European Vacation 2006

1st Stop - Budapest

For the Love of Money
I hate to disappoint you, but I have my money, my documentation, and I have experienced little in the way of drama my first three days on vacation. If that’s not what you came to read, I would come back next week. No, this vacation has definitely started off slow.

Of course you can't expect much from my first evening. I met my cousin Adam and my father at the airport. They picked me up, and we proceeded directly to our hotel, the Gellert. This is the same place I stayed last year - I encourage you to see some of the photos I took. It's an historical hotel with a lot of charm. Once checked in, we had a couple cocktails, caught up a bit, (my father translated as necessary) and I retired.

Not more than an hour after I landed, my father informed me he wanted to explore a business opportunity in Hungary. I listened - it involved developing land, and I have to admit it sounded interesting. Of course, the next 2 days revolved around meeting attorneys and other related parties. In the end, the legal barriers erected by the government in the last few years have made it unattractive for foreigners. Of course the exploration culminated in meeting an attorney, who immediately after informing us about the legal hurdles, launched into trying to sell us his beachfront property in Hungary's equivalent of Arizona. After that I truly was on vacation.

That's not to say we just spoke about business. We managed to hang out in various cafes and restaurants around the city. I spent some time with Adam and my father, which really is why I came to Budapest in the first place.

Road Trip
Within a couple days, I was going stir crazy. I suggested taking a road trip. My father had been thinking about visiting my grandfather's home town. My grandfather, Bill Stern, passed away a few weeks ago, and my dad decided to see his father's childhood best friend. So Thursday we would spend the day in Kosice, Slovakia.

I'd heard the story many times - My grandfather, a hungarian who left Budapest during the 1956 revolt, didn't grow up in Hungary's capital. In fact, he grew up in a border town that became part of Czechoslovakia after the Great Powers redrew the European map in the years following World War II. I never dreamed I would visit it.

I woke up Thursday morning at 5:00am so we could catch the 6:15 train to the border of Hungary and Slovakia. The train ride was nice - I read 150 pages of my book. At about 10am we got there, and we had no idea what to do next. Neither of us speaks Slovak, and he had no idea where to go. So I grabbed a map, and he called Frank.

Frank was my grandfather's best friend. They played soccer together in Kosice and remained friends through the next 70 odd years. My dad and I spent a couple hours visiting and looking through old pictures, mostly of Frank but some of my Apu. It was nice - and it made Frank and my father really happy.

After we had seen each photo about 3 times (Frank couldn't remember which ones we looked at), we set off for the old city. Within 5 minutes of being in Slovakia, I determined that there were a lot of similarities between their language and Russian. Their words for numbers are identical, and I found a lot of other words that are similar. It helped a bit, because we met few people that spoke either Hungarian or English.

My Expectations
I truly didn't expect such a beautiful city. I really thought this place was gonna be a small farm town with the equivalent of a general store. I was happily surprised to find a relatively large old city center, complete with a gothic era Catholic Church. And not some tiny little non-descript church either. My father, being the good hungarian he is, knew that one of Hungary's "founding fathers" was interned under the church. So to pay our respects, we paid the fee and went down to his crypt. A powerful historical figure, he battled the Habsburg Empire for the independence of Hungary. His crypt contained 4 ornate coffins, draped in Hungary's colors.

After touring the church, we found an outdoor cafe where we could have lunch. My father has no recent experience being in a place where he can't communicate. Of course the menu was in Slovak, and the waitress only spoke one foreign language - German. So we picked lunch like any respectable foreigners, we pointed a something about midway down the menu.

To our surprise it was a Chinese restaurant. Who would knowingly have Chinese food in Slovakia? It wasn't bad - and the beer was even better. Lunch cost about $10. We walked around a bit and eventually made our way to the train station for our trip home.

My Idea of Vacation
Today will be a completely different kind of day. Last year I made a great impression on one of Adam's good friends Zoltan (I know). We spent a day inebriated on Margaret's Island, and I guess he wants a repeat this year. While my father visits with a childhood friend today, I plan to start drinking early. So I suggest reading next week's newsletter to find out if we manage to stay out of jail.

posted by Adam Stern @ 12:38 AM