My Excellent Hungarian Adventure
Or, "Airports I have Known"
Getting There
Itinerary:
Aberdeen > Amsterdam Schipol.
Lunch at Schipol
Amsterdam Schipol > Budapest
Car to hotel
Dinner
Being There. Pictures!
The Fisherman's Bastion. If you like your Gothic Neo this is the Bastion for you! No fishermen, or, indeed, fish, were in evidence, but with turrets like that, who cares?
And the inside. The whole thing was very reminiscent of the set for The Singing Ringing Tree, but perhaps that's just some terrifying repressed memory rising up from the hideous depths of my subconscious
The Hungarian Parliament, from the Castle District across the Danube. Another minimalist, understated building...
A funky church, on the not-so-blue Danube, with the various cabin cruisers on their way up to Vienna and stuff. Watching one of these lengthy vessels do a complete pirouette in the middle of the river was highly entertaining.
Matthias Church in the Castle District, on the hilly Buda side of the city. There is no castle. There was, but then some invaders knocked it down. So they rebuilt it. And then some more invaders came and knocked it down. So they rebuilt it again. After the fifth set of invaders, they sensibly decided to put a sock in the whole rebuilding thing.
The Opera House, where The Husband, A and I went to see Der Rosenkavelier, despite being pre-warned by D that "... it goes on a bit." Which it did. For four and half hours. And, of course, it's in German, so we didn't understand a word. Fortunately, there were sub-titles. Unfortunately, they were in Hungarian. I fear nothing, now - nothing, I tell you!!
We had a box. A box! O, the decadance! The sheer upper-middle-classness of it all! Apart from the Royal Box, these were the best seats in the house, and the tickets were all of thirty-four quid. You could get a seat up in the Gods for 50p. I fear we shall not enjoy such luxuries under Call-Me-Dave's governance. (the seats, it has to be said, were not entirely comfortable. particularly not for four-and-a-half-hours, but the two gin-and-wine intervals did help)
A Hungarian with a bird at the Fisherman's wossit. Yep, I'm getting those post-traumatic Singing-Ringing-Tree flashbacks again... (which is grossly unfair to the Hungarians, since it was the Germans who were responsible for TSRT)
A Hungarian container. I shall give this one to A-the-boss, for his collection of Container Porn. (yes, he does indeed have such a thing, named exactly that. He is a very sad man indeed.)
Home again, Home again, Jiggity Jig
Bracing, early morning argument between S and Hotel Management re charge for dinner and drinks on S's bill from the previous night when S was out with the rest of us at a completely different restaurant some miles away.
Car to airport. Cheerful discussion as to whether brown liquid served at Coffee bar is coffee, tea or brown hot water. Security, bag x-raying machine and all that. Board plane to Schipol. Served "ham" sandwich which "...contains poultry-meat."
Land with just enough time to make connection from Schipol to Aberdeen, because what with this being the magic EU, all we have to do is get off one plane, walk to next gate and get on other plane, but wait - what is this you say? The American Government have shot some Germans and need a bit of a distraction, but instead of just shouting "Oh look, The Winged Victory of Samothrace" like any normal person would they yell "TURRISTS!" and before you can say "Didn't Hungary Used To Be In The Eastern Bloc" we're informed that the disembarking tube thingy isn't working properly (so much so that they have to have a stern-faced member of staff and a barrier to prevent us from checking for ourselves) and we're decanted into a bus and sent off for nice ride around the airport before being offloaded at a different gate with a couple of hundred other people and twenty minutes to make our connection. Y halo thar bag x-raying machine again!
Bye bye Aberdeen connection. We are informed our flights will be rebooked and we should go to Passenger-Taunting 2. At Passenger-Taunting 2, the electronic queing system isn't working and there are seven of us in our party. There is considerable confusion. Eventually, we are seen by an incredibly cheerful Dutch bloke who says, incredibly cheerfully:
"How would you like to go to Paris?"
Everyone in our party laughs cheerfully, because they didn't miss a connecting flight just last month and end up spending the night in a godawful hotel near Heathrow. I, however, did, so I turn to The Husband with my best Furious Face and say:
"He is not serious?"
He is serious. We are going to Paris.
But not yet. Four-and-a-half hours to kill. So, lunch at Schipol again. In case anyone is ever stranded in Schipol for a few hours, it does have a very nice seafood and wine bar. It's not cheap, but The Husband respects the Furious Face and knows he has to do something, and a futile-yet-expensive gesture seems his best option. There is sushi and smoked salmon and stuff. And a couple of glasses of nice Chablis, and then because we still have a couple of hours to kill, there is a trip to the bar where there a not-so-nice red wine and, bizarrely enough, a posse of men in kilts (turns out there's some footie match on in Prague), and then we board the plane and discover that the Cheerful Dutch Bloke has sprinkled us all randomly throughout the plane, between people who thought they were getting an empty seat beside them and are Not Pleased, so I do the only sensible thing and stick my earphones in, play SOAD very loudly and have some more wine.
Land at Paris with yet another tight connection to make, and the gate miles away. Oh, hello again bag x-ray machine, how lovely to see you again! How's the wife? Good! And your sister? Exellent! Yes, those are the same boots you saw last time... Same computer too. Then we sprint...well, walk... well hobble in some cases - bear in mind that we are all over 50, and at least two of our number have dodgy knees and walking sticks - as fast as we can to the departure gate where we discover that the flight is delayed by an hour. I do the only sensible thing and have some more wine.
Charles de Gaulle airport is v.large, and the Aberdeen flight is small and insignificant, so the plane is parked approximately in Belgium. It takes twenty minutes to get there by bus. It is now about nine or ten at night, I am not sure which. We get
on the plane and discover that the Cheerful Dutch Bloke has scattered us randomly, but the plane is half empty so we rearrange ourselves to our likeing and I have some more wine. I think. At least the wine on Air France is decent, with not a trace of poultry-meat.
We land in Aberdeen at about 11pm, having left the hotel at 8.00 am, but I'm not sure these are the same time zones. Our luggage is still in Amsterdam. I tell The Husband that I am never, ever getting on a plane again as long as I live.
But apart from that, it was lovely!
Post Script: Our cases turned up the next day with Paris stickers on them. I hope they had a nice time there!
Getting There
Itinerary:
Aberdeen > Amsterdam Schipol.
Lunch at Schipol
Amsterdam Schipol > Budapest
Car to hotel
Dinner
Being There. Pictures!
The Fisherman's Bastion. If you like your Gothic Neo this is the Bastion for you! No fishermen, or, indeed, fish, were in evidence, but with turrets like that, who cares?
And the inside. The whole thing was very reminiscent of the set for The Singing Ringing Tree, but perhaps that's just some terrifying repressed memory rising up from the hideous depths of my subconscious
The Hungarian Parliament, from the Castle District across the Danube. Another minimalist, understated building...
A funky church, on the not-so-blue Danube, with the various cabin cruisers on their way up to Vienna and stuff. Watching one of these lengthy vessels do a complete pirouette in the middle of the river was highly entertaining.
Matthias Church in the Castle District, on the hilly Buda side of the city. There is no castle. There was, but then some invaders knocked it down. So they rebuilt it. And then some more invaders came and knocked it down. So they rebuilt it again. After the fifth set of invaders, they sensibly decided to put a sock in the whole rebuilding thing.
The Opera House, where The Husband, A and I went to see Der Rosenkavelier, despite being pre-warned by D that "... it goes on a bit." Which it did. For four and half hours. And, of course, it's in German, so we didn't understand a word. Fortunately, there were sub-titles. Unfortunately, they were in Hungarian. I fear nothing, now - nothing, I tell you!!
We had a box. A box! O, the decadance! The sheer upper-middle-classness of it all! Apart from the Royal Box, these were the best seats in the house, and the tickets were all of thirty-four quid. You could get a seat up in the Gods for 50p. I fear we shall not enjoy such luxuries under Call-Me-Dave's governance. (the seats, it has to be said, were not entirely comfortable. particularly not for four-and-a-half-hours, but the two gin-and-wine intervals did help)
A Hungarian with a bird at the Fisherman's wossit. Yep, I'm getting those post-traumatic Singing-Ringing-Tree flashbacks again... (which is grossly unfair to the Hungarians, since it was the Germans who were responsible for TSRT)
A Hungarian container. I shall give this one to A-the-boss, for his collection of Container Porn. (yes, he does indeed have such a thing, named exactly that. He is a very sad man indeed.)
Home again, Home again, Jiggity Jig
Bracing, early morning argument between S and Hotel Management re charge for dinner and drinks on S's bill from the previous night when S was out with the rest of us at a completely different restaurant some miles away.
Car to airport. Cheerful discussion as to whether brown liquid served at Coffee bar is coffee, tea or brown hot water. Security, bag x-raying machine and all that. Board plane to Schipol. Served "ham" sandwich which "...contains poultry-meat."
Land with just enough time to make connection from Schipol to Aberdeen, because what with this being the magic EU, all we have to do is get off one plane, walk to next gate and get on other plane, but wait - what is this you say? The American Government have shot some Germans and need a bit of a distraction, but instead of just shouting "Oh look, The Winged Victory of Samothrace" like any normal person would they yell "TURRISTS!" and before you can say "Didn't Hungary Used To Be In The Eastern Bloc" we're informed that the disembarking tube thingy isn't working properly (so much so that they have to have a stern-faced member of staff and a barrier to prevent us from checking for ourselves) and we're decanted into a bus and sent off for nice ride around the airport before being offloaded at a different gate with a couple of hundred other people and twenty minutes to make our connection. Y halo thar bag x-raying machine again!
Bye bye Aberdeen connection. We are informed our flights will be rebooked and we should go to Passenger-Taunting 2. At Passenger-Taunting 2, the electronic queing system isn't working and there are seven of us in our party. There is considerable confusion. Eventually, we are seen by an incredibly cheerful Dutch bloke who says, incredibly cheerfully:
"How would you like to go to Paris?"
Everyone in our party laughs cheerfully, because they didn't miss a connecting flight just last month and end up spending the night in a godawful hotel near Heathrow. I, however, did, so I turn to The Husband with my best Furious Face and say:
"He is not serious?"
He is serious. We are going to Paris.
But not yet. Four-and-a-half hours to kill. So, lunch at Schipol again. In case anyone is ever stranded in Schipol for a few hours, it does have a very nice seafood and wine bar. It's not cheap, but The Husband respects the Furious Face and knows he has to do something, and a futile-yet-expensive gesture seems his best option. There is sushi and smoked salmon and stuff. And a couple of glasses of nice Chablis, and then because we still have a couple of hours to kill, there is a trip to the bar where there a not-so-nice red wine and, bizarrely enough, a posse of men in kilts (turns out there's some footie match on in Prague), and then we board the plane and discover that the Cheerful Dutch Bloke has sprinkled us all randomly throughout the plane, between people who thought they were getting an empty seat beside them and are Not Pleased, so I do the only sensible thing and stick my earphones in, play SOAD very loudly and have some more wine.
Land at Paris with yet another tight connection to make, and the gate miles away. Oh, hello again bag x-ray machine, how lovely to see you again! How's the wife? Good! And your sister? Exellent! Yes, those are the same boots you saw last time... Same computer too. Then we sprint...well, walk... well hobble in some cases - bear in mind that we are all over 50, and at least two of our number have dodgy knees and walking sticks - as fast as we can to the departure gate where we discover that the flight is delayed by an hour. I do the only sensible thing and have some more wine.
Charles de Gaulle airport is v.large, and the Aberdeen flight is small and insignificant, so the plane is parked approximately in Belgium. It takes twenty minutes to get there by bus. It is now about nine or ten at night, I am not sure which. We get
on the plane and discover that the Cheerful Dutch Bloke has scattered us randomly, but the plane is half empty so we rearrange ourselves to our likeing and I have some more wine. I think. At least the wine on Air France is decent, with not a trace of poultry-meat.
We land in Aberdeen at about 11pm, having left the hotel at 8.00 am, but I'm not sure these are the same time zones. Our luggage is still in Amsterdam. I tell The Husband that I am never, ever getting on a plane again as long as I live.
But apart from that, it was lovely!
Post Script: Our cases turned up the next day with Paris stickers on them. I hope they had a nice time there!