08-12-2016, 07:25 PM
My brain is fuzzy. It's been an interesting first 48 hours of the trip. I haven't had any sleep and I'm still punch drunk from the events of Friday afternoon. It is now 3am on Saturday.
In the days leading up to my departure, my biggest task was to consolidate the gear that I was taking with me. That consolidation amounted to eight bags of gear plus two rather heavy carry-ons. Originally I was going to rent some of the gear in Budapest but in the end it just seemed cheaper to buy video lights that worked on 220. I also decided I wasn't going without one of my RAID Hard-drives. This necessitated buying yet another Pelican Case for the trip.
The eventual count was 5 Pelican cases, 4 duffel bags and my camera back pack. The worst duffel is this long pink fencing bag HK grabbed from the West Berkeley Fencing Club. It is too long and the balance is off and it always feels much heavier than it should be. It must be stealing weight from another dimension.
I flip-flopped on how early I wanted to be at the airport. I started out thinking I should get there 3 hours early but that seemed crazy so I settled on two hours early. This meant I started the drive to LAX a little later, which put me in a little heavier section of the rush hour morning traffic. Consequently, my journey to the airport took a lot longer than planned. I arrived with about 90 minutes to get on the plane.
I'm flying Air Canada to Budapest. It stops in Toronto with only a 90 minute layover. I've done 90 minute layovers before. It never ends well. The Queen gave me a disgusted snort when I acknowledged that I hadn't checked which Terminal Air Canada departed from. I assumed it was going out of the Bradley International Terminal. I assumed wrong. But once we pulled passed the traffic surrounding Southwest's Terminal One it was smooth sailing to Terminal 2.
I also assumed there would be a Sky Cap to help me get all the bags into the Terminal. Yet again, I assumed wrong. I also saw that it was going to take more than one rented push cart to ferry all the bags. I hurriedly loaded one cart and pushed it into the terminal toward the ticket line.
The ticket lines were long and not moving very well. I had already paid for the bag mountain and gotten my boarding pass. I still had this long line in front of me. I left the first cart and went back to the curb to get the second cart. All the time, I'm hearing in my mind that constant airport announcement about what you should do if you see unattended bags in the airport. I had a whole trolley cart of them.
At this point, I may or may not have cut in line of a lot of people. I may have just walked up to an unattended Kiosk and started punching in my info to get my boarding pass. This may have happened. I asked one of the Airport staffers if I could leave my trolleys near the counter while I waited for the next available checker. She said fine.
The day before the flight, I got an email from Air Canada asking me to check-in and pay for my bags. They also asked if I would like to upgrade to something called premiere economy for the flight from Toronto to Budapest. It was only $200, so I said why not? I didn't do that for the LAX to Toronto leg because that was $500. And because I'm not a complete monster, I emailed HK and told him to do the same thing.
Back at the terminal, I noticed a shorter line to the front desk for people who have purchased priority seating. Hey, that's me! Except it wasn't priority for this particular leg of the flight. Yep, got in another line that I probably wasn't supposed to be in. Look, I can hear the countdown to departure clock in my head and it makes me cranky.
It also makes me cranky when people don't know what the fuck to do when they get up to the ticket counter. It's simple. You hand the nice woman your tickets and your passport. Then she takes your bags and you go on your way. That's not hard is it? Many people failed that test in front of me. With my eight checked bags, it took me less time than the woman with the one bag to get through this procedure.
I also spent my time in line eyeing my bags far down the counter, waiting for someone to ask why this huge stack of luggage was sitting here unattended? But I finally made it to the front and started getting all the bags on the scale. Naturally, the pink goliath had to be taken somewhere else to be loaded because it was big and long.
With a great sense of relief, I handed off the bags and headed to the departure gate. I no longer feel calm until I'm at the gate. But not completely calm. That comes when I actually make my connecting flight. So, I spent the four hours in the air to Toronto doing the math about making my flight to Budapest.
It worked out fine. Our pilot had his foot on the gas and we arrived in Toronto a half hour early. By the time, I got through customs (Just have your passports ready, morons) and to my gate, I was finally calm. I also met HK who's plane came in from SFO. There was only flight to Budapest a day so all the feeder flights arrive at the same time in Toronto and those Hungary bound passengers all get on the same plane. So, HK and I were on the same flight from Toronto to Budapest.
And here is where that extra upgrade cash paid off. When I bought the upgrade, I figured I would just get some extra leg room and a discount on paying for my bags. Turns out, I actually got what looked like Business Class. I walked by my seat the first time, because I figured there was no way my upgrade was one of those big individual seats that I never sit in. But it was mine for the next nine hours. I got served a meal with actual silverware. They handed me an iPad to watch movies on. I got one of those bags with a toothbrush and socks and an eye mask in it. It was all quite sweet.
The flight went quick. I watched two movies and then I took a nap. Next thing you know, I was hearing the sweet sound of the landing gear extending from the belly of the plane. I love to hear that sound.
Since we were at the front of the plane, HK and I got to passport control quickly. Air Canada doesn't believe in sending out the bags too quickly, so it probably took 45 minutes to get the gear mountain. Guess what? It's easier to push that many bags with two people instead of one. Even though, we now had HK's bags, too.
I had arranged for transport from the airport to the hotel. There was one of those people with a sign with my name on it when I finally got through customs. When I arranged for the transport, I told them I would have ten bags. They sent an email back asking for dimensions of the bags. I sent them a photo of the Pelican mountain. They sent me a revised figure for how much it was going to cost. They needed a bigger vehicle.
HK and I are staying at the Hotel Nemzeti on Josef Ter. Ter being the word for street. I chose the hotel from pictures and price on hotels.com. My initial reaction was I chose wisely, despite the fact the neighborhood looks a bit dodgy.
The sky was overcast making the city look grey and dower. Budapest looks like it could use a good scrubbing.
I had arranged for one meeting after our arrival with our interpreter, Xenia Varga. Yes, I was making warrior princess jokes in my head. I had been going round and round with her via emails trying to straighten out the hiring. I would send an email then a week later she would email back. She was traveling or working or some such. But I finally hired her and this was our first face to face meeting.
I was thinking she would be doing some interpreting for us this first day, too, because some of the people we were here to see said they would be coming to the hotel but I hadn't heard back from then.
So, we stared on a low note when I said there wouldn't be any interpreting today, that we were just meeting. But she was bubbly and fine. HK and I told her about the project. She told us about her previous week at a life changing psychedelic camp. She also told us how she's learning massage. She mentioned that she had ridden her bike from her house so she should could drink at lunch with us. She was put off a bit when I told her I don't drink.
We ate in the hotel to make things simple. Since, I was in Hungary, I opted for the Goulash soup. I might as well get the new experiences out of the way before I spend the rest of the trip hunting for Hungarian Pizza joints. Towards the end of the meeting, the discussion turned to payment. I ran up the stairs to get the cash out of the safe.
While I was gone HK and Xenia had an interesting discussion which HK told me about later. Xenia asked HK if he wanted her to get us some women for our trip. I asked him later to clarify that Xenia was going to get us women who charge by the hour and he said yes. HK politely declined her offer. Xenia is ready to offer a multitude of services and we are probably a step down from the clients she is used to dealing with.
Always on the first day of trips overseas and multiple time zone changes, I like to stay up as late as possible to get myself acclimated. I didn't get much sleep on the plane so it was a bit of a struggle to stay up. But HK and I walked from our hotel to the Danube. We crossed the Freedom Bridge over to Buda and then down to the Chain Bridge, which is the iconic Budapest Bridge. Basically, we were out playing tourist.
I will point out that something is going wonky with my right heel. And by wonky, I mean every time I step I take, I get a nice jolt of pain running up my leg. It's like I have a massive bruise in there that doesn't react positively to any weight put on it. Basically, I'm hobbling and limping around. The walk around Budapest seemed to exacerbate it.
We found a pub to have dinner in. Our waitress was not pleased when I only ordered tap water to drink. But she perked up when she realized I would be ordering food as well. Continuing with my ethnic Hungarian theme, I had the chicken paprikash with dumplings.
HK and I got back to the hotel about 6. I resolved to stay up until at least 8 but I didn't know how. The how came in the form of a call from one our interviewees, Dr. Norbert Maday. He was one of the guys that I was supposed to meet with on Thursday but I hadn't heard from him.
One of the things, I had done when I had arrived was to send emails people telling them we had arrived and to hand out my European Cel phone number. I had purchased phones for HK and I to use while we are here. They are quite crappy and it took me a while to even figure out how to activate them.
Sorry, phone purchase side track. I purchased the phones in advance and because of some problems with the order, mainly they didn't believe I was ordering them, both phones ended up with HK, rather than one going to each of us. HK was mystified about them and couldn't give me the phone numbers from them. I wanted the numbers so I could send it to the people we were meeting. When I got my phone, I saw in the package the little card that told us how to activate the phones and get the phone numbers. When I got to the hotel and it's wifi connection, I activated the phones, got the numbers, and then sent the number out.
Dr. Norbert Maday was one of the first calls I got. Maday wrote a book on Piller. He also has a big collection of Piller memorabilia. When I would talk to people in Hungary, they always mentioned the person I should talk to was Maday.
He calls. He wants to meet Friday. Not only does he want to meet. he wants to pick up HK and I from the hotel and take us to his town 80km away to see all his historical saber fencers. The Saber Fencers were having some sort of meeting or convention and Friday was the last day they were all going to be there. Maday also pushed for us to do our interviews with him and another person on the list, Janos Mohos. I told him it would just be enough for one day to film the historical saber demonstrations.
The conversations was hard and I don't know if my point about the interviews was coming across. But I think I eventually got agreement that he was to come by to the hotel at noon, pick us up and take us to his city which he never told us the name of.
It had to be late in the day since one of the meetings I had scheduled for the morning was with Dr. Sallay Gergely at the Museum of Military History. Dr. Sallay (last name first in Hungary) and the museum had a lot of Piller's medals and military records. They were also going to license them to the film very inexpensively.
The plan for Friday was now full. We would meet with Dr. Sallay in the Morning and Dr. Maday in the afternoon. In between the two meetings I was going to run to a Film supply house here in Budapest to pick up a C-stand.
The best part of all this activity was that it kept me up until 8pm. I finally killed my lights and went to sleep.
In the days leading up to my departure, my biggest task was to consolidate the gear that I was taking with me. That consolidation amounted to eight bags of gear plus two rather heavy carry-ons. Originally I was going to rent some of the gear in Budapest but in the end it just seemed cheaper to buy video lights that worked on 220. I also decided I wasn't going without one of my RAID Hard-drives. This necessitated buying yet another Pelican Case for the trip.
The eventual count was 5 Pelican cases, 4 duffel bags and my camera back pack. The worst duffel is this long pink fencing bag HK grabbed from the West Berkeley Fencing Club. It is too long and the balance is off and it always feels much heavier than it should be. It must be stealing weight from another dimension.
I flip-flopped on how early I wanted to be at the airport. I started out thinking I should get there 3 hours early but that seemed crazy so I settled on two hours early. This meant I started the drive to LAX a little later, which put me in a little heavier section of the rush hour morning traffic. Consequently, my journey to the airport took a lot longer than planned. I arrived with about 90 minutes to get on the plane.
I'm flying Air Canada to Budapest. It stops in Toronto with only a 90 minute layover. I've done 90 minute layovers before. It never ends well. The Queen gave me a disgusted snort when I acknowledged that I hadn't checked which Terminal Air Canada departed from. I assumed it was going out of the Bradley International Terminal. I assumed wrong. But once we pulled passed the traffic surrounding Southwest's Terminal One it was smooth sailing to Terminal 2.
I also assumed there would be a Sky Cap to help me get all the bags into the Terminal. Yet again, I assumed wrong. I also saw that it was going to take more than one rented push cart to ferry all the bags. I hurriedly loaded one cart and pushed it into the terminal toward the ticket line.
The ticket lines were long and not moving very well. I had already paid for the bag mountain and gotten my boarding pass. I still had this long line in front of me. I left the first cart and went back to the curb to get the second cart. All the time, I'm hearing in my mind that constant airport announcement about what you should do if you see unattended bags in the airport. I had a whole trolley cart of them.
At this point, I may or may not have cut in line of a lot of people. I may have just walked up to an unattended Kiosk and started punching in my info to get my boarding pass. This may have happened. I asked one of the Airport staffers if I could leave my trolleys near the counter while I waited for the next available checker. She said fine.
The day before the flight, I got an email from Air Canada asking me to check-in and pay for my bags. They also asked if I would like to upgrade to something called premiere economy for the flight from Toronto to Budapest. It was only $200, so I said why not? I didn't do that for the LAX to Toronto leg because that was $500. And because I'm not a complete monster, I emailed HK and told him to do the same thing.
Back at the terminal, I noticed a shorter line to the front desk for people who have purchased priority seating. Hey, that's me! Except it wasn't priority for this particular leg of the flight. Yep, got in another line that I probably wasn't supposed to be in. Look, I can hear the countdown to departure clock in my head and it makes me cranky.
It also makes me cranky when people don't know what the fuck to do when they get up to the ticket counter. It's simple. You hand the nice woman your tickets and your passport. Then she takes your bags and you go on your way. That's not hard is it? Many people failed that test in front of me. With my eight checked bags, it took me less time than the woman with the one bag to get through this procedure.
I also spent my time in line eyeing my bags far down the counter, waiting for someone to ask why this huge stack of luggage was sitting here unattended? But I finally made it to the front and started getting all the bags on the scale. Naturally, the pink goliath had to be taken somewhere else to be loaded because it was big and long.
With a great sense of relief, I handed off the bags and headed to the departure gate. I no longer feel calm until I'm at the gate. But not completely calm. That comes when I actually make my connecting flight. So, I spent the four hours in the air to Toronto doing the math about making my flight to Budapest.
It worked out fine. Our pilot had his foot on the gas and we arrived in Toronto a half hour early. By the time, I got through customs (Just have your passports ready, morons) and to my gate, I was finally calm. I also met HK who's plane came in from SFO. There was only flight to Budapest a day so all the feeder flights arrive at the same time in Toronto and those Hungary bound passengers all get on the same plane. So, HK and I were on the same flight from Toronto to Budapest.
And here is where that extra upgrade cash paid off. When I bought the upgrade, I figured I would just get some extra leg room and a discount on paying for my bags. Turns out, I actually got what looked like Business Class. I walked by my seat the first time, because I figured there was no way my upgrade was one of those big individual seats that I never sit in. But it was mine for the next nine hours. I got served a meal with actual silverware. They handed me an iPad to watch movies on. I got one of those bags with a toothbrush and socks and an eye mask in it. It was all quite sweet.
The flight went quick. I watched two movies and then I took a nap. Next thing you know, I was hearing the sweet sound of the landing gear extending from the belly of the plane. I love to hear that sound.
Since we were at the front of the plane, HK and I got to passport control quickly. Air Canada doesn't believe in sending out the bags too quickly, so it probably took 45 minutes to get the gear mountain. Guess what? It's easier to push that many bags with two people instead of one. Even though, we now had HK's bags, too.
I had arranged for transport from the airport to the hotel. There was one of those people with a sign with my name on it when I finally got through customs. When I arranged for the transport, I told them I would have ten bags. They sent an email back asking for dimensions of the bags. I sent them a photo of the Pelican mountain. They sent me a revised figure for how much it was going to cost. They needed a bigger vehicle.
HK and I are staying at the Hotel Nemzeti on Josef Ter. Ter being the word for street. I chose the hotel from pictures and price on hotels.com. My initial reaction was I chose wisely, despite the fact the neighborhood looks a bit dodgy.
The sky was overcast making the city look grey and dower. Budapest looks like it could use a good scrubbing.
I had arranged for one meeting after our arrival with our interpreter, Xenia Varga. Yes, I was making warrior princess jokes in my head. I had been going round and round with her via emails trying to straighten out the hiring. I would send an email then a week later she would email back. She was traveling or working or some such. But I finally hired her and this was our first face to face meeting.
I was thinking she would be doing some interpreting for us this first day, too, because some of the people we were here to see said they would be coming to the hotel but I hadn't heard back from then.
So, we stared on a low note when I said there wouldn't be any interpreting today, that we were just meeting. But she was bubbly and fine. HK and I told her about the project. She told us about her previous week at a life changing psychedelic camp. She also told us how she's learning massage. She mentioned that she had ridden her bike from her house so she should could drink at lunch with us. She was put off a bit when I told her I don't drink.
We ate in the hotel to make things simple. Since, I was in Hungary, I opted for the Goulash soup. I might as well get the new experiences out of the way before I spend the rest of the trip hunting for Hungarian Pizza joints. Towards the end of the meeting, the discussion turned to payment. I ran up the stairs to get the cash out of the safe.
While I was gone HK and Xenia had an interesting discussion which HK told me about later. Xenia asked HK if he wanted her to get us some women for our trip. I asked him later to clarify that Xenia was going to get us women who charge by the hour and he said yes. HK politely declined her offer. Xenia is ready to offer a multitude of services and we are probably a step down from the clients she is used to dealing with.
Always on the first day of trips overseas and multiple time zone changes, I like to stay up as late as possible to get myself acclimated. I didn't get much sleep on the plane so it was a bit of a struggle to stay up. But HK and I walked from our hotel to the Danube. We crossed the Freedom Bridge over to Buda and then down to the Chain Bridge, which is the iconic Budapest Bridge. Basically, we were out playing tourist.
I will point out that something is going wonky with my right heel. And by wonky, I mean every time I step I take, I get a nice jolt of pain running up my leg. It's like I have a massive bruise in there that doesn't react positively to any weight put on it. Basically, I'm hobbling and limping around. The walk around Budapest seemed to exacerbate it.
We found a pub to have dinner in. Our waitress was not pleased when I only ordered tap water to drink. But she perked up when she realized I would be ordering food as well. Continuing with my ethnic Hungarian theme, I had the chicken paprikash with dumplings.
HK and I got back to the hotel about 6. I resolved to stay up until at least 8 but I didn't know how. The how came in the form of a call from one our interviewees, Dr. Norbert Maday. He was one of the guys that I was supposed to meet with on Thursday but I hadn't heard from him.
One of the things, I had done when I had arrived was to send emails people telling them we had arrived and to hand out my European Cel phone number. I had purchased phones for HK and I to use while we are here. They are quite crappy and it took me a while to even figure out how to activate them.
Sorry, phone purchase side track. I purchased the phones in advance and because of some problems with the order, mainly they didn't believe I was ordering them, both phones ended up with HK, rather than one going to each of us. HK was mystified about them and couldn't give me the phone numbers from them. I wanted the numbers so I could send it to the people we were meeting. When I got my phone, I saw in the package the little card that told us how to activate the phones and get the phone numbers. When I got to the hotel and it's wifi connection, I activated the phones, got the numbers, and then sent the number out.
Dr. Norbert Maday was one of the first calls I got. Maday wrote a book on Piller. He also has a big collection of Piller memorabilia. When I would talk to people in Hungary, they always mentioned the person I should talk to was Maday.
He calls. He wants to meet Friday. Not only does he want to meet. he wants to pick up HK and I from the hotel and take us to his town 80km away to see all his historical saber fencers. The Saber Fencers were having some sort of meeting or convention and Friday was the last day they were all going to be there. Maday also pushed for us to do our interviews with him and another person on the list, Janos Mohos. I told him it would just be enough for one day to film the historical saber demonstrations.
The conversations was hard and I don't know if my point about the interviews was coming across. But I think I eventually got agreement that he was to come by to the hotel at noon, pick us up and take us to his city which he never told us the name of.
It had to be late in the day since one of the meetings I had scheduled for the morning was with Dr. Sallay Gergely at the Museum of Military History. Dr. Sallay (last name first in Hungary) and the museum had a lot of Piller's medals and military records. They were also going to license them to the film very inexpensively.
The plan for Friday was now full. We would meet with Dr. Sallay in the Morning and Dr. Maday in the afternoon. In between the two meetings I was going to run to a Film supply house here in Budapest to pick up a C-stand.
The best part of all this activity was that it kept me up until 8pm. I finally killed my lights and went to sleep.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm