Milan, Hungary Trip: Part Two

We landed in Budapest without incident and Eszter and I separated. Even though she would be meeting me the next morning at the Budaörs office just west of Budapest, she was going back to Debrecen by train and driving out the next morning with her boss, my Hungarian counterpart Donat. Deprived of a rare traveling companion, I caught a cab over to the west side of Budapest, crossing the Danube (called the Duna in Hungary) and getting to the little suburb known as Budaörs (pronounced bew-dah-uhrsh but you say the uhrsh real quickly). That reminds me, it’s time for a quick lesson in all fourteen Hungarian vowels which I kind of managed to finally, in what I think was my ninth trip there, to learn. Follow along:

á – ah as in ‘pahk the cah in Hahrvahd yahrd’
a – au as in Paul (this one is realllll difficult)
e – eh as in egg
é – ay as in may. Yeah, that throws me too but at least it’s easy to pronounce
i – ee as in fee
í – shoot, I forget how to pronounce this
o – oh as in oreo
ó – oh but not you have to somehow say it faster than just ‘o’
ő - I can’t even write this because the sound doesn’t exist in English. It’s like a cross between ‘ew’ and - ‘ugh’.
ö – like ő but shorter. Somehow I can pronounce all of the ‘o’s properly though
u – ooh
ú – u but shorter. Tough but at least it’s easy to remember the rule
ű - very much like ȍ except that your mouth is open more but more narrowly. Really weird, I know
ü – you guessed it...like ű but shorter

So a word like köszönjük drives me insane but I can at least make a good attempt at pronouncing it. I feel so accomplished. Next up: two word sentences!!

I checked into my little panzió (which you guys might remember means pension), the Vargaház (or Varga House). I love staying in little hotels and this one, basically an extension of someone’s two story house, didn’t disappoint. It really felt like staying in someone’s house which I love.

I didn’t have a map of Budaörs but luckily it is surrounded by hills so I felt confident of being able to walk around for a while and find my way back. The temperature was in the low 30s all day and the sun was nowhere to be seen: perfect conditions for a walk! I immediately set out for a tall hill just above the town that had for some reason a little church on top. I still don’t know why there’s a little church on top because the sign up there was only written in Hungarian and German (apparently there are a lot of Germans living there).

I found my way back down the hill, wandered through a lot of nice little neighborhoods and, after three hours, got back to the hotel. I checked e-mail for a couple of hours and even had a videoconference with someone at work in Austin using Skype, then headed out to find dinner, specifically pizza. I actually knew where I was going, having seen the restaurant earlier in my wanderings. And lo and behold, it was lightly snowing!!!! I cannot tell you how fantastic it felt walking around in it as it was falling and accumulating on the ground. Budaörs is a quiet little suburb so there was very little traffic out, neither foot nor automobile. It was like I had the whole snowfall to myself. I loved every minute of it. Thankfully it was still cold enough for the snow to accumulate a little, maybe to about an inch. That was enough for me.

The next morning I walked about a mile and a half with my luggage to the Budaörs office. I was going to do it anyway but the snow on the ground, some of which was starting to melt, heightened my resolve. I met Eszter and Donat at the office, had a good visit and then drove back with them to Debrecen, where our factory and distribution center in the eastern part of the country is. It has snowed there too but it was almost all melted there as well. Too bad. Of course, the Hungarians were more than ready for spring to come. I had told Donat in December when Austin was getting its massive cold fronts that I wanted to experience a really cold winter in Hungary. His response: “Matt, go to a freezer, crawl inside and close the door. You’re crazy.” This was Thursday.
I had a good day at work on Friday then on Saturday Eszter and her boyfriend Imi, short for Imré (that’s ‘eem-ray’), drove me in a company car out to the caves at Aggtelek. It’s in the northern part of Hungary near the Slovakian border, about a three hour drive away from Debrecen. NI has several cars that employees can use for company business or for the use of visitors like me. I knew this but never considered actually using one myself before. I’m still not sure I would go drive one on my own. Not that I’m scared of Hungarian roads and drivers but that I’d have some problems in the event of an accident.
Anyway, Imi was driving and he did a good job though the GPS kept telling him to slow down in Hungarian. On the way we passed by a memorial to the fallen in the battle of Muhi (moo-hee) back in 1241 (1241!) when the Mongols overran the Hungarian forces. It wasn’t a memorial like a building but rather was a large mound of dirt covered with weeds and quite large wooden crosses. The mound was about 20-25 feet tall and had a pathway winding around it to the top. At the top was a large wooden cross with a wooden angel nailed to it. The angel was actually flying but facing the ground: a ‘fallen’ angel. It was a bit disturbing actually especially since it was near freezing outside and quite gray all around (I hadn’t seen the sun since the plane descended below the clouds into Budapest). Definitely the strangest battle monument I’d ever seen.

If you like military history, you can read about the battle here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mohi
By the time we got to Aggtelek the sun was out, yay! We were part of a rather small tour group consisting of us, our guide and a Hungarian couple in their 40s. I suppose the cold weather kept everyone away although in the cave the temperature would be a constant fifty degrees or so. Guess if I had a choice in scheduling I’d wait until summer to visit but I was thrilled to be anywhere outside of Debrecen that day. Even better was that instead of having to navigate my way through train stations and negotiate with disgruntled taxi drivers I was being taken care of by Eszter and Imi. It just makes being somewhere so much more enjoyable to be shown around by locals. This is why I make such a concerted effort to do the same thing for non-US visitors I work with when they come to Austin (it’s also an excuse to go do some things I enjoy and eat some good food, eh).

The caves at Aggtelek had something I hadn’t encountered before: an underground river, appropriately named the River Styx. The whole Aggtelek complex, designated a World Heritage Sight, actually runs for 25 miles along the river, beginning in Slovakia and crossing into Hungary. We would be walking for about two hours in the Hungarian section; I never found out the distance. The guide spoke in Hungarian and Eszter translated for me as she felt necessary. The guide was quite nice in that she sometimes waited until Eszter was finished translating before she continued on.
The cave had a concrete pathway along its length which made the walking pretty easy. The river was more of a little stream but occasionally the whole tunnel floods pretty badly during heavy rainstorms. You could see where stalactites had been knocked off the ceiling by floods and were now laying at weird angles like crushed matches.

After exiting the cave, we walked back to our car over the hill and through the woods, eh. It was nice to do a little hiking, the first time I’d done that in Hungary, and I was especially thrilled to encounter a frozen pond. Up until that point the largest body of water I’d ever seen frozen up close was my birdbath out back (I once saw the frozen St. Lawrence River but that was from an airplane). I wanted to run out on the ice so badly but figured that might be an easy way to see something else new: the inside of a Hungarian hospital. Still, I was excited just to walk out on the edges. It’s times like that when I pause to think whether it would be great to live someplace further north (nah).

We drove back to Debrecen only to continue on to the small town of Barand about 25 miles southwest of Debrecen to have a late dinner with Imi’s family at their house. We arrived at their house around 8pm and I was introduced to his mother, father and two brothers. The menu included fish soup from the mother’s hometown, fried fish with bones in it (I had a lot of fun picking them out...the family was very worried I was going to swallow one), some sort of mayonnaise slaw and some other things I don’t remember (I’m now writing this three weeks later, give me a break). After dinner, Imi and Eszter dropped me off at my hotel around 10:30 (poor Imi had to then drop off the car at NI, then drop off Eszter and then drive back home). It was a great Saturday though.
The next day I slept in then woke up to find that my internet, which hadn’t worked since Thursday night, was still not working. Sorry Péterfia Panzió, I love you and all but I can’t function without internet, particularly since I need it for work purposes and to skype with Jennifer. I checked out with the intention of staying at the Divinus, the 5-Star hotel just a ten minute walk up the road which all NI employees seem to stay at and that Donat thought I was crazy for not staying at. The ladies at the Péterfia seemed genuinely sad I was leaving but I explained to them in my atrocious Hungarian that I’d told them about the internet on Saturday morning and it still wasn’t fixed. I felt a little sad myself for leaving but oh well.
The Divinus is a very nice hotel but there’s nothing in the rooms that makes you think it’s 5-Stars. Maybe the fact that there is intentionally no shower curtain on the shower though the vent fan is running so well that when you finish the shower you don’t feel cold. I think the 5-Stars comes from the all amenities like the good breakfast buffet, spa and other stuff I didn’t use. In my opinion, you can’t be 5-Stars unless you have one of those Japanese toilets that does special stuff like talk to you.
At 11:30 I was in the little suburb of Józsa (yo-ja...the ‘j’ being like ‘g’ in Gillette) practicing with my buddy Misi’s Under-20 soccer team. It was in the mid-30s outside but they were still practicing. Misi let me borrow his cleats which made running around possible on the incredibly muddy field. I only participated in one drill (in which they played ultimate frisbee with the soccer ball and could only score with their heads) and then in a practice game (that worked out well because they needed a tenth person for the teams to be even). After that Misi and I played a game of pick-up basketball in the gym of his old school (I beat him 24-22 behind some miracle two-point shooting). Then we had an early dinner of ghoulash (called gulyás by the Hungarians) with his girlfriend. I watched the first half of a soccer game on TV with them and then caught a cab back to the hotel. I felt like I had been a real Hungarian that weekend; what a fabulous weekend! Maybe next time I’ll go to Romania, eh.
I worked at the office from Monday through Thursday. The only social highlights were playing volleyball with a bunch of NI employees in a high school gymnasium one evening and getting taken out to dinner by Donat, Eszter and Ildikó (the other person I indirectly supervise in Hungary) on Thursday night. The next morning I rode with Donat and two other NI employees to visit the Institute of Chemical Analysis in Budapest.
After the ICA visit Donat and the other two guys (Zsolt and Tibor) dropped me off at another panzió in Budapest as I was going to fly home in the morning. This panzió was one I’d been meaning to stay in for the past year and a half but never had the opportunity until then. It was called the Passzió Panzió and no I don’t know what Passzió means. I wanted to stay there because it seemed to be located in a nice residential neighborhood. My room was quite small, smelled a little like smoke and had no curtains on the window (allowing for someone in the building across the way to peek in if they wanted) but otherwise it served my purposes just fine.

I took a three hour stroll around the neighborhood and to the periphery of the Budapest city center before returning. I’d been to the city center several times before and had no desire to put up with the hustle and bustle; I wanted quiet. I was especially proud of finding the panzió on the return trip because my map only covered the city center, not the neighborhood where I was. I like challenges like that though.

The next morning it was off to the airport to fly home! First Frankfurt, then Philadelphia and then ending in Dallas. I had window seats the whole way, yay! I didn’t sleep the whole way but it’s usually easier not to sleep on the return trip since it’s daylight most of the way. I left Budapest around 9:30 in the morning and arrived in Dallas around 9:30 at night, making it about 22 hours of travel from door to door. The plane to Dallas had three soldiers on it, two of whom were welcomed by family members with large banners in the baggage claim. Made my reunion with Jennifer seem much tamer; I felt like clapping for the soldiers and was actually kind of moved.
The next day Jennifer, Graham, Maisy and I bid adieu to my in-laws and set out for home. It felt good to be back but there’s also a small part of you that misses the co-workers and friends you have overseas.
The next trip on the agenda is a four day jaunt to Phoenix for a conference; I’m working on that write-up now as well.

Milan, Hungary Trip: Part One

Holy crap I’m cramped. I’m sitting in seat 21A of US Airways flight 701 from Frankfurt to Philadelphia trying to finally type out a trip e-mail after fourteen days on the other side of the Atlantic. I had never really put much thought into how small a space you have in Economy Class on an airplane until my flight this morning from Budapest to Frankfort where I’d somehow scammed an exit row seat on Lufthansa. I measured the distance between the edge of my seat and the beginning of the next guy’s and it came about to the distance from my elbow to just past my wrist. I thought that was pretty good for planes until my seatmate, an American working for a metals factory somewhere in Northern Hungary, reminded me we were in an exit row and thus subject to extra room needed for evacuations. Now I’m not in an exit row and my knees look to be about three inches from the next seat. Do people taller than 6’2” get first dibs on the exit rows? Oh well, at least I’m pretty good about sitting still in a plane for long stretches.
Where to start? Well, it had been over seven months since I’d visited our manufacturing facility and distribution center in Debrecen, Hungary and I needed to visit the sales branch office in Italy to complete my super trifecta of the four largest European branches (UK, France, Germany and Italy being the final one). My counterpart in Hungary was able to finangle sending Eszter, one of the two Corporate Trade Compliance people there, to the Italian branch as well to learn the ropes of a sales branch visit, particularly for Europe. I was self-taught and didn’t want to make her go through that and plus in the long run I should be delegating those visits as well. I would say I’m the old salt passing on my infinite wisdom except that a) I’m only 32 and b) there’s not that much wisdom to pass down.
Speaking of age, I’m now old enough to realize that I’m not going to be able to do things forever. For example, I won’t always be able to carry a heavy backpack as my carry-on. At some point I’ll need to have a roller carry-on instead. Oh the mortality! And I won’t be able to wander around at will in random foreign cities for hours on end. Instead of finding my way around on foot I’ll have to start taking taxis! Hard beds will feel even worse on my back. The key though is whether I’ll still get to have my fairly carefree, ‘hey I’m going to try to learn X language and fit in’ attitude. I sometimes worry I’m going to be too high up the career ladder to keep my current travel attitude of staying in middle-brow hotels instead of the high end, of walking as much as possible, of eating cheap food (although I DID NOT eat any gyros on this trip) and trying really hard to learn at least how to pronounce words properly (it seems most visitors don’t try much, even the long-term visitors...and that’s their prerogative). I’m also getting to the age where my friends abroad are more likely to have families of their own and thus may be less likely to do things in the evening or on the weekend like out-of-town trips or soccer practice. Whatever. I WILL NOT LET OLD AGE STOP ME!!!!!
That also reminds me, I’m tired of seeing everyone else’s wife, kid and dog on the streets. I want to see my own. I’m coming Jennifer, Graham and Maisy!!! Though of course I can’t complain about it really since I’m not on, say, a one year deployment to Afghanistan or something.
So anyway, I was off to Italia! For the second time, Jennifer would be packing up our brood and heading on up I-35 to Dallas to spend the fifteen days (Saturday -> Saturday) with the grandparents. So really they’re the ones who come out like bandits from my foreign travel, eh. Thanks B and L!!!! You’re both szuper!! Plus with Jennifer being a stay-at-home mom I can call her in early evenings instead of waiting until 11 at night (Hungary and Italy are seven hours ahead). And through the magic of Skype, not only can I talk to her for free but I can videoconference! We’ve certainly come a long way from the days of my maternal grandfather spending six straight weeks on the road selling watches and having hardly any communication. Thanks Skype people!
Jennifer thought she had a commitment in Austin on the Saturday I was going to fly out (though it fell through) so I flew out of Austin that morning while she packed everybody up and drove to Dallas later in the day. My itinerary was Austin – Dallas (AUS-DFW) on American, then DFW to Philadelphia and then to Frankfurt on US Airways, finishing up with a jaunt over the Alps on Lufthansa to Milan. I was quite excited to be flying over the Alps but not excited to be flying through Frankfurt, the site of my saga of missed flights while trying to get back from a not-good business trip (for those who don’t remember, my flight from Budapest made me miss the first flight, I was on standby for a second flight to DFW but couldn’t get on and finally, just to get the heck out of Europe, flew to Boston and spent the night there...and oh yeah, I almost cried when I didn’t make the second DFW flight). American has a direct flight from DFW to Frankfurt but I was going to save the company $300 by flying through Philly via US Airways. It almost turned out to be a bad decision because our flight from DFW was quite late and I had a very short layover scheduled in Philly. Best part is that US Airways NEVER ANNOUNCED MY PLANE WAS LATE OR WHEN IT WAS GOING TO ARRIVE!!!!! Why does this peeve me so much? If I had known that it was going to be so late, I could maybe have made other arrangements to get to Milan with American, US Airways, Lufthansa or perhaps other Star Alliance partners. Instead, realizing about twenty minutes before the flight was supposed to leave that we hadn’t started boarding, I walked over to the window and saw there wasn’t even a plane at the gate. Great. I walked over to the desk and explained the situation. The lady told me the plane would arrive soon and I didn’t need to worry. I think her quote was “You’re only going from Terminal A to Terminal B. You’ll make it.” I had to press her for alternatives. Turned out if I missed the flight in Philly I’d be stuck there overnight. If I took a different flight out of Dallas, such as a direct to Frankfurt, I’d be stuck there too. Great. I decided to take my chances with the DFW-Philadelphia flight. The flight left maybe forty minutes late but I was able to make the Frankfurt flight in Philly, as the not-that-helpful US Airways lady had predicted.
The flight from Philadelphia to Frankfurt was uneventful though I was sad not to have an opportunity to grab a Philly cheesesteak in the airport. I intend to rectify that situation today though (unless I can somehow scam an earlier flight to Big D). The flight was only seven hours so I didn’t pop an Ambien. It worked out as I was only briefly super tired for maybe a half hour during the flight, then got my second wind. The flight from Frankfurt to Milan went right over the Alps which are simply magnificent. I so want to visit them at ground level.

Got into Milan needing to exchange my dollars for euros and find the Malpensa Express train (Malpensa is the name of the airport which I think in Spanish means ‘bad thought’). I got a bunch of Italian words from my mom and practiced some of them with an environmental engineer from Florence on the flight from Philadelphia including the following:

non parlo Italiano – I don’t speak Italian
si – yes
non (sounds like no) – no
buon giorno – good morning
buon pomeriggio – good afternoon
buona sera – good evening
buona note – good night
prego – you’re welcome
grazie – thank you
per favore – please

I was really looking forward to seeing how similar Italian and Spanish really are, having heard about the similiarities all these years. The answer is that they are but not quite enough for me to pretend to speak Italian. The good news though is that all the vowels sound the same though there are slight differences in some consonant pronunciation. It’s a cool-sounding language though.
Anyway, I took a train (the Malpensa Express) from the airport to Cadorna Station in Milan, then caught a cab to the hotel. I got a kick out of my cab driver, who spoke decent enough English, found out I spoke Spanish and asked me if I was from Spain. Ha! I’d never been mistaken for a Spaniard before. Usually I try to make people think I’m German or something by refusing to speak English though on this trip I’ve actually softened my stance on that a bit, preferring to converse in English if the alternative is not conversing at all.
The hotel was a converted Holiday Inn (the phones still said Holiday Inn on them) and was within a five minute walk of the NI office. I can’t say this enough: I love walking to work. I wish I could do it everyday. Of course, if I had to do it everyday maybe I’d get tired of it but I love doing it on trips. Despite the fact that the temperature hovered in the 30s and 40s the entire time I was there.
I threw down my stuff in the hotel, took a two hour nap until 1:00 and by 1:30 was out the door with a map of the city center in hand. I figured I had maybe a couple of miles to walk before getting there and actually I was so far out of the city center the area my hotel was wasn’t on the tourist map. I love walking challenges though and reveled in the fact I still got to the city center with no problems and was confident of finding my way back.
The part of Milan I started in didn’t feel that special but the city center was quite nice. It didn’t feel decrepit like parts of Budapest but it didn’t feel all nice and homey like Paris or Munich. You’ll see the photos. I knew I was close to the city center when the streets turned to cobblestones in places and I started seeing old churches. I found a war memorial for Italy’s war dead in World Wars I and II. Actually, it was more than a memorial, it was a round building built like a mauseleoum with three underground floors with the names of I suppose all of Milan’s war dead written on the walls. I was the only person there and it was really kind of awe-inspiring and thought-provoking. I know in the first war Italy was on the Allies side but in the second one they were the instigator; they even invaded Ethiopia! How do you reconcile that especially when such a huge percentage of your country’s population died?
A bit further on I ran into a bunch of people carrying signs and marching down the street. Oh boy, a political protest! Sadly, it was only a bunch of people marking Rare Diseases Day. I was definitely disappointed though I suppose rare diseases deserve attention to by blocking the streets.
I can’t say too much about the places I saw in Milan; I’ll have to let the photos speak for me and not least because I’m now typing this on a plane coming back from a conference in Phoenix, Arizona, three weeks after I was in Milan. Obviously my memory isn’t quite as clear.

Anyway, I saw a bunch of churches, an old castle, some statues, a part of the medieval city wall, a monumental church with a huge open square in front of it, another large war memorial and an old sports stadium. In the sports stadium, I had another one of those random moments that make me love wandering around when I got to watch a penalty shootout in a soccer game played by a bunch of guys in their 30s and 40s. It went down to the seventh guy I think and I just got to stand there at the field level and watch. I love that type of stuff.

Oh, and somewhere along the way I saw a bunch, like maybe fifteen, of old men playing bocce. There’s a game I need to learn since I already know how to play shuffleboard.
And yeah, it was really cold outside but I was bundled up very well and actually enjoyed it. If it weren’t for snow, ice and mush, I’d probably enjoy living someplace where it got much colder but maybe that’s what everybody says.

After wandering around for maybe four hours, I started back for the hotel. It was also getting dark and I was in no mood to be out super late. I had two goals: find a grocery store to stock up on groceries and find a decent place to eat (no gyros!). There was a 24 hour supermarket just down the road from the hotel so I knew I was covered there (24 hours in Europe is shown apparently as ‘0-24’) but it being Sunday finding anyplace that was open was a bit tougher. I made it even more difficult for myself by trying to find, you guessed it, a pizza joint. Well, I finally found one that was open but, true to form on my European jaunts, it was also a gyro joint, ha! I stood firm and ordered a pizza which consisted of 75% thin crust, 15% cheese, 10% a topping I don’t remember, maybe salami and 0.01% sauce. That bothered me but I’d heard that’s how Italian pizza is. Still tasted decent and to top it off I got to watch the end of the Carling Cup final (English Premiership soccer) where Birmingham upset Arsenal.
I met up with Eszter the next morning and we spent a productive two days at the branch office, getting work done and eating good Italian food. Everybody loves Italian food anyway but it seemed to taste especially good in Milan. We even got to wander around the downtown area at night on the Tuesday.
Wednesday morning came and it was time to head for Budapest via Malev Hungarian Airlines, one of my favorite airlines ever for the sole reason that they pass out hot rolls on their flights in a big bowl.
The flight was quite nice not only because of the hot rolls but because we got to fly over the Alps again, this time heading northeast over Slovenia, that little country that had the gall to tie the US 2-2 in the last World Cup (the game where the refs disallowed the perfectly legal goal that would have put us up 3-2). I forgive you Slovenia because your mountains look so beautiful from the air, all covered in snow and everything.