The Morning After

The morning of my escape, proved fruitful for my soul. To be honest, my body tingled with anticipation about the adventures which awaited me, as well as the one I had just escaped. Ask anyone who loves to travel and most will tell you that the best part comes not from the planned activities or the tourist visits, but from those unplanned, serendipitous moments - either alone or with others - that conspire to treat those involved with once in a lifetime moments, insights, and memories. For me, my mouth still smirked about my previous night - with the naked fruit eater - while I wandered the streets of Budapest with my backpack hanging off my left shoulder. Although I had no need or desire to stay with him any longer, I certainly found the entire situation so amazingly like something only I would manifest, that I simply had to accept it as something purposeful and necessary. The smile I wore explained to the world, that I was content with my circumstances - lost, alone, and sweaty with a heavy backpack on my shoulder in a foreign city with no place to crash for the next nine days. Existential crisis be damned - I knew in this moment that I was alive and my journey real. I had no idea where to go, expect of course away from the place I had just deserted. A few blocks down Jozsef krt I found a hole in the ground, actually a metro entrance, which invited me down. I entered the earth to find a soviet era metro station, complete with a few very minimal tobacco shops which in addition to cigarettes, sold an interesting variety of pastries and drinks. After considering the map I had taken from the "guest house" I realized I had no idea where to go to find new accommodations. The stench of urine and trash blew through the underground, and at 7 AM without food or even a drink of water, it sort of overwhelmed me into abandoning the metro option for safer ground and air above land. Once outside again, I recovered my sense of direction enough to move toward the River Danube - a place I had viewed in movies, travel magazines, the Amazing Race, and in books from my Hungarian neighbor back in Los Angeles. At least I believed that area to be beautiful and probably more like the Budapest I thought I would be visiting. This turned out to be quite a brilliant move. Slowly, the buildings and surroundings began to take new form. My eyes filled with architectural beauty and my senses soared, overcome by the city that too was waking up with me as I walked the streets. It was an odd mix of government cleaners and workers doing matainence work and city beautification activities, shop keepers pulling back the metal gates, people heading to work by foot and car, and a sprinkling of club-goers making their way home from the bars (which that night I discovered stay open until 5 or 6 in the morning - and these are NOT afterhours bars, just regular places). I continued walking along the Danube River on Rakpart (a road that changes names several times along the river), and could not help myself from locking my gaze across the river from the Pest side (where I was) to the Buda side over the water. The pictures on the website and the books I had viewed prior to my arrival, absolutely did not capture the glorious vision of the hillside structures - the Buda Castle, the National Gallery, statues, churches, and countless idealic homes. I fell instantly in love with the city of Budapest at about 7:35 AM on August 21, 2009! I have a feeling it is going to be a life-time love affair.