Thursday we got a message saying they would be working on the plumbing Friday and would we please not use the faucets or toilets from 8 AM – 3 PM?
Because we are North Americans who are always so happy and positive (according to the ticket taker at the museum yesterday), we responded with “No problem. We are going to Lake Balaton for the day.” Teaser: We weren’t.
So there was a little confusion at the outset because I didn’t listen to Nora closely enough when she told me she thought we needed to take a train. At least that’s how she would put it. I’d say I listened very closely but misunderstood. In any case…
We headed off on a trolley, which I thought might be what she meant by train. I mean, really, it runs on tracks and has more than one car hooked together. Sounds trainish to me, but maybe I just haven’t been properly trained. In any case…
Not only was it not a train, it was the wrong not train. Closely watching the GPS move us along the track, I caught it the moment it wasn’t going the direction I had predicted. However, rather than just get off, we went as far as the next stop, where it stopped. I mean stopped as in not going any further. That didn’t keep us from sitting on it for a long time wondering what would happen next, then finally getting off when nothing happened next.
I was just sure if we walked back to where the trolley went off the rails, so to speak, we could catch the right train. We did, and we didn’t. Instead we snagged a lovely older couple who didn’t do a very good job of hiding their amusement as they explained that the train we wanted wasn’t where we wanted it. We would have to go over there to the other trolley, take it two stops, go underground, catch the metro, take it two stops, and that’s where the train station was.
You already know that didn’t go according to plan, so I won’t dwell on it. We did get to the metro, but then I made the mistake of asking a promising blonde woman if she spoke English, and when she said no, I went ahead and asked her which way to the train station. She confidently pointed the wrong direction, so we went the wrong direction, which then sparked a lively conversation among three fellow passengers when I said the one word I knew in Hungarian, which was “Train Station?” except in Hungarian it’s one word.
The back and forth went on for a mile before one of the passengers said, “Maybe I could just speak English with you.” Yes, that would have been helpful to know, I thought but didn’t say. He told us the consensus was that we needed to get off at the next stop, get on the metro going the other direction, take it to the end of the line, and voila. We did. It worked. Voila.
Next stop, the ticket counter, where we learned that the next train would leave in 45 minutes and take an hour and a half to get there, which would be just about the precise moment when we’d need to head back home. We decided some other day would be perfect for going to the lake. Instead, we found a metro map that clearly showed which bus we should take back to the city center. 8 E. “E” is for express.
The route looked circuitous, but we decided it would be a good way to see more of the Buda side of things, so why not? We bought a delicious pastry from a bakery in the underground to make the whole trip worthwhile, then headed for bus 8E.
Let’s not get buried in the details. There were two whole fields of buses and trams and we chose the wrong one. A couple of confused ladies who only spoke Hungarian pointed us in the right direction, which is yet another reason why you shouldn’t trust directions given by people who have no idea what you’re talking about. We dutifully followed their pointed fingers across a long field of transportation where our bus wasn’t, and ended up asking an actual bus driver, whose broken English was confident that we were on the wrong side of the tracks, so to speak. If we would just go through that tunnel over there, we’d be all set.
The two fields of transport were connected by a long tunnel walkway where we were virtually alone and it was such a great place to rob someone that I thought of trying it myself. Except that Nora was the only one I saw and she was hanging onto her purse as if she had a fresh heart for a relative’s transplant in it. The graffiti didn’t inspire confidence.
Once out of the tunnel, we saw “8E” right there across the field waiting for us. We boarded and got a beautiful view of the hills of Buda and its clearly-better-off homes, including greenery. Pest has less greenery, it having been rooted out for endless blocks of concrete homes.
Once off the trolley, we spent an hour looking for lunch, then stopped at the main train station to get information on our way home. That’s a whole nother story that ended up going nowhere, but we did get another pastry to make it worth the trip.
There is a bright side to this story: we didn’t need to use the bathrooms at our apartment all day, and even if we didn’t go anywhere, whenever we had to go, we had a place.
There is another even brighter side: Wandering after getting off the bus, we happened on the Museum of Magic and Light. It’s not one of Budapest’s most famous attractions, but we dropped in to see what it was all about and weren’t disappointed. The whole place is a display of AI generated light shows and interactive exhibits where we could get our avatar made, walk across a room and watch the light patterns become waves around our feet, moving with each step, see brilliantly-colored pictures that morphed into fastasmic shapes, and more.
It wasn’t the lake, but it was magical.
