This past weekend I got back to my usual routine of weekends spent traveling and visiting other American teachers in various towns throughout Hungary. This weekend started out like the rest with a quick sprint to the train station to catch the earliest Friday afternoon train after school and ended with a long Sunday spent exhausted and hungover at train stations as I made the trek home- there was plenty of excitement in between however.
This week’s destination was a three town cluster due south of me near the Romanian border (watch out, that was foreshadowing!) these three towns, Szarvas, Gyula and Mezoberény are the new homes of three of the newest CETPers; Caley, Bridget and Arlo respectively.
On Friday I headed for Szarvas, which, though not all that far from me, turns out to be one of the most difficult towns to get to from Gyöngyös and involved me changing trains 5 times as I zig-zaged across the Great Hungarian Plain. Changing trains 5 times undoubtedly means that you will miss one of those connections- which I did. Normally missing a train late at night in a one road town called Újiszasz would mean trouble, but luckily for me Újiszasz is also home to John and Donna- two wonderful CETPers who took me in for a nice chat so I didn’t have to wait the hour and half in the less than inviting train station. Eventually I did make it to Szarvas and there I was greeted by Arlo, Emily, Caley, Laura, Ben and Eve. We spoke in English and had a few beers and at some point found ourselves as the evening entertainment for a local bar in Szarvas when they started playing ABBA on karaoke. Luckily we had plenty of fun dancing and singing so didn’t mind too much when it was time for bed and all 7 of us had to find a spot in Caley’s tiny single room apartment- just line them up on the floor like sardines!
The next morning we got up (relatively) early and ran to catch our bus to Gyula where we met up with Bridget. Bridget wasn’t our only reason for heading to Gyula however. That weekend Gyula and it’s famous castle were hosting the Hungarian Renaissance Festival! This festival was a lot like other festivals in Hungary, lots of tents selling beer and sausage and a stage where people play music and dance. This festival, however, was different in that people were also running around in full suits of armour! There were also fencing and whip demonstrations which some of us took part it (yes, in Hungary after they give you beer they give you a giant sword and tell you to hit your friends with it!) All in all a great festival- the highlight being a group of guys wearing tall brown furry hats with horns coming out the sides (á la the Flintstones) when we commented on how cool they were the men stopped to chat and it turned out one was even from my town! This only got more bizarre when they starting shouting-proudly- in English „We Republicans- we love Pat Buchanan!” so with a reluctant wave to the republicans int he Flintsone hats we moved on from the festival.
This is about when we realized that Gyula actually sits right on the Hungarian-Romanian border, in fact, we could probably walk there! These seemed like such a fantastic idea that Emily, Caley, Arlo and I took a look at the map (apparently not a great look!) and headed off to Romania! An hour or so later, after walking along the side of the highway through muddy fields and seeing no sign of anything, especially a border crossing, we gave up and found a bus back to Gyula only to have another look at the map which proved that, oops! We had actually taken the completely wrong road and walked in completely the wrong direction taking us halfway to Sarkad! So much for that (you wouldn’t think that it would be so difficult to find a national border on foot, and yet I seem to have failed at this twice now in the past few months! The other being the ordeal of crossing back into Slovenia from Italy.) Oh well, the plan for this weekend includes a possible trip to Aggtelek from Laura’s which sits on the Slovakian border- maybe we can give that one a go.
After we had re-grouped in Gyula (without a Romanian passport stamp for Caley) we started on our way to town number 3- Mezobereny, Arlo’s place. After arriving at the train station and finding a bar right out front we decided we should stop for a drink and a dance- all ignoring Arlo’s plea that we had a WAYS to go and we would never make it if we stopped at every bar- but we did eventually make it- after getting lost, taking the long way around and even getting pizza. Back at Arlo’s we again piled in to the tiny flat- sardine style (just be sure to get agreement from the other 4 people in bed if you want to turn over!) The next morning we all headed back to our own towns- exhausted and bruised from sword fights but pleased with another adventurous weekend.
For a more fantastical version of these events and other adventures of the CEPTERS check out Laura’s blog!
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