bogdi and tasha, international travel(l)ers (part 1)
tasha was here for the new year and left yesterday from budapest. So we decided to spend this past weekend in budapest, as part of our "each time we meet, let's see a different city" plan.
first, we went to the train station to get a ticket. Simple task, you may think. When we got there, we encoutered the strange people gathering that is the romanian queue, or line. Namely, there was one person on each side of the ticket window. I stood behind the one (a woman) who went to the window first, about two steps behind. A third guy comes and just barges between me and the woman at the window. I tap him on the shoulder and tell him I was on line. He has the gall to ask me why I was standing so far (two steps). I got annoyed and yelled at him 0;) something that came out totally wrong and likely recommended me as a looney, but which shut him up, so ha. Then the woman at the window tells me that we can't possibly get international tix from the train station. Woo. So we should go to the train agency. I asked her how late that was open, she didn't know. So we trek to the agency, which, wouldn't you know, was already closed, it being half after 4 (there was a sign on the door saying it closed at 4 between 4 and 11 of jan.). The fun thing was that there were people still working inside.
clearly, there was no way for us to leave that night (thursday), so we decided to come back earlier on friday. We went there around 1pm, and that was really good thinking now. First we stood on a short line, only to be told that international tickets were sold at a different window (there were only tiny signs adertising it, right at the windows). Ok, no big hassle. We stand in that line, and the woman tells us that indeed we can get tickets from there, but we need seat reservations from yet a third lady. She also tells me that round trip tickets are cheaper and suggests we get two round trips. Now tasha was leaving, so we didn't really need two round trips, but since it was cheaper we decide to go for it. Only I didn't realise that two round trips is one thing, and two round trip reserved seats is yet another thing. So we go to the other lady, tell her our order and she calls to book the seats. Now mind you, she did not have a computer to book, although the other ladies did have computers (with ze internet). Why she didn't is a mystery of the romanian transportation system.
she calls and it's busy. She suggest that we sit down and wait. We wait for about 20 min, finally the seats come in. When we go back to the other window, the lady says "wait, there are two seat reservations on the way back but you only needed one". There is a bit of a commotion, as the boss comes over, says they were sorry for the misunderstanding, while the lady who called for the seats says if she can't cancel one we have to pay extra (wooo!). Finally, it is solved, and about 1 1/2 hours later we leave with the tickets.
we leave later that night (after trying to make heads and tails of the cfr.ro aka, romanian railway transportation's website, which gives quite a few wrong times) on the not so fast but nice looking train to satu mare, which is the last "city" before the hungarian border. We get to satu mare and have to wait for about 1 1/2 hours for our connecting train, an inter city to budapest. It's cold outside, although not as cold as it could be (this should be the coldest time of the year), so we decide to wait in the waiting room.
now you should try to imagine the train station in satu mare as this building with way too tall ceilings and sloped roof, that has probably never been renovated since it was build in stalinist style sometimes in the 50s, with a main room with a few more or less closed cigarette shops and two waiting rooms reeking of pee, unwashed clothes and country side sweat. Moreover, the waiting room where we sat housed a few snoring or/and slumbering urchins, a guy with a fur hat with ears and a mirror, which he used to stare at others, and a rambling woman who kept everyone quiet with her angry tone. We sat down an did our su dokus, until a guy came over and started - in english! - a beggar's routine. He even asked which language we spoke, apparently being able to beg in german and dutch as well. Obviously, we're ready to join the EU. Our train was announced, even though it was scheduled to leave in about 30 min, so we gladly took off.
we thought we were all nice and snuggly in the more comfy (couch) seats of the hungarian inter city. Little did we know what was to come...
next stop was at the border, in the town of carei (incidentally, were my mom was born). The border police came over with some ladders and checked atop the train and other such things I didn't particularly pay attention too. On her way in, tasha saw them check under the seats, too. Anyway, guy comes over to check our passports. He takes mine, asks me where I am going, if I have a note from my parents, to which I reply I'm 27 (hello, he held my passport), and he goes "oh". Then he asks me if I have any money. That, to me, seemed like tmi, so I was like "uh, like 6 lei or so". He wanted to know if I had any euro. I said tasha had, and that we were together. He goes back with the passoports, returns after some time, gives back the other passports and insists that I get off the train. At this point I panicked a bit, so I asked whether tasha could come too. So we took our luggage and got off.
he took us to the border police's office, which was tiny and overheated and had the TV set to antenna 1, a romanian channel, which was playing doctor quinn, medicine woman, of all things. There were about 5 people in there. The one in charge was curious why I did not have a coming into the country stamp on my passport. I did have the landing stamp from budapest, the exit stamp from the hungarian border, yet no romanian stamp. He asked me through which point I had come in to the country. Wouldn't you know, I did not remember the name, which they did not seem to believe, so I just said something random. Bad move. Eventually, we figured out through which point I had come in, and they asked me why I first said something else. I went on saying I didn't pay attention, which to them seemed amazing. I said my dad was driving, I was off a 9 hour flight and a 6 hour road trip, did they think I was sharp at the time? Then they were "how come you didn't notice there was no stamp?" - well, because I couldn't care less, which I told them. It's not my business to make sure border control does their job properly.
they let the train go, much to my and tasha's chagrin. They were determined to find out the stamp mystery. This one guy had more sense than the rest and agreed with me, and was trying to tell them that the car border police likely forgot to stamp my passport, big woop. Obviously, if the hungarians stamped it, I had come in through that border point.
while they were waiting for confirmations on the fact that I had indeed, entered the country (hahaha! they asked me how did people at the passport office (I had to go there for a related business) know I had come into the country if I had no stamp and I said "well... cos I was in the room" ;) and also had hungarian stamps of the same day), while they were waiting, they were like "well, anyway, we still can't let you go, cos you haven't got 100 euros and you have to have 100 euros on you". I was like "she (tasha) has 100 euros and she also has a bank card and we have a hotel reservation, you know". It seemed very suspicious to them (or maybe they were just bored) that we were simply going to budapest for the weekend. They were like "no, YOU have to have 100 euros, somebody else can't have them for you". And tasha said "ok, I'll hand her 100 euros". They were like "actually, you need 150 euros, cos even if it's 30 euros per day the amount you need to have, we always go for the 5 days amount, even if you stay one day".
at this point the "whatever" factor had replaced panic with me, while tasha was very annoyed (especially since all this was going on in romanian - and, did you know, border police does not speak english, not one of them did - so I would give her the gist of the discussion while it was happening). So I said "ok, we'll go to an ATM, get the money and come back, ok?" Well, no, cos apparently it was 3am and the one ATM in town "works only one day a week, and that certainly is not saturday morning". I shit you not, that's what they said. I'm sure I had the best look on my face, and it was my amusement to translate this to tasha. Plus, they realised, we needed euros, and the ATM gives only local currency, so we need a bank, and banks aren't open on saturdys, even if we waited until morning.
I also had to write a memo about whatever happened between me getting into the country and then. They asked me a couple of times if I had left the country in between those dates. I tried to point out that if I had tried, somebody would have dealt with the stamp issue earlier. The guy who took my passport in the train asked mefor no particular reason why I had said to him that I had gotten into the country through the same border point as tasha did (they had asked me a few times if we had come in together, which was silly, since tasha's stamp, the earliest one, was of about 2 weeks after my hungarian ones). I told the guy I did not say such a thing, since he did not ask me anything about that in the train. Then they finally got the confirmation that it was a border police mistake, and they - magically - also decided to let us go, provided tasha showed them that she had 100 euros on her - cos bank cards don't seem to factor in here... The guy in charge apologized, and got us both coffees at the local classy joint (with the morning drunks, ahoy) and then shipped us on this red engine thing, that brought us into hungary as sunrise. Much to my amusement, I noticed that they stamped my passport jan. 7, 2005 :D so now you know how organised the romanian borders are.
then we saw a flock (or a bunch etc.) of deer, running down the fields.
you can imagine that what with the hullaballoo, we were way behind schedule. So when we got into mateszalka, which is the equivalent of satu mare on the hungarian side, we saw that we had a 4 hour wait until the next inter city. The woman at the window was speaking romanian, and she said that we'd need new seat reservations on the inter city. Again, we asked if there was an ATM, and she said "it's saturday morning! they don't work". I don't think the principle of the ATM has gotten through in this part of the world ;) tasha wanted to go explore, and woot! she found the ATM and it was fine and dandy and spitting money, too. Miracle of science, I tell you. Anyway, we decided to take the slow train to debrecen (where we could catch our link to budapest), just cos we only had to wait for it for about an hour, and being on the slow train is better than not moving at all.
the slow train looked ancient, but thankfully was pretty empty. Still, did it go slow! we stopped into every little hungarian village. At last we got into debrecen, where we had to wait for about 45 min or an hour for the inter city. I got into a silly argument with an urchin, he speaking hungarian and me speaking english. By that point I was so tired that somehow the easiest thing was to comment on the architectural merits of the train station building, which looks like a gothic cathedral-meets-stalinist concert venue (house of culture, literally), with these large russian constructivist murals on each side, depicting peasants with horses - surely the concept was something about integrating hungarian history with (then) modern directions. Beyond the style and subject, the murals weren't bad.
eventually our train got in and we boarded it and off we went. It was almost full, with people coming from vacation spots, judging by the few carrying skis (in hungary? ;) it's rather flat). I got to sleep a bit, snuggled on tasha's shoulder. So yea, I have the best girlfriend ;) I forgot to mention that the border police wanted not to inconvenience her, and kept trying her she was free to leave (me behind). So I'm not sure if they got the fact that she was my girlfriend, or just friend, although, either way, what friend would just leave you behind?
finally, after having taken 5 trains, we got into budapest about 5 hours later than we should have, at the keleti train station, which methinks is modelled after paris' gare du nord (and once mom thought it must've been the budapest opera house, since it's rather centrally located and all ;)). From there, after tracking a bit from the end of the train, we jumped into the first taxi and went to take a shower at the hotel.
