Night
Train to Hell (and Back)
- somewhere in Slovakia
When
we previously left off, we were leaving
Krakow,
Poland for Budapest. This
trip entails
traveling
across Slovakia en route to Hungary, and
that's
where the troubles began. Read
on for the
night
from hell.
We
are finally getting used to life on the road.
This
means
battling all of life's everyday distractions
on
the road. We are settling
into a rthymn. And what was a vacation has become a way of life.
Small, minor inconveniences
at home become amplified on the road.
Things
are harder to do. This
includes being sick.
Well,
sometime
towards
the end of our stay in Poland, the flowers
bloomed
and pollen was released en masse into the air
that we breathe. That's
when I begin sneezing
about
five hundred times a day and am stuffed up and
have
a sore throat and producing copious amounts of
phlegm. We boarded the night train and attempted
to
sleep perchance to dream. It
was not to be.
First,
we
settled ourselves into our train compartment.
Once
the
conductor came around, we were informed that our
SECOND
CLASS compartment was two cars over.
Dragging
our
scattered belongings, we managed to settle into a
nice
vinyl clad compartment with completely upright
seating
for eight and fell into a
restless sleep
punctuated
by my endless sniffing and sneezing.
Thank
god
for the roll of toilet paper I snagged from the
hotel.
In the middle of the night, shortly after
passing
through Slovakian border patrol, a new
conductor
came in looking for tickets. Well,
we said
the
prior conductor kept them, because we didn't have
them.
Unfortunately, he knew very little English.
Using
a map, he told us we needed to buy tickets for
the
trip across Slovakia. We
repeatedly tried to
tell
him that the tickets we bought in Poland should
have
covered the entire trip to Budapest but to no
avail.
For over an hour, this went back and forth.
Finally,
at our wits end, and threatened with being tossed
off
at the next train stop in the middle of the night,
we
just decided to buy whatever tickets he wanted us
to
buy. But when we tried to
pay in American dollars,
he
became extremely agitated. "NO,
SLOVAKIAN CROWNS."
Reasoning
with him, we came from Poland, therefore
we
could not possibly have any Slovakian money. Again,
it went back and forth and he mentioned the possibility of not being
allowed into Hungary. I went looking for help and enlisted the
aid of
a kind young man in the car next to me.
He spoke
a
bit of English, enough to understand our side and help us plead with the
conductor
for someway out of this, which he proceeded
to
do. Finally, after
exhaustive negotiations, our
new
friend said to us, no problem. We
just have to
wait. WAIT? So while we waited, we found out our new
friend
was a cook in the Slovakian army and that he
loved
the Chicago Bulls.
Finally,
we neared the
Hungarian
border, and the conductor came back once
more.
This time he wrote 45 on a sheet of paper.
We
immediately
produced 45 dollars, anxious to put the entire ordeal behind us and be
allowed to travel into Hungary. He
sat a
bit
looking
at the money and then counted off twenty, handed
back the rest and left our compartment never to
be
seen again. What an honest
guy...he could have pocketed the entire amount. He may have
felt bad for us, because
unaware
that I was so sick, he may have thought he
upset
me a great deal, with my bloodshot eyes tearing
up
often, and all my sniffling during our
conversations.
Well,
not more than five minutes after he left, we found
our tickets, which had been misplaced in all the confusion
of switching to second class. At
least we
did
not have to deal with it again in Hungary, and finally made
our way to Budapest, sleepless and still very
sick.
Once
we settled in at a hostel in Budapest, we made
our
way
to the local Aptika or pharmacy. Hungarians
love
their medicines. They have
all-night mini-mart like pharmacies everywhere
in the city and they are quite good. We
went
in and of course the lady behind the counter
spoke
no English. I pantomimed my
symptoms, pretending to sneeze
next
to the plant on her desk. She
quickly produced
a
tissue. OK, try again and finally she understood.
Allergies. She gave me some pills called Disophrol
with
all hungarian instructions. Then she pantomimed
that I should take one every twelve hours. And
I am sure that they are illegal in the US.
There
are
so many restrictions in the US, that over the
counter
drugs are useless, but here, they give you
anything.
Whatever it is, it works. And
I am once
again
well (as long as I stay on drugs.)
next
time: budapest (buda or pest? - you make the
call)
over
and out
ann-marie and doug
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