waved us through. Nestled into our seats, the train left on the minute it was scheduled. Impressive indeed. Fifteen minutes into the ride, Michael gets up to go to the bathroom, runs into the conductor who wants to see his ticket causing Michael to make an immediate about face. We are on the train to Romania. What the f(&*? We are told to get off at Szolnok, a town I had never heard of and had no desire to learn about. It took over an hour to get there, but that did not end the trials and tribulations. We had options to return to Budapest and then go to Eger again or we could go to Hatvan, change trains, go to Fuzesabony and then on to Eger. The latter choice would get us there at 3:30 pm, while the other would land us in at 5:32 pm. It turned out that additional tickets would cost us 1,220 Huf each with my teacher discount and with his student discount. I paid mine, received my ticket, looked to Michael who was not reaching for any money only to be floored when he said "I am sorry, but I am not putting out any more money for tickets." IF I had thought fast enough, I should have said, "You are right, good-bye", but I did not want a scene after this hassle and paid it. Though I have to say I fumed for hours, which he did not notice or at least respond to. The train station is about a mile from the center. What were they thinking? We rushed through the city, the TourInform was long closed, but I did manage to find three nice hotels in the center for the book. We found two restaurants and the city is much lovelier than I had remembered. We were running late to get back to the train station for the 7:34 train, which if we missed it, we would have to wait until after 10:00 pm for the last train. We bought our tickets, but the woman clerk told us we needed seat reservations for one portion of the trip. She did not however, sell them to us, escaping my attention. When the female conductor came for our tickets, she asked for our reservations that we were not in possession of and then started screaming at the top of her lungs. She asked our cabin mates if they spoke English and the poor man said he spoke a little while trying to explain why she was upset. We tried telling him that the clerk did not charge us for or give us reservation tickets. He and the woman in our cabin started calmly speaking to the conductor, but she went berserk. We really thought she had lost it. She then disappeared and returned with a young man whose English was quite good, who explained she wanted us to pay 890 Huf for a seat reservation on the spot. Fine, we did. Then I said she had not given me my ticket back. Her hysteria escalated to the point I thought she was going to stroke out in front of us. As it turned out, I had stuck it in my wallet in the confusion. When I discovered it, she burst into tears, crying without abandon and continued her tirade the whole time. When she finally abandoned us, the gentleman told us that he and the woman sitting with us were trying to get her to by-pass the reservation fees, since we were misinformed, hence her theatrics. We finally arrived in Budapest at 9:40 pm.

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Eger or Bust

I finally pinned down Michael to join me on a sojourn to Eger, a town I need to research for my book. It was up in the air between Eger and Szeged, since I have to do both anyway. He thought if we went to Szeged, he would be able to take a jaunt over the border to Romania to have his passport stamped. His student Visa runs out on June 22nd, so he has to leave the country and reenter on a tourist Visa. Szeged and Romania look like a short distance on the map, but getting from Point A to Point B is as convenient as preparing Baked Alaska on a campfire. First you have to go to northeastern Hungary, a two hour train ride, and then go to the Romanian border, another four hours. Now he is left searching other options, but he committed to the day's trip. Eger is only two hours away, but we will have to fly around once we get there. The TourInform office closes at 1:00 pm on Saturdays; please, please do not let the train be late. With the Google Latitudes map in the right panel of this blog, you can check my whereabouts as I move around. If it ever seems like it never leaves Akacfa utca, you know I am home plugging away at some work task.

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