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Europe, March-April 1998 Budapest, Hungary On the overnight train from Venice to Budapest, we passed through Croatia and Slovenia. Usually, in Western Europe, the train conductor takes the passports and tickets of the passengers in couchettes and deals with the immigration officers at each border, allowing the passengers to continue to sleep, undisturbed. At each border crossing in the former "Eastern Bloc", armed guards would board the train and go down the aisles, pounding on the doors and screaming, "PASSPORT CONTROL, PASSPORT CONTROL!" and basically scare the shit out of the sleeping passengers. The first time it happened, Casey was a bit groggy and slow in opening the door. I was yelling at him to hurry up and open the door so they wouldn't have an excuse to knock down the door and shoot us with their handy Uzi's. Between Venice and Budapest, passport control happened about 5 times. Yeesh! Talk about a sleepless night! Once we actually got into Budapest, the high living began. We went to stay with our friend Kata, who was watching the apartment of her friend, Ken Frost, better known as Frosty. (I had met Frosty on my previous tour, but he doesn't make an appearance in this particular story.) Frosty's flat had an extra bedroom and we were installed therein for the next week or so. Kata was in Budapest on a Fullbright scholarship. Our first action was to go and get money out of an ATM, having spent the last of our cash on sandwiches between Spain and France. This is where it gets a bit complicated. While we were there, the exchange rate was roughly 200 forint to the dollar. Casey, operating the foreign ATM or just suffering from a bit of stage fright, was supposed to take out 2000 forint, at that time, a good bit of money for just a few days. Instead, he took out 20,000 forint, and since we weren't paying for lodging, that was really a LOT of money! We would have lost a bit of money in the exchange if we tried to turn the cash back into some other currency, so our motto became, "Do whatever, buy whatever, drink whatever, eat whatever! We MUST spend this money!" Every morning, our ritual was to go to the Cafe Muvez across the street from the Opera House for breakfast. This venerable old establishment was one of the oldest cafes in the city and much of the old-world charm was visible, albeit from under a thick veneer of cigarette residue. Silk cloth papered the walls, yellow with tar and nicotine and large silvered glass mirrors bloomed with age spots. The decor inside was all gilt and white (yellow) silk. Really quite beautiful, if a bit sad that it had faded so. Kata and I would each order a cappuccino and two pogatcha (flaky cheese scones) to start, followed by the same again. Casey at first started with the cap and biscuit, but then moved on to the formidable cake and sweets counter instead. We realized that there was no limit on our spending and therefore no limit to our diet. So one morning, he started with the most likely looking cakes and then went on to ice cream sundaes. The locals thought he was crazy, but amusing. Every day was punctuated by our meals. We went on a mad spree of breakfasting, luncheoning, afternoon tea, followed by drinks and then dinner. My two favorite places was St. Jupat's off of Moskvar Terr. and Fâtal, close to the public market. Fâtal had the greatest fried Camembert plate, with plum preserves and fried apple rings, as well as my favorite duck confit on a bed of svekedli (caramelized cabbage with egg noodles). The noodles were nice and crisp on the bottom from frying in duck fat. Yum! The other place St. Jupat's has a great story behind it. In the late 80's, a team of Hungarian sailors returned home after competing in on of the great Cup races, I'm not sure which one. They arrived rather late at night, and having been rather home sick, wanted to just go out and have a good Hungarian meal. But because this was shortly after the fall of communism, the city's habits were still to close early, so the sailors were out of luck. Out of the disappointment of their first night home, these sailors put together their resources and opened up a restaurant that served large portions of delicious, hearty Hungarian fare and was open 24 hours a day. No other Hungarian sailor would arrive home and go hungry in the middle of the night. The food there was good. Meat and potatoes, mainly, but inexpensive and genuinely sailor-size portions. Casey's favorite place, was, of all things, a bar. Sixtus or Sistine Chapel, was a small place near the university that served dinner. There was only one kind of dinner every night, and it was always vegetarian, but it was wholesome and very tasty. All you would say to the bartender was that you needed dinner and then how many. I think between the three of us, we had about four dinners. An Irish woman in need of some extra cash cooked it up every day, the plate changed every day and it was sold out every day. Sixtus was also the place where I tasted my first palinka. Normally it is a type of brandy distilled from plums, but one of the Fullbright scholars we were with, ordered a round for all of us and had me try the pear palinka. It was icy cold, but went down like a trail of fire. Whew! Most of the time we were in town, we went around with Fullbrighters and their various friends visiting from back home. Time has erased most of their names from my memory, I am ashamed to say, but some still linger... The FABULOUS Raphael, the barrel- chested Polish modern-dancer with his model girlfriend and an amazing ability to score spliffs. Mark, the filmmaker who may or may not ever come back to the U.S. Wardell, who worked for the X-Games and we saw once in L.A. shortly after coming back. The girl with the bottom half of the villa. Johnny and his fiance who were just trying to get married but had to slash through some horrendous red tape... Then there was Bolash, the Hungarian filmmaking hanger-on of all of these American kids... Every night there were new entertainments, a giant party sponsored by a local radio station (we had to wade through a downpour and dodge the street-car ticket police because some of us were traveling gratis), a foreign-foreign film festival, Johnny's one-man act, followed by the crazy fashion show upstairs where we had really good mushroom palacintas (crepes). To thank Kata and all of her friends for their hospitality, I decided to cook a giant Chinese dinner. We spent one whole day getting ingredients, chopping at the public market. I remember Casey helping me roll the green-onion pancakes we passed around as appetizers. I made nine dishes that night and as each group of people left, someone would ask me how I made the cabbage. THE CABBAGE!!! It was just stir-fried with a little garlic and salt. THAT'S IT! I spent all day shopping and cooking, all of the labor that went into the meal and it came down to the most insignificant dish, the one that I included because I thought we needed something without meat... (sigh). Raphael was the only person that commented on something else, he liked my braised beef shank... We brought some of that and the rice to Kata's grandma and great-aunt. Later on, we passed by to see how they were doing and she told me that she liked the beef, but that it was very unusual. She asked me what did I use to flavor the beef and I told her, ginger and star anise. She nodded her head and said that it would never occur to her to use those flavorings in something savory and then closed the door on us. A couple of nights later, we were on the train to Krakow. Thus begins the four night epic train-hopping journey.
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