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So, Mister and Missus have become house sitters. Today we moved into somebody elses house to look after somebody else’s cats. Somebody else’s we barely know and met, really, just the one time. To some, it may seem like an odd thing to do, but when we were asked by a mutual friend whether we’d be interested I discovered the whole thing wasn’t as foreign as I’d imagined. In fact, there’s a whole industry out there bringing home owners and potential sitters together, particularly when it comes to the minding of pets. And that part I can understand, as I couldn’t imagine putting Miss Tilly into a doggy hotel no matter how convincing their sales pitch. She wouldn’t speak to me again, I’m sure of it.
Anyway, back to us. For the next month we’re sleeping in someone elses bed, showering in their…well, shower, and watching their pay tv. And guess what? There’s a whole channel dedicated to foodie type programming! I’m set then, so. Poor Mister Emmet.
I’m interested in the type of people who partake in this house sitting business. For us, this is a whole new experience. I’m already longing for our own home as I look around at things I would change or move around, but haven’t the power to. I don’t think I could do it as a long term thing, and moving from place to place, with no control over your immediate surrounds, well, I reckon that would drive me batty. But people do. They travel from place to place on the basis of where a home needs to be sat, work locally and then move on to the next place. Some are young, and apparently many are grey nomads. Hmmmm. Anyway, it’s all new to me, but something I might look into.
Oh, and there’s a cat on the pay tv box blocking the receiver…looks like we’re stuck on the food channel then. Bugger.
Before we returned to Australia from Ireland my then brand-new husband Mister Emmet and I went to Hungary, well, specifically, Budapest. In fact we got stuck there, for a short while, due to that never-again-to-be-mentioned Icelandic volcano.
Hungary is integral to who I am, but it took me to actually go there, some twenty-seven years after my birth, and over fifty years since my family left their Eastern European homeland for the greener pastures and calmer waters of Australia, to realise just how much I needed to explore that part of my heritage.
My family, well, my maternal grandparents and my mother, arrived in Australia in 1956 after fleeing the policies and practices of the Soviets and the violence of the Revolution. I most regret that I didn’t have the opportunity to talk about my Grandfather’s experience before he passed away. That said, I was all of nine years old when he died. My grandmother has since developed rose coloured glasses when she speaks of her life in the old country. I believe some of what she tells me, but I know that she and her many siblings lived a poor upbringing in the countryside, somewhere. They, my grandparents, also lived for a time in Budapest, and this is where we went in April, shortly after we married, and in the company of my mum.
Since coming home my Nagymama, my mum’s mum, has been cooking for us once a week. So, I’ve decided that there’s no better way to learn about my heritage than through my passion for food. Now Nagymama is cooking for us twice a week! But the second time, at the weekend, I’m helping. And learning!
And shortly, so too will you, as I plan to pass on the recipes she is teaching me, so that you too can come to appreciate the joy of Hungarian cooking! It’s not for the faint hearted though. Eastern European is built on starch, oils, fats and spices. And plenty of meat. And one helping is never enough. Eat more…no seriously, eat more.
….cont.
Monday 19 April 2010: I’m woken by Emmet reacting to a dream. It’s an abrupt awakening, but after a satisfying nights sleep I’m not fussed. Outside is the hum of people biking and boating their way to work. The clothes I washed in the hotel sink the night before have dried on the radiator. Emmet and I pack the bag before deciding to stay another night in our hotel. We’ve learnt from experience that we’re unlikely to be able to book any mode of transport out of the city for the same day, so plan on another night of comfort before we’re back sleeping in our seats. We trek back to the library but not before stopping off to have a pancake and omelette for breakfast. At the library I spend time Googling transport options while Emmet emails all and sundry to let them know we’re stuck but okay. I manage to coordinate three buses, one from Amsterdam to Brussels through the Dutch Eurolines website, one from Brussels to London through the Belgian Eurolines website, and the final leg from London to ol’ Dublin town through the UK version of the Eurolines website. With no direct route available, this was our only option. Emmet handed over his credit card as his is in Euros, mine is in Aussie dollars, and I made the bookings. Emmet runs back and forth between me, the printer, and the print voucher machine until we have all of our tickets in our hot little hands. It takes a few hours to coordinate, but when we’re done we can spend the afternoon relaxing in Amsterdam.
We walk down some shopping streets as Emmet has wrecked his jeans around the ankles. He wears jeans almost every day so it’s no wonder they die quite horrific deaths. He tries on a pair and we take them. He also has a look for some shoes but the prices are quite high and we can’t seem to find anything decent on sale. Never mind. We stop in at a Waterstones and pick up some reading material for the onward journey. I get a colourful magazine as I can’t read on buses without getting a headache. Emmet gets something far more intellectual. We both get a left over Easter egg on sale at the counter. We wander through the streets and along the canals until we’re back at the hotel. We prepare ourselves an in-room picnic and eat sandwiches, cheese and salad. Emmet drinks a beer he has been lusting after for some time. It tastes like chocolate. We check the news and hear that airports may begin opening from tomorrow. I hear the sound of what might be a plane and Emmet opens the window. The plane! At least another three follow it before we fall asleep.
Tuesday 20 April 2010: Back in our travel outfits – trackies, t-shirts, cardigans and coats – we load up the backpack with supplies and head on over to Amsterdam Amstel for our 12.30pm bus to Brussels. The woman at the desk tells us there’s an earlier bus and offers us a seat, which we take. She also informs us that she had a number of spaces on a bus to London this morning. Bugger! When we arrived in Amsterdam there was quite a crowd, and anticipating the same today we had opted for booking online rather than just arriving at the ticket office to see what services were going in our direction. Never mind. We get on the bus and leave Amsterdam behind us. There’s a fellow on the bus who seems to be stoned. He’s making nervous movements that are making me a little nervous too. He keeps taking to the driver and seems to have trouble operating the toilet door. Soon he relaxes into his seat and we’re half way to where we need to be. The driver has his own issues going on as he follows the GPS a little too faithfully and takes us to a pedestrian street with an overpass his bus is too big to pass under. He puts the bus into reverse and sends a passenger out to make sure the road is clear. It’s anything but. We have to negotiate trams, bikes and less than impressed Mercedes drivers, none of whom care to be inconvenienced for the few minutes it would take our driver to turn around. Eventually he’s out of the tight squeeze and we’re off again.
We arrive in Brussels and check with the Eurolines desk to see if there is an earlier bus to London. Ours is scheduled to leave at 10.45pm. It’s around 4pm when we arrive in Brussels. It appears not. We walk into town and grab a bite to eat in a shopping mall. Brussels is not my favourite place, although Emmet has a soft spot for it. We buy the newspaper and read up on all we have been missing without access to English news. Emmet buys some comfy, and less smelly, shoes and I consider purchasing a radio for the next leg but opt not to.
Emmet calls home from the train station before we head back to the Eurolines waiting room. It begins to fill with people and we’re glad we have a ticket. There’s a rush to join the queue when it hits 9.30pm. A young lass has an epileptic episode and is taken away in an ambulance. Fortunately she makes it back in time to take her bus home. We are checked on bus number 12, which is one of the latter buses to leave even though it was the first to be allocated. We get seats together and the journey continues, but not before some hiccups with passengers leaving their luggage on the footpath expecting someone to place it in the hold rather than doing it themselves! Six or seven buses left Brussels bound for London that evening. All full.
Wednesday 21 April 2010: It’s dark and I’m tired. There’s not much to be seen on the way to the ferry in Calais other than other buses and trucks passing us by in the same direction. Emmet is watching, excited and curious as to whether we’ll be taking a ferry or going via the Channel Tunnel. We’re headed for the ferry. We get off the bus briefly for a passport check by both French and UK authorities. The French guards are a little intimidating. I’m shaking like a leaf from the cold hoping it doesn’t make me look too suspicious in from of the man holding my passport. The British lady on the other side was much more upbeat for someone working at 1 in the morning. We board the ferry and have to stay awake for the duration of sail. Tea is welcomed, as are some Lindt chocolates Emmet had picked up in Brussels. The sea is dark. There’s nothing to see. We get back on the bus and drive along the Dover coast until we pick up the road into London.
The stop-start of London’s ample red lights wakes us both. A wave of joy passes over me, quickly followed by the dread of having to wait 12 hours for our connecting bus to Dublin. I’m too tired for anymore of this. The five hours to Brussels, the five hours waiting time and the seven hours to London have taken it out of me and I get the shakes from exhaustion. When we arrive at London the bus station is full of lost souls. It’s difficult to tell the difference between stranded travellers and the homeless. The toilets are locked, which does not please me as I’ve been holding it for quite some time. We arrive ten minutes ahead of the scheduled check-in time for the next bus to Dublin, leaving at 6am. We wait. Emmet jumps in the line and hands over his ticket to the lady, who subsequently hands him our boarding cards. I’m pleased and have a new-found burst of adrenalin keeping me upright. Emmet worries that the Eurolines lady hasn’t read his ticket properly and not seen that it’s actually for the 6pm bus. He rejoins the queue to make sure we’re not taking the place of someone else on the bus. We’re not, so we take our seats and wait to depart. The driver allows eight additional passengers to board. They’ve been in the bus station a while now waiting as stand-by passengers. I’m glad to see them join the bus. Within twenty minutes of boarding we’re bound for Dublin and I am happy that our homeward journey is now some 12 hours from coming to an end.
I’m not envious of the couple in front of us having a blue. They’re going to be spending the next 12 hours together and she’s totally ignoring his pleas. A random Irish lass boards the bus and begs the girl in front for a sip of her water. She’s perished, apparently. She remains obnoxious for the remainder of the journey. Thankfully Emmet and I are far enough away from her to listen in without having to enter into any direct contact. Somewhere along the way she mentions how lucky we are to have been trapped in such ‘civilised’ countries. I’m not sure what she means by that but feel I should be either ashamed or embarrassed on behalf of someone. This journey’s discomfort is also physical. It’s the tightest of all the buses so far. It’s also the coldest. A woman in front of us complains to the driver who turns up the air conditioning after a short pit stop. We’re in Watford. I think. It’s soon too hot on the bus as the sun beats down through clear skies and the massive bus windows. The whole journey there has been nothing but sunshine and I wonder how far up this ash cloud is supposed to be if there’s absolutely no sign of it from the ground. My suspicions are confirmed as my Irish companions begin to melt…the Irish don’t cope well with heat. The same woman who asked for the temperature to be raised asks for it to be turned back down again. The air conditioning is stuck. The driver can’t pull over as the bus too is stuck, in traffic. There’s only just enough time to get to the ferry before it leaves so we make do with random bursts of cool air and slowly warming bottles of water.
The English countryside is glorious in the sunshine. The contrasting green fields and blue sky are stunning. Wales too. Especially around the coastline. Spring is truly in the air, with the leaves of the trees breaking through and flowers blooming. I entertain my inner child and announce ‘sheeps’ and ‘cows’ as we travel along. There are youngsters and mothers hanging out in every species. Soon enough we’re an hour from the ferry’s scheduled departure time. 40kms to go. Wait, no, it’s 40 miles! Damn it, there’s no town nor port in sight! It’s a photo finish but we make it in time to be waved on board, minutes before the ferry pulls away. We’re so close!
The inscription on my wedding ring reads ‘…and yes I said yes I will Yes’, quoting Molly Bloom’s soliloquy from James Joyce’s Ulysses. Emmet’s has it too. And that day, Wednesday 21 April 2010, the Ulysses brought us home to Dublin.
On 15 April 2010, my new husband and I were due to fly back to Dublin from a brief sojourn in Budapest. That didn’t happen. As with thousands of others, our flight was cancelled due to an episode of force majeure caused by the unpronounceable Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland. At 6pm on Wednesday 21 April we finally returned to Irish soil, but not without enduring some six days of heavy Googling for spaces on trains, busses or ferries and a good 44 hours on the road. Here is how we got home courtesy of the lovely people of Eurolines.
Thursday 15 April 2010: Arrive at Budapest Airport to find that Aer Lingus flight EI 679 has been cancelled. Having been in a virtual news vacuum, we have no idea why. The woman at the desk tells us the next Aer Lingus flight is a week away. We cancel and head to the Malev desk where one woman is sitting behind the counter dealing with a growing queue of stranded passengers. A man in the line is whingeing about ‘only needing to pay for excess baggage’. He’s not even flying Malev, but is rushed to the front of the line and accompanied by another staff member to his flight. She laments that he should have arrived on time and observed the baggage restrictions. He appears to have little concern for those of us who have already been in the line, and should be ahead of him, for some time. The Jewish lady (this is how she identified herself) behind us in the line tells us all about her day spent in Budapest…we’ve already been there three days and seen everything she talks about. She is just passing through. The young blonde in front of us is trying to get to Helsinki. She makes the last flight, but is confused by the mixed messages her airline is sending. We get to the front of the line and I’m about to burst a blood vessel due to stress. The girl at the desk says there’s a flight to Berlin that will close in 15 minutes, in that time we’d have to get to the gate in Terminal A, we’re currently in Terminal B. We decline and thank her. She’s stressed, we’re stressed, but she did her best.
We take a taxi to the train station to see if there may be a way out from there. It’s now raining. The woman at the station’s travel desk says there’s a train to Munich, but she can’t check us in at that time. The train isn’t scheduled to leave for another two and a half hours, so we’re not sure why we couldn’t be checked in. The woman is clearly sweating and struggling with her English. She too tries. There are many other people stranded at the station. We decide to try and find a hotel as it’s getting late, and no one gets anywhere when they’re too stressed to think straight. We wander over to the Best Western Hungaria and check in. Emmet and I leave Mum and Eileen to rest and head back to the information desk at the train station to see if anything is available tomorrow. There are some trains leaving for Germany, but most have upwards of four changes. I can’t justify that with Mum and Eileen and their bags. Running between connections is not a goer. We head over to MacDonald’s to use their free wifi. Still nothing. Maybe the bus? A couple of Quarter Pounders later and we head back to the room for a night of highly disrupted sleep.
Friday 16 April 2010: Awake from 5am. I try to take a shower quietly so as not to wake Emmet, but I manage to dislocate the shower head and it crashes into the bath. I eventually get my shower, but now Emmet is awake. We ponder what to do before collecting the ladies for breakfast. They too have been up since the crack of dawn, if not before. We decide that it’s probably best to have the day free for finding a route out and book an extra night at the Hungaria. Emmet and I take the Metro to the bus station, where the Eurolines girl is able to offer us four tickets to Amsterdam leaving the following afternoon. Nothing else is available for days. From what we can see, no additional services have been scheduled as yet. We take the four tickets to Amsterdam, which will see us arrive some 22 hours later, on Sunday afternoon. The challenge is now to see whether we can get Mum and Eileen to Paris to connect with their Trafalgar tour, which is due to leave London on Sunday. They won’t make London, but Paris is a chance. We go back to the hotel, but not before making an emergency stop for clean undies and socks, and tell the ladies we have a way out. Emmet is all cuddles and moral support as I try desperately to find a way to get from Amsterdam to Paris on Sunday evening. I manage to get half way through a booking with Thalys, the high-speed train linking the two cities. The hotel’s internet browser shuts down halfway through. It’s available, and I need to book the seats. My Mum needs to get to see Venice. We head to the train station to look for an internet cafe. It’s seedy. It doesn’t work out – for the better in the long run as who knows how secure those computers were! The four of us walk into town, to three travel agents, none of whom can help us. Two don’t do train tickets. One can’t sell us a ticket for a journey beginning and ending outside of the state. We go to a second internet cafe where, finally, the ticket is booked! And printed on a printer that allegedly hasn’t worked for days. A sigh of relief. At least the ladies get to their tour. As for Emmet and me? We book a hotel in Amsterdam, knowing full well we’re going to need somewhere to lie down after 22 hours on a bus.
Saturday 17 April 2010: Packed, checked out and with a backpack full of ham and cheese bread rolls, apples and water we board the Eurolines bus and wave goodbye to Budapest. Being on the bus is somewhat of a relief, but I’m already worried about the next leg for Emmet and me. I’m also concerned that we haven’t been able to print out the tickets Mum and Eileen need to take their train. We watch as the scenery changes around us between Hungary and Austria. I enjoy the site of wind farms along the way. To me they’re like dancers. In Austria we stop in Vienna. The bus station is packed. There are people wanting desperately to get on a bus and go just about anywhere, but preferably London. A strange fellow gets off our bus and onto one going to London. He seems to have been confused in Budapest and boarded the wrong bus. He had insisted on putting his seat right back into Eileen’s lap so we were glad to see him go. Whether he found his bus, I don’t know. The fumes in the bus station gave Emmet a headache. I was already popping pills trying to avoid a migraine. Drive on, driver.
Sunday 18 April 2010: Where are we? What time is it? Is it Euros here? Overnight we experience Europe via its truckstop restaurants and toilets. There are some very clean ones, let me tell you. There are also some in need of a good clean. Fortunately I picked up some wet wipes before we left Budapest. We stop on the border between Austria and Germany and hand our passports over to the immigration patrol. Our bus is cleared, but the one in front is not. Four passengers are hauled off into a small bungalow beside the motorway. The fellow is handcuffed, but still allowed to stand in the doorway for a cigarette. He is accompanied by three young women. One is pregnant. There are dramatic stories being told. I cannot hear them, but I can see arms flailing and desperate gestures. We drive on.
Following a number of power naps and constant readjustments in seating positions we eventually reach Amsterdam, where the weather is glorious. We take the train into the city proper and leave the ladies with the bags while Emmet and I run over to the library. It is the most spectacular library I have ever seen, and features some 200+ computers for use by patrons, free of charge! We log on and print off the tickets for Mum and Eileen. It’s sitting here I realise how smelly I am from spending 22 hours on a badly air-conditioned bus. I desperately need a shower. My hair feels horrible and my face is covered with a thin layer of grease. We run back to the train station and get the ladies in a taxi to the airport – the trains aren’t running from the central station today, as there’s track work taking place. They go. They text from the station. They make their connection.
Emmet and I get lost. The free map from the tourist information lady is close to useless as only random streets are named. We walk through the red light district, on the opposite side of town from where we should be. Emmet doesn’t like it. He encourages me not to look left and right. His head is down and his eyes focused forward. I look up as I hear tapping on one of the many windows lining the street. I see two women standing in adjacent windows. One is in worse physical shape than I am, falling out of the skimpy bikini she is ‘wearing’. The other looks as though she is well and truly dependent on some sort of illegal injection. She does not look well, thin and a pale yellow colour not caused by the window’s lighting. She has dark circles under her eyes and her hair is thin. I only saw her for a few seconds, but her ghostly image has stuck in my mind. We walk on. Eventually finding another library where we’re pointed back in the right direction.
Sweet relief when we get back to the hotel, even though the room has a ceiling too low to allow Mister Emmet to stand upright. We shower. We’re clean. We dress in the clothes we bought in Budapest – they are all we have that is clean – and head out to find a proper meal, one not involving ham and cheese bread rolls, or takeaway suitable for in-transit consumption. And that night, we sleep.
….or so she thinks judging by this photograph!
