Turning lemons into lemonade.

Day-tripper.

Do you ever have one of those days where you get one curve ball after another, and you just spend all your time trying to deflect them? That used to happen to me a lot at work. I would come in, expecting a normal quiet day, and then all of a sudden the phone would start ringing, the emails coming in, everyone by my desk. I didn't have time to stress out, I just reacted and then wondered at the end of the day how it all worked out. Same sort of thing happened today. Today's curve balls included:

Waking up at 4am and not being able to fall back asleep.

Heading to the train station at 5:45am only to find that my train to Budapest was 90 minutes delayed. How do trains get delayed at 5:45 am?

Buying a ticket for the 7:09 am train only to realize that this one is going to Budapest but to the Nyugati train station. My connecting train is at the Keleti station.

Sitting in a hot train car with a woman who will not stop speaking I can't understand what you are saying! And it is 7 in the morning, for Pete's sake!

Arriving in Budapest and trying to figure out how to take the Metro to the other train station. Buy the wrong ticket and have to buy another.

Getting off-balanced with my heavy bag by the crazy, fast-moving escalators.

Dealing with shoulder aches due to my heavy bag. Why is it so much heavier today? Adjusted straps. Felt better.

Trying to explain the Eurail pass to the ticket counter woman. I purchased a pass back in the States to travel by train through Hungary, Austria and Germany. I have to validate it before I use it. They had no idea what I am talking about. Had to find someone who did.

Finding something to eat at the train station that doesn't scare me. Go into a shop with sketchy characters who are going shots of alcohol at 11:30 am. No, thanks. My other choices are gyros or massive football sized sandwiches packed with meat. I go with the gyro.

Getting into Pecs, a small artists town in southern Hungary and rather than walking around, spending my first hour doing all my laundry in the sink because I have no clean clothes.

Going out to dinner where these two men won't stop staring at me. Have you never seen a woman eating alone at a restaurant before? After I paid the waiter, I looked in my book about what to do about tip, and they said that I should give the tip as I am paying, and that Hungarians think leaving tips at the table are stupid and rude. There are no waiters around, the men won't stop staring at me, I am getting nervous, so I left the money on the table and ran out of there. Whatever.

Walking around town around 7 to find everything closed. I came back to my narrow hotel room that smells of cigarettes (not mine) and laundry detergent (all me) and watched bad Euro videos on VH1 because I don't understand anything else.

Say what? And I thought Polish was hard.



Budapest's Keleti train station: filled with a strange assortment of characters and food choices.


My insanely narrow hotel room/laundry room.

Pretty! First impressions of Pecs.