what are you famous for?
1:30am. thursday, june 20. so i'm at beth's flat in budapest, and i'm trying to access my blog account, and the damn thing keeps popping up in hungarian... not my blogs, but the menu system... "create blog" and "sign out" look like words from the original printing of the communist manifesto. the smart people at google have developed this thing that identifies what country your ip is registered to and modifies the default language they show you.
anyways... tomorrow, i think that beth and i are going to the market to pick up fresh fruits, then a stop to one of the infamous hungarian baths, a quick lunch at a local traditional hungarian restaurant, followed by a walk through the hungarian national museum. and then on friday, over to london to visit chris and celebrate the last weekend in europe.
chris, dan, and al: remember that shit that happened to us in the subway at prague? well guess what? beth and i got tagged for that shit again! this time here in happy budapest. for those not in the know... some european cities actually practice the honor system in paying for your public transportation. they expect you to buy your ticket and validate it as soon as you enter a bus, or right before you take the escalator down to the subway platforms. seriously, nine of ten times, you can get away with it.
but that one time (and now in beth and my case, two times) out of ten, there will be a line of "transit authorities" waiting at the bottom of the escalators to check your tickets. don't have one, get fined. forgot to validate, get fined. didn't know that you needed to get a transfer ticket to switch from the blue to the red line, get fined. and that's just what happened.
we didn't know that you needed to get a different ticket for such a line switch. in most other cities, you get some sort of time limit to use the ticket for transfer, but not budapest. i tried ignorance, acting confused and like i couldn't understand english. beth tried sympathy, using tears to hammer it home. neither technique worked. the penalty was 5000 forints each. i'll let you find the conversion to dollars. the best part of it is that we could've just walked instead of taken the transfer, but it was hotter than hell out there today.
do you read chris's blog? he has some good observations to tell you about. he's the translondon guy on the right. i hope this doesn't put pressure on him to write more often... oops. the reason i thought to mention it now, is that during various times on this trip, i've had great moments of self-introspection. i've been thinking a lot about what my purpose is...
in greece at this one restaurant in santorini, the waiter/host asked us a question that at first i thought was just something lost in translation, but later realized it to be maybe a little more profound than i had thought.
"what are you famous for?", he said. while beth answered him, i thought hard about what to tell him. i think i liked the question more than any answer that i could give. it sounds like a dumb question, but ask someone sometime, and see what they say. i think the answer will show you more than you think.
i think i would answer, "making people laugh."
then beth came up with what she felt was her new question to ask strangers... "where did you come from and where are you going?" she really got a kick out of it, so i thought i'd write it down to remember.
my attention deficit is kicking in. one last thing before i go to sleep. this following is a transcript of an actual conversation that beth and i had in prague...
BRIAN: "you know, there's a lot of polish people in chicago. i wonder why that is and i wonder if there are a lot of czech people too."
BETH: (matter of factly) "i know there's a lot of czech people."
BRIAN: (smug) "oh yeah?"
BETH: (completely serious) "yeah... ukranian village."
BRIAN: (sarcastic) "ukranian village? nice."
i think that beth and i have been in each other's company for a little too long. lol.
anyways... tomorrow, i think that beth and i are going to the market to pick up fresh fruits, then a stop to one of the infamous hungarian baths, a quick lunch at a local traditional hungarian restaurant, followed by a walk through the hungarian national museum. and then on friday, over to london to visit chris and celebrate the last weekend in europe.
chris, dan, and al: remember that shit that happened to us in the subway at prague? well guess what? beth and i got tagged for that shit again! this time here in happy budapest. for those not in the know... some european cities actually practice the honor system in paying for your public transportation. they expect you to buy your ticket and validate it as soon as you enter a bus, or right before you take the escalator down to the subway platforms. seriously, nine of ten times, you can get away with it.
but that one time (and now in beth and my case, two times) out of ten, there will be a line of "transit authorities" waiting at the bottom of the escalators to check your tickets. don't have one, get fined. forgot to validate, get fined. didn't know that you needed to get a transfer ticket to switch from the blue to the red line, get fined. and that's just what happened.
we didn't know that you needed to get a different ticket for such a line switch. in most other cities, you get some sort of time limit to use the ticket for transfer, but not budapest. i tried ignorance, acting confused and like i couldn't understand english. beth tried sympathy, using tears to hammer it home. neither technique worked. the penalty was 5000 forints each. i'll let you find the conversion to dollars. the best part of it is that we could've just walked instead of taken the transfer, but it was hotter than hell out there today.
do you read chris's blog? he has some good observations to tell you about. he's the translondon guy on the right. i hope this doesn't put pressure on him to write more often... oops. the reason i thought to mention it now, is that during various times on this trip, i've had great moments of self-introspection. i've been thinking a lot about what my purpose is...
in greece at this one restaurant in santorini, the waiter/host asked us a question that at first i thought was just something lost in translation, but later realized it to be maybe a little more profound than i had thought.
"what are you famous for?", he said. while beth answered him, i thought hard about what to tell him. i think i liked the question more than any answer that i could give. it sounds like a dumb question, but ask someone sometime, and see what they say. i think the answer will show you more than you think.
i think i would answer, "making people laugh."
then beth came up with what she felt was her new question to ask strangers... "where did you come from and where are you going?" she really got a kick out of it, so i thought i'd write it down to remember.
my attention deficit is kicking in. one last thing before i go to sleep. this following is a transcript of an actual conversation that beth and i had in prague...
BRIAN: "you know, there's a lot of polish people in chicago. i wonder why that is and i wonder if there are a lot of czech people too."
BETH: (matter of factly) "i know there's a lot of czech people."
BRIAN: (smug) "oh yeah?"
BETH: (completely serious) "yeah... ukranian village."
BRIAN: (sarcastic) "ukranian village? nice."
i think that beth and i have been in each other's company for a little too long. lol.
Comments
i hope you don't mind me borrowing that for me to use it as the "question of the day" at my next toastmasters meeting.