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Better than nothing. - Greg - 08-29-2016
Your hovercraft - Drunk Monk - 08-29-2016
Was Hungary like this only backwards?
The CF dose - Greg - 08-30-2016
Tuesday Aug 16th Coda
Some memories bubble as I sit around the house, including this one.
I mic’ed up Xenia for the Szepesi interview. I had one mic on Szepisi and one on her so I could hear what she said as she interpreted. Something in her mind always made her speak away from the placement of the mic. I put it on the HK side of her chest so when she turned to him to speak, I would hear her. But she decided she should speak to me. I eventually just started pointing at HK so she would speak in his direction and the direction of the microphone.
However, her aim was un-erring whenever she had to cough. She would blast full throated into the microphone every time she coughed. Szepesi laughed as I yanked the head phones from my head. It took Xenia a few looks around the room until they rested on me to realize that she had tried her best to deafen me.
Wednesday Aug 17th
Okay. I’m going to pretend I know what happened in the morning of this day. I think this was my first interaction with the Budpaest Metro system. Our Hotel Nemzeti sits atop the Blaha Lujza Ter Metro station. I’ve been making my through it’s dirty corridors to cross the streets for quite some time, but it finally clicked in my head that I could actually pick up the subway car down there, too.
To save time, I decided rather than walking all the way to Buda, I would just pick up the train and take it over. And the trip was going to cost me about $1.35 each way, so I knew I was reaching the limits of my travel budget with this trip.
I got off at the Batthyány tér which sits right across the Danube from the Budapest Parliament building. My initial thought was to also take the Funicular up the side of the steep hill to Buda proper but I got to walking and just climbed up the stairs to the Castle.
My first big find was the Hussar statue from which all the small statues are based. Then I wandered the grounds of the castle looking at the preparations for the upcoming Folk Festival. HK and I’s big plan for the weekend was to get some b-roll footage of the festival to show some Hungarian culture.
Buses started to disgorge their morning tourists and the streets of Buda slowly filled with tourists. In my world view, it was time to leave.
I made my big purchase at the pharmacy. I broke down and decided it was time to take some medicine for my foot. According to google, the best cure for my self-diagnosed heel problem was stretching and ibuprofen. It’s a big leap of faith taking the proper dosage of medicine where the instructions are all in Hungarian. It seemed to work out okay.
I also made the tragic mistake of visiting the House of Houdini, which wasn’t Houdini’s house at all, just a house to shelter a very poor collection of Houdini artifacts. Most of the artifacts were reproductions. A couple of them were props from the most recent Houdini movie. I took the tour with a very shy flower who really wasn’t up on her Houdini facts. After she finished her spiel, I chimed in with the bit I knew from my years of interest.
The capper for the House of Houdini visit was the magic show. You know it’s going to be bad when the magician starts with the rope of three different lengths trick. Since the audience was small, me and four Germans, I got to help with a card trick. Woohoo. It was all pretty sad. I think we applauded mainly to keep the magician on stage from spiraling into depression.
I walked back through Buda by the Vienna Gate and down the hill. I figured as long as I was descending towards the river I could eventually find the Metro station. It also didn’t hurt that the street I was on had the same name as Metro station. Sure enough, turned a corner and I was back at my subway station.
For the afternoon, we interviewed Dr. Szakály of the Veritas institute. My original plan was to rearrange Dr. Szakály’s office, but HK balked a bit at trying to move some extension cords. I asked Szakály if there might be another office or conference room we could use. We ended up pushing everything out of the deputy director’s office.
Our interpreter showed up late as is to be expected at this point.
Again the content of the interview has yet to be determined but it seemed good from behind the cameras. I had intended to take the Dr. for dinner but I guess our wires were crossed or he had had enough of our shenanigans. The restaurant that we were supposed to go to was ‘The Fighting Squirrel’
Another? Already? - Greg - 08-30-2016
Thursday Aug 18th
Because I am dumb and had been taking ibuprofen for almost a full day, I decided to start my day with a big walk around town. For my previous walks, I had gone North on the ring road in front of the hotel. For Thursday’s walk, I was going to head south.
The Pest side of Budapest can be roughly defined by two rings roads, an inner and an outer. My home at the Hotel Nemzeti lies on the outer ring road. The nicer parts of the city lie within the inner ring. My hotel is on the section of the road called Jozsef krt. But if I cross the intersection and head north, it immediately becomes, Terez Krt. Eventually, the road will take me to the Danube across the Margaret Bridge.
But I was heading South. It was time to finally see the Corvin Theater, which plays a prominent role in the 1956 Uprising. The theater lies in a warren of streets and alleys, making it highly defensible when Russian tanks are chasing you. It was one of the flash points of the war and held out for quite some time. A lot of soldiers who defended the theater were kids. They rushed out and threw petrol bombs into the tanks air intake systems.
When I found out the theater still existed, I wanted to see it. Plus, it was a chance to see parts of the city I had bypassed up to this point.
I cursed myself the entire walk for not bringing my big camera, relying instead on my cel phone camera for my pictures.
Corvin was exactly as described. There is a statue outside the curved facade of the theater for the young fighters. Plaques cover every available space detailing heroics, I’m sure. I figured if there was a guide to all the plaques in the city it would be bigger than the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Corvin is hard to photograph since it does lie in the middle of a big group of buildings. It is made incalculably uglier by the addition of this long metal sculpture that leads to the cinema. Across the street from the theater was supposed to be the Kilian Barracks, which also played a pivotal role, but I couldn’t determine which building it was supposed to be
I crossed the Danube via the Petofi Bridge, which is the southernmost Bridge in Budapest. The sun was just peaking through the fog, illuminating all the buildings on the west side of the river in a golden glow. I’m sure you can still hear me cursing my cel phone camera.
Petofi, for those playing along at home, was a poet during the 1850’s, whose work helped inspire people to revolt during that era. You can find lots of Petofi monuments in Budapest. Initially students protested in Petofi Square at the beginning of the 1956 uprising.
I walked in front of the Gellert Spa, one of three big spas in Budapest. I was fortunate enough to watch them change the ‘L’ on the large sign on the front of the building while I ambled. More cursing.
I crossed back into Pest over the currently closed Liberty Bridge. Our friend Xenia said that people were taking advantage of the closure of the bridge to have picnics on it, going so far as to place out tables to dine upon. The road across the bridge also aligned with the inner ring road of the city. I noticed as I passed about half a dozen antique bookstores for HK to check out later.
We had an appointment at the Sports Museum with Dr. Laszlo Szabo to discuss Piller at the Olympics for 9:30. It was going to be an odd interview, since we didn’t have a private room to do the interview. We were going to hold the interview in the middle of the room and hope no museum attendees walked into frame. I’ve done worse.
What was worse was that I had already been rude to Dr. Szabo. When we had dropped by the museum earlier in the week, there had been an interview going in the same spot where I was going to do the interview this morning. An older gentleman was doing an interview and he was interrupted by some klutz kicking a chair accidentally right in the middle of the interview.
Okay. I was the klutz. I was mortified at the time. I couldn’t skulk from the room fast enough. I was more mortified when I showed up for the interview and realized the man who I had interrupted earlier was Dr. Szabo.
But Dr. Szabo was stealthy. When I came into the museum proper and said I was here to do an interview with Dr. Szabo to the women behind the counter, she had no idea who I was talking about. You know, Dr. Szabo? The man in charge of this facility? She figured I must be in the wrong building.
She figured that until the man standing right next to me at the counter introduced himself as Dr. Szabo. Later that day, I told Dr. Szabo he might want to think about introducing himself to his staff. The flip side of that is, I have no real way of knowing how to pronounce Hungarian names. I kind of know how, but it’s atrocious. The women behind the desk probably just couldn’t understand me. As a for instance, Dr. Szakály is pronounced Sah-kai. Tell me that isn’t messed up.
Dr. Szabo was kind enough to bring along his son to play interpreter if I hadn’t thought to bring one. He also wanted us to move along since this was his last stop before he went away on holiday with aforementioned son. Xenia eventually showed up to perform her duties.
No one popped in during the interview and it went fine. Again, I’m still not sure of the content, but Dr. Szabo seemed authoritative. I can’t wait to get a good translator.
Towards the end, a woman did show up with another photographer. The woman’s father was one of the Olympic athletes in the posters on the walls.
Because I am who I am, I did ask Dr. Szabo a very forward question. Yes, I live by the squeaky wheel theory.
As I sat behind the camera and listened to Dr. Szabo answer the questions, my eyes wandered to the displays of Olympic artifacts. We had been told the museum was in a temporary space. Basically, it was in a long narrow building next to a giant saucer shaped soccer stadium.
The displays, which I had noticed on our previous visit were just cardboard plinths which had been notched at the top to allow for glass cubes to cover the memorabilia. I tried to take photos through the glass of things, like 1912 Olympian Jeno Fuchs (No one liked him according to the Dr.) mask and sabre, but it was miserable. I got a lovely reflection of me and the cel camera over the picture.
Hey, wouldn’t it be great if I could ask the director of the museum if he could slide the glass out of the way for a minute so I could snag a photograph? Hmmm? Wouldn’t it?
At the end of the interviews, I usually have a question to ask that HK might have skipped or a follow up question to one of the earlier conversations. Today, my question was if Dr. Szabo wouldn’t mind taking apart his display so I could get a better photo?
Squeaky wheel wins! Sort of. Rather than just removing the glass, Dr. Szabo took the top off the display and removed the mask, allowing me to photograph it. Which was great. But I kind of wanted it with the sabre. No, I didn’t push my luck.
Since we were now a week into the trip, it was time to do laundry. Yes, I was now in jeans and t-shirts mode after my initial button down shirt time, but I had to do laundry some time.
On our way to the Italian restaurant in the Jewish quarter, we had passed a laundromat multiple times. HK deemed it sketchy. I concurred with him, but we hadn’t actually gone into the place. Online, I had found a chain of clean looking laundromats called ‘Bubbles’. Bubbles were open 24 hours a day. In my mind, I was going to go over there early and get it all done. But my partner who doesn’t wake up quite as early as I did suggested we should go in the middle of the day. Seriously, who would do their laundry in the middle of the day, he argued?
Usually, probably no one. Bubbles most of the time is probably a ghost town. Except for one time of the year when the city is full of young people crowding the city to attend the largest music festival of it’s kind.
Guess what was going on while we were in Budapest? It’s called the Sziget festival. It lasts for a week were the promoters take over an island in the Danube and put on musical acts. Sziget would be the Hungarian word for Island.
When we showed up at Bubbles, being dropped off by Sandor, it was packed with scruffy kids huddled around the 4 washers. Plenty more waited outside, smoking at the picnic tables. HK and I retreated to a nearby restaurant to eat while the crowd thinned a bit.
I don’t care how long we would have waited there eating, the crowd wasn’t going to get any smaller. HK checked his phone for other laundromats nearby. They all got scary reviews on Trip Advisor.
I decided we should come back another day. I still had enough shirts for a few more days.
We grabbed our duffels and walked through the Jewish section back to our hotel, coincidentally walking right by the sketchy laundromat. We opted to go in. Turns out, it wasn’t sketchy at all. It had about 24 machines, all going strong. The Sziget Festival kids had been here, too
But the sketchy laundromat had an important difference from Bubbles. It had Androogy. Androogy wanted to know if we wouldn’t mind just dropping off our clothes and coming back for them tomorrow. That way he could get the overnight crew to wash them.
Are you asking me if I want someone else to take care of washing and drying my clothes? No, I wouldn’t mind that at all.
Androogy made it a strong point to tell us not to lose our claim checks. No claim checks. No laundry. No excuses. I made sure to put my ticket in a safe place. I even woke in the middle of the night to make sure I hadn’t lost the claim check.
Time to head back to the hotel. Recharge batteries. Ingest footage.
My nipples explode with delight! - Drunk Monk - 08-30-2016
Why is your font so small?
That's a bit personal - Greg - 08-30-2016
The forum resisted my attempts to make it bigger. I actually wrote it in pages and copy and pasted it here. I think there is something in the mark-up that defeats the HTML to change the size. That's my excuse. I'm sticking with it.
RE: The Last Captain - thatguy - 08-30-2016
CMD+OPT+SHFT+V
--tg
Tg it - Drunk Monk - 08-30-2016
How do you do that command on an iPhone?
Oh great; time to learn a new language... - cranefly - 08-30-2016
Quote:TG wrote:Come on, TG.
CMD+OPT+SHFT+V
Not all of us know Klingon.
Thanks, Greg, for my Last Captain fix. Now I can start packing for Alaska.
We leave very early in the morning (Wednesday).
Thanks for the tip, TQ! - Greg - 08-31-2016
Friday August 19
Road trip.
One of the interesting tidbits that had been floating around was that George Domolky, from Boston, had once posed for a giant statue of a fencer. Well, that statue was in Dunaujvaros and we were going to drive down there in the morning.
It was a quick trip, just 50km south of Budapest. Sandor, our driver, kept trying to figure out what we were trying to see.
In the grand scheme of things, seeing the Domolky statue was more of a footnote than a highlight. But, how often do you get to see a statue of someone who you have met?
After a few false turns, we finally found the statue. It was a pain in the ass to take pictures of since it was completely surrounded by trees. I found one small spot where I could take a picture of it. I sent the picture off to George Domolky with a note saying we had seen it. I got a note back later thanking HK for thinking of him.
For the trip to Dunaujvaros, I also brought the drone. It was a good chance to see if there were enough GPS satellites to make the thing work. I got a couple of balky signals at first as it tried to connect but eventually all signals were green and up the drone went.
Did I mention the statue was completely surrounded by trees? You couldn’t see it from the air either. There were two other statues near the Domolky statue completely open for view. The one we needed, hid beneath the trees.
Sandor was completely impressed by the Drone Flight. I did a couple passes over the soccer complex where the statue rests but there was nothing to see there. So, we packed up the car and headed back to Budapest.
This is how it works at the Hotel Nemzeti. As previously noted, I had bum rushed poor Zoltan and acquired the use of the restaurant for the Hussar demonstration. Well, Zoltan was on vacation for the week. It probably had nothing to do with what I had done to his lovely hotel for the afternoon. His replacement, Timea actually introduced herself to me and wanted to make sure that I was to see her if there was anything I needed.
Oh, silly woman. For the afternoon session of Friday, I had a return engagement with Norbert Maday. This time, we were going to be doing a sit down interview. I had spent the week trying to track him down via Xenia. The hope was to go to the mystery man’s house to see the rest of his Piller collection.
He opted to visit us at the hotel. Not wanting to interfere with the hotel, I asked Timea if there was a suite or a private room I could use to do the interviews rather than commandeering the restaurant.
Not a problem. At the back of the restaurant up a circular staircase was a conference room. I could use that. She wanted to charge me the princely sum of 50 euros to use the room. Normal rate for the room was 250. Yes, that would be completely fine. Timea wanted to know what arrangements I needed for the room. She also wanted to put out water for the guests. I just told her all I needed was a couple of chairs. Timea couldn’t have been happier to help out. What is wrong wth these people?
I had arranged all that with Timea on Thursday. But before I could set up, there was plenty of time to go visit Androogy and get the laundry.
After all the admonitions about not losing our tickets, the trip to get the clothes was very anti-climactic. Basically, we found the baskets that had our clothes and took them. Not a lot of security checking for this one. The guy running the store, the anti-Androogy, was more concerned with smoking his cigarettes. I had to remind him to take our claim checks.
For a change, I had plenty of time to set up the gear. I wasn’t running around feverishly getting everything ready while our subjects waited. It was just me in the empty room. I had Igor the bell hop (Igor is his real name) help me bring the gear down from the room and up the stairs to the meeting room. He refused to take my tip, saying I had already tipped him the day before. What is wrong with these people?
Maday showed up bearing gifts or at least parts of his collection. He brought Piller’s mask and sabre as well as several trophies he had won during his career. HK was ecstatic. Maday also brought a painting of Laszlo Borsody he had commisioned of Borsody teaching at the Ludovica academy. According to Maday it was of photo realistic quality by the finest painter in Hungary. He proudly displayed it for us. I used it as the back drop for pictures of the trophies as well as the back drops for the interviews. This latter plan would turn out to be a mistake.
While we waited for Xenia to arrive, Maday told us a story about how he got started in fencing. One Christmas, while Hungary was still under communist control, his father took him into the living room. They closed the curtains so no one could see into the room. Then his father pulled away some moulding surrounding the doors and extracted a cavalry saber. He went to another door and did the same thing to get another saber. Then for Maday’s Christmas present, Maday’s father gave him a fencing lesson. His father told him that he must never tell anyone about this. It was to be their secret. And for Christmases after that, Maday received fencing lessons from his father.
You should have seen the joy in Maday’s eyes telling that story. He told it much better than I am relating it here. And why am I telling it here rather than using such a priceless story in the film? Because Maday refused to tell us the story on camera. I begged him. It’s the perfect story. It demonstrates many things. The fear of the communist regime. The love Hungarians had for Saber. And most of all it shows Maday’s love for his father. But no. No matter how much I tried, he wouldn’t budge.
He then gave us a speech about honor and how a man’s word is his bond. We all shook hands. Then I had to tell him I needed him to sign an appearance release form so he could be in the movie. That went over really well. Sure, honor and all, but could you sign this because the lawyers in the US don’t trust you? For a minute, I thought that might be it. But he signed the release and it was on with the show.
Before we got started, HK took me aside and said he wasn’t going to use my list of interview questions. He felt it would be best if he just winged it. Umm? No! I’ve been with HK for a while now and that’s the last thing I want. I have stood behind the camera many times listening to him go through the trackless wastes of his interests far astray from anything that would be relevant to the movie. Needless to say, I was bit concerned by what was to come.
Fortunately, most of his questions came from my list. And we didn’t get too lost.
All during the week, Xenia had constantly told us she thought Norbert Maday was the Hungarian Hitler. That doesn’t make for a good relationship between interpreter and the one who needs to be interpreted. Because Xenia was Russian, I got the sense the feeling of hatred between them was mutual.
The interview started poorly. First off, Maday speaks English well, not great, but I thought he could do our interview in English. He opted to do it in Hungarian. Well, he starts telling Xenia the story in answer to our question at about 4 words a time. The subtext being she couldn’t keep up properly with him speaking. Maday spoke as if he was talking to a child.
Well, that was going to be horrible to cut to. So, I stopped the interview and made Maday talk like a person. He acquiesced and we got on with it. I think Xenia spoke to him during the breaks because it did go much smoother after that.
Maday’s viewpoints are all filtered through the Hungarian is best filter. Any questions we had about other early Sabre Coaches in Budapest like Santelli and Gerenscer, were swept aside. The only true genius in fencing was Borsody. There is going to be a little filtering of our own when I go through the Maday interview.
Towards the end of the interview, Janos Mohos came in. He was going to be our second interview of the afternoon. Mohos was a bit of a mystery. When I was building the list of subjects to interview, I chose him because he had been on the list of speakers for the Piller exhibit at the museum. But I couldn’t find out any information about him online. He didn’t have wikipedia entries in either English or Hungarian. He was a blank. My list of questions was very general and weak. I didn’t know where he was going or what he could tell us.
In order to find out about Mohos, the first question from HK was for him to tell us about himself and how he got started in fencing. Oh, boy.
For about twenty minutes, it could have been hours, Mohos spun the most detailed personal essay I had ever partially heard. Partially heard, because Xenia was only giving us the highlights. All I could think was that we had made a terrible mistake. This was a guy who liked to talk and we had given him a captive audience.
It was deadly dull until he brought up the fact that his first coach had been picked up by the secret police and never heard from again. Then he mentioned he had to leave the country after the 1956 uprising or he would have been killed. He ended up in Switzerland where he was the national champion, according to the translation, for 27 years in a row. Doing the math later proved this statement to be inaccurate but still.
His stories went from sleepy time to edge of the seat amazing. I never wanted him to stop talking. Then, he mentioned that he had dated Piller’s daughter. Well, crap. Sitting in front of us was the man who knew all the Piller stories.
He just kept going, unprompted. Maday, who was sitting off to the side at this point, just told HK to put the question list away. We weren’t going to need it. I am dying to hear the translations. I think Mohos could have talked all night.
Then HK made a fatal mistake. He called for a break. Maday saw this as an opportunity to get his wife and say good night to us. Maday was only supposed to be with us for an hour and it had already turned into three hours.
Maday started to pack up his things. I helped corral his painting which I had been using as a back drop and looking at all night. Staring at it. Pondering it. Noticing there was a big mistake in it.
I made the comment to HK about the mistake. He was aghast that I would think of telling Maday that his beloved painting was flawed. He tried to get me not to tell Maday, but the compulsion was deep within me.
The painting shows Borsody in the foreground with two lines of fencers opposite each other in the background. They stand in a gymnasium with arched windows on opposite sides of the room. Sunlight streams in the windows giving the gym a golden glow.
My problem was that the light streamed in from both sides of the building. Unless Earth suddenly gained a second sun, there was no way this was possible. Since, I had stared at the painting and pondered it all afternoon, it had become an itch I had to scratch. I told Maday. HK was disgusted. Maday told me he would ask the artist about it.
Maday wrapped up, grabbed his family, and headed for the door. I was all set to continue hearing Piller stories from Mohos. It seems that Mohos goes where Maday goes. Since Maday was leaving, Mohos was leaving. But. But. But.
Nope. He was done. Xenia offered to give him a ride home. The interviews were done for the day.
Our biggest problem on the trip was that people would always tell us about Piller’s great stories. When we would ask what were the stories, they would tell us they didn’t remember them. They just remember he had them. One more man had them, too. His name was Janos Mohos. He left me wanting more.
I wrapped up the gear. The bell hops came and took it to my room. I don’t think they took any tips. When I tried to give Timea a few bucks, she declined as well. She said if I wanted to, I could tip her when I left in a week or so.
The Big on for St. Istvan's Day. - Greg - 09-01-2016
Saturday Aug 20
Saturday was going to be our ninth day of work in Budapest. I know I was feeling a little ragged. I had actually called for a day off on Wednesday, but people kept agreeing to do interviews, so our schedule was full. I didn’t want to put off anyone until later. For me, it was best to get the interviews out of the way.
Which left Saturday as our first sort of day of rest. Except for one little caveat. August 20th was St. Istvan’s day. It is probably the biggest holiday on the Hungarian National calendar, sort of a cross between the 4th of July and Christmas. But mostly 4th of July. It celebrates the day a thousand years ago when St. Istvan converted the country to Catholicism. The Hungarians point to the date as the birth of Hungary.
If I was going to capture the essence of Budapest and Hungary that would be the day to film around the city. The day off will be pushed to Sunday.
I was also getting itchy to see some of the city. I had been here over a week and all I had seen were people’s offices, hotel rooms, and living rooms. I had yet to explore the city proper, camera in hand.
The schedule for the day was going to be packed. I wanted to take the drone out for some shots of the Danube and the bridges. Dawn was not the best time to shoot since I would be shooting into the sun, but it was the quietest time of day. I didn’t want a lot of interference.I would be shooting at dawn.
Next, I was going to the Folk Fair up at the Buda Castle to get some color shots. One of the big events of the day was the mass at St. Istvan’s Cathedral where they paraded the hand of the Saint in front of the crowd. This was important because there is historical footage showing the same ceremony with the Royal Guard, of which Piller was a member.
To finish the day, there were going to be Fireworks over the Danube. There were supposed to be giant crowds all along the banks, so I needed to get there early.
I mentioned my plans to HK and he said he wanted to tag along after I had finished the morning Drone work.
My day off was set with at least 12 hours of work.
For the trip, I did bring along the drone. But I brought it in it’s hard case rather than the stealth backpack. I had to go with the hard case so I could put the drone in the hold of the plane. This meant when I was walking the streets of Budapest, I was lugging around this big black case. All I kept thinking was I must look like a mad bomber with that case.
I started the day using my new best friend, the M2 train to get me to Batthyany Ter. I was really blowing the bank today by buying a 24 hour pass. It was going to cost to almost 6$ to use the trains, buses, and light rail for an entire day. Screw it. I’m on a feature.
Naturally, I was early. I spent thirty minutes prowling the Danube bank waiting for the sun to come up enough to light some buildings. It didn’t help that there was some low lying fog occluding the sun. I wasn’t alone on the concrete walk. Another photographer had set up a tripod and his camera about twenty feet from where I waited with my ominous black case. If he was shooting time lapses of the parliament building, he was going to be a bit cranky when the drone started flying through his shots.
Eventually, the sun cooperated and there was enough light to shoot. Yes, the sun was right behind Parliament, but it would just have to do. I spent twenty minutes flying up and down the Danube between the Margaret and the Chain Bridges. I was lucky to chase a barge as it made it’s way towards the Chain Bridge. I was really happy with my mornings work.
Sure, but why not push it? I grabbed my case and walked the path towards the Chain Bridge looking for a wide area from which to do another launch. I made it through the tunnel under the Chain Bridge to the other side, where, much to my delight I found they were closing the streets for the day’s festivities. It wasn’t perfect but there was enough room on the path for me to get the drone into the sky.
After I got the propellers on and fired up the remote, I kept getting an error message saying there was too much electrical interference. I couldn’t get a signal from the satellites. As I looked around it quickly became clear why I couldn’t get a signal. Right behind me were the overhead power cables for the light rail system. The light rail might not be running, that doesn’t mean they turned the power off to the cables.
I moved from the path down to this grassy area right below one of the lions on the west end of the Chain Bridge. I had to launch quick because I thought I saw two guys in security vests above me on the bridge. Just act like you belong and everything will be okay.
I launched from the wet grass and flew the drone the length of the bridge. I was on the south side of the bridge so the bridge itself was getting lit by the rising sun. Perfect. I didn’t want to spend too much time flying it around since, well there were two security guards above me watching what I was doing. Okay, maybe I showed off a little bit by hovering opposite them and taking their picture. Maybe just a bit.
But I did not fly the drone directly over the bridge. I always kept it to one side. One of the rules of Drone flying is not to fly over traffic so as not distract motorists. I would hate to be the cause of any accidents. Plus, I don’t think I could outrun the security guards.
Guess what? There was no traffic on the bridge that day. The bridge was closed to vehicular traffic. I found this out when I made my way around to cross the bridge back into Pest.
It had been closed for the folk festival and St. Istvan Day celebrations. Which meant I could fly the drone directly over the bridge. All I needed to do was find a launch spot. I stopped in the middle of the bridge, which was at that time even empty of people, to take a selfie.
As I crossed the bridge, I noticed a guy with what looked just like my Drone backpack. I cursed him for his stealthiness as I lugged the big black case.
At this point I was jacked up with excitement and felt I could do no wrong. My middle name was hubris. I asked one of the security guards if I could launch my drone from the center of the traffic circle. What could it hurt since all the roads around me were closed to traffic? He said no. Actually, I don’t know what he said, since he didn’t speak a lick of Englsh.
I climbed down the stairs off the bridge and found a clear spot away from trees opposite a small restaurant. Two of the cleaners stopped to watch me unpack the drone and put on the propellers. One of the propellers didn’t seem to want to go on, but I eventually got it to spin on.
I can’t tell you how excited I was for this flight. One of the shots I wanted to recreate was from above the east tower looking back towards the bridge. There is a similar shot in the archives from 1945 when the bridge had been destroyed by the Germans to keep the Russians from crossing. Now, I was going to put my drone in almost the same spot with the repaired bridge shot. I was the king of the world.
What’s the opposite of hubris? Nemesis? Yeah, he wasn’t far away.
Because I was in King Stud mode I gave a thumbs up to the restaurant workers as I started the engines of the drone. They whirred to life. I pushed up on the throttle. I like fast launches because I want to the drone in the air away from dangerous things.
It was about seven feet from the ground when I found out why the one propeller didn’t feel like it was going on properly. Simply, for some reason, it wasn’t on properly. At seven feet in the air, one of the propellers spun away from the drone, leaving only three propellers still attached.
I watched aghast as the drone spun erratically and plummeted to the ground, where it did it’s terrible flop around dance in front of me. The propellers eventually ground to a halt. I don’t know what stopped the engines.
I imagined I could feel the disgusted eye roll from the restaurant workers as I failed so spectacularly in front of them. I rushed to the drone to see how much damage there was all the while trying to act invisible. I could find no sign of the spun off propeller.
According to my remote control, the drone was now experiencing a significant calibration problem. The camera below the drone was also only hanging by two of it’s four rubber connectors. Other than that, it didn’t look all that bad. Fingers crossed.
I put on one of my spare propellers. I set the internal computer to start doing a recalibration. I sat there and stared for ten minutes while the little status bar grew more complete. I finally got the message the recalibration was complete. Please fly. Please fly. Please fly.
It balked but it went up. Unfortunately, not was all right in drone world. I couldn’t control the camera on one of it’s axis. Plus, the camera shook like it had palsy. I tried a few shots but I could see on the monitor the frame constantly shaking. Crap and damn. I brought the baby in for a landing.
While I did, the guy with the stealth drone back pack showed up. He told me he did indeed have a drone and wondered if I knew the rules about flying it in Hungary. I said I thought it was okay. He walked away but stopped after a few steps on the stairs. He bent down to pick something up. He turned back to me and offered me back my missing propeller.
Sigh. I wandered over to the Metro station near Parliament called Kossuth. And wouldn’t you know it, the festivities had already started. Huge cloths in Hungarian Colors were draped over the front facade of the building. A marching band played. Soldiers on horseback lined one side of the forecourt. The place was full of pageantry early on a Saturday morning. Something you might want to capture for a documentary.
My big camera was back in the hotel. I was carrying a broken drone in a case that made me look like a bomber. I did have my cel phone. Those pictures should be great.
Realizing there wasn’t a lot of point in me hanging around sans camera, I slunk back to the underground. Yes, a breeze did blow back my hair.
I switched gear at the Hotel Nemzeti from broken drone to Nikon D750. I also was going to tote my Manfrotto tripod around for the video shots. Well, HK was going to carry the tripod when it was not in use.
Our first stop was back at Parliament. I was going to find the shots I missed on my walk over from the Chain Bridge. I shot some footage of former Prime Minister Imre Nagy on his bridge. I filmed Ronald Reagan striding towards the American Embassy. Yes, Budapest has a Reagan statue.
Earlier I had shot with my cel phone a dog at the base of the statue thanking the soviets for all the work they had done in Hungary. It stands right outside the American Embassy. There was also this nice monument for the Nazi occupiers. It is surrounded by a protest which asks the question “Why do we have a monument for the Nazis”? Okay, it’s not for the Nazis, but it does put into light that Hungary had nothing to do with the death of almost a million Hungarian Jews.
We stopped in St. Istvan’s cathedral to see the Saints Hand in a box. I stood out because I was carrying the big tripod with me. I also brain froze and couldn’t figure out why all my pictures were coming out so dark. Turn up your ISO, idiot.
One of the church wardens came up to me while I was filming the box with a guard standing next to it. The guard and the box was at the front of the church while I was at the back. The support person wanted me to take my tripod out of his church. He also wanted me to remove my hat, which I had taken off but put back on when I was setting up the camera.
He also wanted to know if perhaps I was making a video in his church. Um, er, no? I quickly departed before the lightening bolt struck me down for my lies. I did get a nice shot of the man in the feathered hat who held a pike standing next to the St’ Istvan’s hands box.
HK and I made our way through Budapest to the Chain Bridge. When I had crossed it earlier, it had been empty. Now, two hours later, it was packed with pedestrians.
My goal on the Buda side was to take pictures of the funicular that climbed up the side of the hill to the castle. Our path took us up some really steep stairs to the bridges that crossed the funicular’s path. I shot video. HK rested in the shade.
I couldn’t make it clear to HK that once we had our wrist bands for the folk festival, we could pass through the gates freely. I knew of a couple nice restaurants on the top of the hill we could have eaten at and then come back to the festival. He wasn’t buying it.
We ended up dining at the only restaurant in view. which turned out to be expensive. Although they did make me the first fresh iced tea I had had since arriving in Budapest.
The Folk Festival was about food. Lots of food. Big food. Everything was cooked in these giant skillets that were a yard across. There were crafts going on, but nothing snagged my interest. I did manage to film a nice man doing a bull whip set. This paid off later when the same man recognized me and stopped his group so I could do another video shot.
HK and I wandered the castle grounds amongst the booths. We grew tired and decided it was time to go. Unfortunately, I kept finding things to film. As we left the castle grounds, the bread parade with everybody in their peasant clothes was just starting. I had to film that. Then they were grouped around St. Matthias Church, so I stopped in there for a few quick shots.
At some point, HK grew tired of carrying the tripod, so I took it from him and carried it down the hill back to the metro station. HK seemed to be a bit impressed that I could navigate unerringly back to the metro stop. Well, I had done the same walk earlier in the week and the street we hiked down did have the same name as the metro station.
The original plan was for HK to come back out with me for the mass and the fireworks. But the morning walk had tired him out and he was now opting to do one of the two afternoon itineraries. Since he had seen fireworks before, HK was just going to go with me to the open air mass in order to see St. Istvan’s hand.
Except by the time it was time to leave for the Basilica, HK had lost all interest in doing the mass, as well. Maybe not lost interest as lost energy. Either way, I was going solo. Since I had dawdled so much on the trip back to the hotel, I only hung out there for an hour before heading back to the Blaha Lutz.
The forecourt and all the surrounding streets around the Basilica were packed with people. Earlier I had watched them set up the cordons in the forecourt. Now I got to see they had cordoned off large areas for ticketed personnel only.
I walked through the masses looking for any spot to set up. I finally ended up in the street on the other side of the courtyard from the Basillica. The people looked really tiny near the altar on the opposite ends of the square.
I broke out the tripod about five people away from the fenced off area. I hoped that they would parade the chest around the fenced off area and I would kind of get a peak at the chest close up. There was one guy in the crowd being very nice to me. He stood out of my and made sure I had room for the sticks. I stood between him and his wife for all intents and purposes.
It was going to be a nightmare. The guy two people in front of me was tall and blocked about 50 percent of the altar when I took a picture. I was just going to have to deal. Plus, I had about an hour to stand there before things even got going.
As time passed, the crowd shifted. I edged my way closer and closer to the waist high cordon. Then for reasons known only to himself and his girlfriend, the tall guy in front of me departed. It was a clear shot to the stage 300 yards away. I was surrounded by little muslim girls who barely came up to my shoulder. This was going to be perfect.
There was more shifting. I was at the cordon. The only thing blocking me now was the local police woman and she kept moving. I now had a great spot. I was now the jerk blocking everybody behind me. At least I wasn’t holding up my cel phone to block even more of the sight lines.
Except the gate I was set up against had to swing open to allow for the parade at the end of the mass. The security guards came over and started motioning that we had to move to the side. This meant the people to the side of me had to lose their great spots as I pushed back into them. Some days it pays to be big.
The parade out seemed to last forever as every parish in Hungary got a chance to parade out of the square. But the cask with the hand finally made it by me. I got some nice close up shots. Success for the day. Now I just had to find a way out of the mob scene.
Nobody was moving. They all stood near the fence. I didn’t know what was going on, but I saw a gap in the crowd and pushed my way out. I was ready to find some food and get ready to see some fireworks.
As I bent over to put the tripod away, I noticed one of the folk groups that had been in the parade was standing near me. They had others behind them. It dawned on me that the groups hadn’t just left, they had made a big circle through the streets and now they were coming back. And I had abandoned my spot at the railing. So, crap.
Then I noticed that no one was monitoring the entrance to the ticketed area which was now largely empty. The people in the ticketed areas had left with the parade out. I quickly snuck into that area and was once again up against the fence for when the parade came back.
Sure, enough back came the army guys holding the cask aloft. The angle was a little weird for the second pass, but at least I have two chances for film success. I did bemoan these scruffy guys that cut between me and the parade. I shut up my boos when I realized they were the undercover cops charged with protecting the cask.
It all ended and I went to find dinner. There wasn’t enough time to go back to the hotel, so I found a restaurant nearby called the Strudel House for dinner. I spent most of the dinner crumpled in my chair watching the Olympics on TV. Two hours of standing after six hours of walking around will do that to you. Dinner was delicious and yes I had strudel at the Strudel house. It was quite tasty.
Leading up to the Fireworks display, I had been asking everyone where was the best place to watch the Fireworks. In my opinion, I was thinking if I stood on the Margaret Bridge and shot south towards the Chain Bridge, I would get a pretty good view. But I’m always up for local knowledge. I asked at the hotel. They hem and hawed and didn’t really come up with good suggestions. They seemed to think anything I wanted to do would probably be good.
Xenia the translator, who I had given the weekend off, sent me an email asking me if I wanted her to arrange a place from which to view the fireworks. A private place would have been awesome, but I didn’t get an answer back from her before it was time to go see the Fireworks. Oddly, every time I asked Xenia about St. Istvan’s day, she seemed non-plussed by the whole affair, as if it wasn’t a big deal.
Earlier in the day, when HK and I were just departing St. Istvan’s Basilica, we bumped into a man from Connecticut. He seemed ticked off about the crowds and the ongoing celebration. He complained that he had timed his tour poorly to be in Budapest during this event. Idiot! I can’t think of a better time to be in Budapest. The whole town was celebrating. There were going to be fireworks. There was fresh bread. Never trust a person from Connecticut.
I came up the escalator at the Batthany Ter station to find huge crowds of people lining the river walk. There was a parapet along the walk and every inch of it had someone sitting on it. I chose this point thinking that the Chain Bridge area would be crowded. Here, I could maybe get some fireworks over parliament building shots. First, I just needed to find an unobstructed view.
Two people on bicycles had blocked off a good long stretch of the parapet with their bikes. I asked them if they wouldn’t mind if I set up the tripod and camera at the end of one of their bikes. They didn’t seem to mind. There was a family on my right and the bike people on the left. In front of me, parliament glowed from the sodium lights. I seemed to have lucked into a good spot.
It took a few minutes, but I eventually determined the couple on the bikes were dear. At least the man was deaf. His girlfriend seemed to talk.
About ten minutes before 9pm firework start, a group of six young adults showed up behind us. They too were on the hunt for a good spot but obviously had come to the party late. Well, they decided that the best place for them was on the parapet in front of the deaf cyclists.
The YA’s made motions to the couple about moving in front of them. I don’t think the couple knew what they were agreeing to but next thing you know, they were sliding along the parapet completely blocking the couples view. I think they were too embarrassed to speak up for themselves and just let it happen.
Then the YA sliders decided they should get in front of me too, since I was standing next to the parapet rather than sitting on it. Yeah, no. Don’t try and block the cranky photographer.
I put my hand out to stop them and told them to move back. They looked at me puzzled. But maybe something in my eye caused them to retreat. Soon, they had left the parapet completely and were standing behind me.
One of the YA guys came up to me to tell me that he didn’t think it was right that those two got to block such a big section of the parapet. I told him it wasn’t right for him to be an asshole and take advantage of the two deaf people. It didn’t matter what they were doing, the deaf couple had arrived first. The YA retreated amidst grumbling.
A few minutes later the fireworks started. It took me a millisecond to realize I had camped out in the wrong spot. All the fireworks were going off from the Chain Bridge and Gellert mountain. None would emanate from the Parliament building. People with cel phones held above their heads blocked my view almost completely. Best of all the YA kids made it a mission to be in the spot between me and the fireworks.
I did get a few videos of the fireworks, but a lot of it was the back of peoples heads. It would be clear for a second and then someone would raise their cel phone into my shot. I guess no good deed does go unpunished.
The Fireworks went on for quite some time. I’m sure my dogs would have hated it had they been in the vicinity. It was nice to have the moon rise over Parliament while I had my camera there.
Now, I had been on all my feet all day and it was time to take the train home. I walked backed to the Batthany Ter station, an idea that had occurred to many many many other people. The police had blocked off all the entrances to the station bar one. I guess they wanted to make sure everyone had their ticket to get home.
It looked like it was going to take a long time to get through that queue. I opted to go to the nearby Margaret Bridge and catch the light rail home instead. The light rail stopped right in front of the hotel Nemzeti.
By the time I got to the stop in the middle of the Margaret Bridge, I realized those trains weren’t running yet. Street sweepers were driving along the tracks blasting the tracks with water. There were are also crowds of drunks walking along the tracks the police were dealing with.
As I walked the bridge I did notice one thing. I should have stood on the Margaret bridge for the fireworks. It would have been awesome. Next time. I’m still kicking myself over that decision.
I kept walking. Or limping. At this point, my heel was on fire. I made way to the Kossuth station at Parliament were the crowds had thinned enough for me to gain entry. The train back to the hotel was packed, but it was only three stops.
When I walked in the door to the hotel, the wifi in my phone kicked on allowing me to receive messages. There was a note from Xenia saying she didn’t know what I wanted to do for the evening and the fireworks. She suggested I go to the Margaret Bridge.
Time for a quickie! - Greg - 09-01-2016
Sunday August 21
And on Sunday, I rested. Sort of. Okay. I didn’t rest at all. I just didn’t lug a tripod around with me everywhere I went.
HK wanted to head back up to Buda to see the museum there. I wanted to find the Ludovica, the former military college, and a few other spots.
I promised to use the trains as much as possible and do as little walking as possible. I still ended up over 12 miles for the day.
My first stop was the Corvin theater. I was now going back with my still camera. It was still a pain to shoot. Then I took the Metro 3 to the Ludovica which has evolved into the Natural History Museum. Since it was Sunday, the place was closed.
I was kind of disappointed because Maday had told us the room in his painting still exists. It was supposed to have an awkward entrance as you entered it. Well, as I was departing the Ludovica grounds I noticed a building off to one side. The main feature were these rounded top windows that were different from any other windows at the Ludovica and looked just like the windows in Maday’s painting as well as photographs I had seen.
Yes, I tried to gain entrance. Yes, the security guard thought I was crazy and sent me on my way. Yes, I’m going to insist that was the building where Laszlo Borsdoy taught Piller.
My next was stop was the Kerepesi cemetery. Sure, every famous Olympian was at the Farkaseti cemetery over in Buda, but the Kerepesi was near the hotel and a lot of famous Hungarians were buried there, too.
I hopped on the light rail and it went in the wrong direction. Dammit. I got off at the next stop and moved to the other tracks. This stop was far off the tourist trail deep in suburban Budapest. I was surrounded by those nice tall apartment complexes you see in movies about the communist eastern bloc. I didn’t feel out of place at all.
Eventually another train came and we started back in the proper direction. Only the train didn’t get far beyond where I was originally picked up. Then the driver got out of the front of the train and made his was through the two cars to the back of the train. The other passengers started screaming to find out what he was doing.
The word filtered down that this was as far as this train went. If we wanted to go further in this direction we better get on the bus idling across the street at the curb. I didn’t understand a word of this. I just followed the rest of the passengers as they darted off the train, crossed through traffic and got on the bus.
I kept my eyes glued to my crappy international cel phone and it’s brand of google maps to make sure I was going where I was supposed to be going. But, yay, I was on a Budapest Bus.
I got off the bus at a brick wall that I picked out to be the wall of the cemetery. I should have gone on at least one more stop to be closer to the entrance, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I also saw the tracks for the Light Rail being replaced which was the cause for our departure from the Light Rail train.
Kerepesi was huge. There was an app to tell you where all the famous graves were in the place. At least that was my assumption. The app poster was in Hungarian, so I assumed the app was in Hungarian.
The place looked impressive. Lots of huge cenotaphs and monuments to the dead. If I knew anybody from Hungarian History, it would have probably been fascinating. As it was, I was just a little bit bewildered by the scope of it.
There was a giant monument to Kossuth, he of the metro stop near Parliament. I’m going to say he was Prime Minister back in 1848, when the first Hungarian uprising occurred. There were monuments to fallen Soviets. There was a 1956 section. None of it meant a thing to me. I learned later that Italo Santelli’s grave was somewhere in there. Because of the scope of the cemetery, I doubt I would have found it.
From the cemetery I walked to the train station to pick up my good friend Metro Line 2. I took it back to the hotel and the light rail line. I took the light rail to the Octagon stop on Andrassy Ut. There I met my new friend Metro Line 1.
Metro Line 1 is the oldest subway in Europe. It has teeny cars that race along in tiny tunnels. They are also hard tunnels to find. I did finally notice the yellow placards that mark their entrance.
I took the train to the Szecheny Baths which everyone told me I should visit. This was just a reconnaissance visit in the hope that I would get there later on this trip. But I couldn’t get beyond the gate and never saw the giant baths themselves.
I wandered the City Park. I entered the castle and paid too much to walk up a flight of stairs to get a bad view into the castle forecourt. There was another fair going on here, too. They were making more food in big platters. I saw the biggest hotdog in the biggest bun. I purchased my first T-shirts of the trip, too.
I made my way to Heroes square for another set of pictures. I bemoaned my lack of tripod but it was Sunday, my day off. There were a couple of pedal pubs circling around. One had stopped and promptly attracted a hooker. The next time I looked she was ensconced on one of the stools next to the six guys.
Pedal pubs are this weird invention. There are six to eight seats with pedals underneath. There is also a keg at one end of the vehicle. You get to pedal around the city all the while drinking from the keg.
I took Metro 1 back to the Opera house so I could take pictures of it. I was rapidly losing steam so I headed back to the hotel.
I met up with HK and we went to the Strudel House for dinner. Mmmm strudel. I was so tired I even sat outside amongst the smokers without caring.
Things fall apart. It's scientific - Greg - 09-02-2016
Monday Aug 22
What would make a trip to cemetery all that more special? A torrential downpour, of course.
I don’t know why I feel the need to visit the graves of famous Hungarian sabre athletes, but I do. So, part of the trip was to head over to Farkasreti Cemetery in Buda to see the graves of such notables as Alader Gerevich, Pal Kovacs, Rudolph Karpati and a bunch of others. There was also supposed to be a memorial to all the Olympic Athletes buried there. Daniel Magay had shown us pictures of his tour of Farkasreti.
Well, the rain pouring down outside my window put the trip into question. Plus, the fact I had never heard back from my cemetery contact who was to show us where all the bodies were buried, also made the finding of the graves problematic.
In the morning, I received an interesting email from HK. He had been up all night with the dry heaves and diarrhea. He was not going with me to the cemetery. He was doubtful for the afternoon trip to the film archive. He tasked me to get him some water and some rolls. I headed off to the underground and it’s shops to get the water. I picked up the rolls from the breakfast buffet.
Sandor and I crawled cross city through the traffic. Traffic is bad in Budapest because of the old streets and the minimal amount of routes to traverse the city. Rain didn’t help.
Farkasreti was pretty much a bust. I wasn’t about to walk around looking for graves in a downpour, especially since I had no clear indication of where to look for the graves. There was a sign pointing towards the Olympic Memorial, so we drove there.
I darted in the rain to the curved wall to take pictures with my cel phone. Those are going to be great.
I had Sandor drive us slowly back out in case I by chance spotted an important grave. Yeah, that didn’t happen. Farkasreti was huge. I could probably wander for days in there and never find a thing.
We headed back across town to the hotel in the hope of getting HK for the trip to Manda Film Archive. Originally, I wanted to go Farkasreti and Manda during the same trip since they were both on the Buda side of the river. The rain and the sickness put the kibosh on that.
HK wasn’t up for the trip to Manda. I had a quick lunch at a local place that had really good food. I couldn’t wait to go back to that restaurant.
Xenia had worked with Manda to come up with a list of films for us to review. It was now up to HK and I to go through the films they had and see if we wanted them digitized. When Norbert Maday learned what we were up to, he invited himself along. And where Maday goes Mohos goes. As it was originally explained to me, they had a bunch of films on 16mm that we were going to watch in the Manda screening room.
Xenia wasn’t at Manda when Sandor and I rolled up. I had to do the mime and dance at the front desk to get them to know what I wanted. Our contact Dorothy came out and showed me what was in store. They had a sheet and I just needed to film out the time code for the sections I needed to be digitized. Simple.
Xenia showed up. Maday showed up. Dorothy grabbed a big box of video tapes and off we went to the screening room.
So, no cool 16mm films just video tape. I could figure it out. Put in a tape. Scrub until I found sections that looked like fencing. Write down the beginning time code. Write down the ending time code. Seemed pretty simple and straightforward.
Except I was surrounded by morons. Xenia grew impatient with how I was going about it. There were probably 16 2hr tapes. She wanted me to just go right to the points marked on her list. I was trying to be methodical by going through all the tapes.
Meanwhile, I had Maday and Mohos shouting out whenever they saw something that interested them on the tape. As if I didn’t see the sabre fencers on the screen. At some point, Maday talked to another archivist to get his own set of films to review.
While I’m watching on one screen, they’re watching other stuff I need on another screen. That wasn’t distracting at all. Xenia put herself in charge of filling out the form. On the one hand, she could write down the descriptions in Hungarian. On the other, her handwriting was atrocious. I was living in this nightmare.
I scrubbed on, catching glimpses of stuff I needed on other screens. Xenia started shuffling the tapes to get to bits she thought I should see next. At some point, it got confused on which tapes I had seen and which tapes I hadn’t. It made for a really miserable experience.
When I realized how long this was going to take, I sent Sandor home. No sense in letting him just sit in the parking lot. Xenia offered to drive me back to the hotel, which was fine since her house was pretty close to the hotel.
The whole drive back Xenia is tripping on some weird noise coming from the car. She thought some thing was bouncing on her roof. I paid attention and realized that it was just something loose in the left rear strut of her Xfiniti SUV. Just go get it checked, right.
As we approached the hotel, I mentioned that she could just drop me off in the square opposite the hotel rather than trying to pull up in front of the hotel proper. Xenia said it didn’t matter. She had to turn and go back to Buda anyway. What? You had to go back to Buda through this miserable traffic. Buda, where we just where? I asked the obvious question: Why didn’t you just drop me off at the metro station and I could have taken the train. The train would have been faster anyway than crawling through crappy traffic to the hotel.
Xenia says to me “I didn’t want to spend the time to explain the trains to you. It would have taken too long”
I punched her. She didn’t think I would understand the metro system? What the hell? (Please note, no punching occurred during this story)
During the course of the viewing party, Mr. Mohos agreed to come back for a follow up interview. He wanted to come to the hotel at 2pm on Tuesday. I told him that 4pm would be better since I had interviews until 2pm at the military history museum. He asked for 2:30. I told him I probably wouldn’t be back until 2:30. Then it would take me another half hour or so to set up. The earliest I could possibly get to him would be 3. I think I got him to agree that he should be at the hotel at 3pm. Time to get another room at the hotel for the interview.
the sky is crying - Drunk Monk - 09-02-2016
Looking for swordsmen in a Budapest cemetery in the rain. That's sorta romantic.
Did y'all know that one of the first dates that Stacy and I had was to a cemetery? You probably did. Heck, it might even be logged here somewhere.
Well, when you put it that way. - Greg - 09-02-2016
I obviously need to get more poetry for my soul, since my gut reaction was 'Hey fool, get out of the rain"