Hungary

I did it.

I went to Hungary!

I got up and caught the train to Arad. I waited in line, afraid I would miss the train. I got to the front and managed to buy my tickets. Here, they sell tickets by the kilometre, not by the destination. I was handed two 30 km tickets. Or something like that. It only cost 75,000 lei.

My friend met me at the station and we went to meet her friend who was driving us.

The ride was uneventful. I was smooshed in the back seat between two Romanian girls, but i miraculously was able to sleep. I woke up at the border.

Imagine my surprise discovering the car in front of us had an Ontario licence plate. The girls encouraged me to go up and introduce myself.

Me, being the dutiful Canadian, did just that.

I marched up to the car and caught the passenger's eye. I made the motion to roll down the window. She rolled her eyes and turned her head. I looked at the driver. He made eye contact and then stared off into space.

I was presentable. I didn't look like a vagrant. I was hurt. I tapped on the window and held up my finger to show I only wanted to speak with them a minute. The woman sighed, rolled her eyes again and opened the window a crack.

"Hi! I saw your Ontario licence plate. I'm from Canada too!"
"Ok"
"I'm from New Brunswick!"
"Ok"
"Are you guys from Ontario?"
"Yes"
"I'm living and working in Romania!"
"Ok"

These were not typical Canadians. They had accents so maybe they were transplanted Hungarians or something. I was a little hurt, but I trudged back to the car to retell my sad tale.

We got to Szeged and we girls went for a little walk downtown. Unfortunately, it was bitter cold so we stopped in almost every shop we saw just to get warm. One store, a craft store, had the fattest fish I had ever seen. I amused the workers (and probably embarassed my friends) by taking pictures of it.

The shopping in Szeged sucked. It was described to me as an oasis of good clothing with good prices. I hate the selection in Timisoara so I was so enthusiastic to go.

I guess dusty pink is the new black. I can't wear dusty pink. In fact, I can't wear most pinks. Everything was pink and lavender. My friends, who also can't wear pink, were disgusted.

We went to the grocery store. First we needed to eat something. This proved to be a hassle as everything was coated in grease. I ended up getting Greek food. Yes, I ate Greek food in Hungary. And it was good.

Then we went grocery shopping. This is one of my secret pleasures. We went to the electronics department first and they had hair straighteners. Halleluja! I could almost hear the angels singing in the background. Unfortunately, the lady wouldn't let me plug it in to test the heat, but I diligently carried it around with me. In another department, I found other hair straighteners. This place (Cora's) was heaven!

Speaking of heaven, we went to the dairy department. Dots, Dots and more Dots! Well, the Hungarian version. Chocolate, vanilla, fruit filling, nuts, they had it all. I bought one of every kind. They could barely tear me away from the displays.

I'm pretty used to Romanian supermarkets and I know enough Romanian to be able to read the signs in the aisles and the packaging instructions.

Hungarian is impossible. I read somewhere that some linguists put all the world's languages on a difficulty scale. English rated a five. Chinese was a seven. Finnish was a ten. Hungarian, being distantly related to Finnish, would probably also rate a ten. I learned one word: es (with a little accent thingie). It means "and". I'm proud to say I figured that word out myself.

Driving home was a little traumatic. We heard that there was a car accident and three people were killed on the road. We passed by the car and it was a mess. It didn't even look like a car. We waited for almost two hours at the border too. I've read that in Communist time, it could takea day or two to get from Romania to Hungary. My friend, who is Hungarian, said that when her family wanted to visit family in Hungary, they'd have to take food and blankets because they knew they were going to end up sleeping in the car.

Well, two hours is better than two days. We bought cheap liquor at the duty free shop. When we got to the control area, they had a poster with a picture of a man on it. It was in Italian, German and Romanian. Turns out they found his body and knew nothing about him, only that he probably came from South-East Europe. The picture was of his corpse. Yuck.

We got back safe and sound at 11:00 pm so we went straight to bed.