jenjoy

Single Serving Friends

“Can I buy you a drink?” the man asks me, nodding towards the Budapest Airport Food Court.

It’s not what you think.  He is in his late seventies, short and stout, his skin puffy, hands calloused from a life of hard work.  He shuffles over to the line.  “I hate to drink alone”, he says, and even though it’s nine in the morning, he slides a cold bottle of beer off the mountain of ice in the cooler.  His accent is hard to place, Scottish with a hint of Hungarian.

We met a few hours earlier, on the airport shuttle.  He had kissed and hugged a petite white haired woman, standing in her flowered housedress on the cobblestones of the Pest side of the city.  She fought back tears and grasped her hands in sorrow as he climbed stiffly aboard the van.  At the airport he had struggled with his small piece of luggage and I had helped him lift it to the scale at the check-in kiosk.

Sitting on the uncomfortable molded plastic chairs in the airport, I was wanting a bottle of water.  Out of Hungarian Florints, I was debating using my credit card at one of the gift shops when he caught my eye from across the aisle.  Moments later, his beer cracked open, he begins to tell me his story; his glory as a resistance fighter against the Soviets and his narrow escape after the failed 1956 revolt.  He had donned a fake mustache, snuck across the border into Austria and made his way to a safe haven in Spain.  Finally landing in a small English town near the Scottish border, he fell in love, married and had a family.  None of his children spoke Hungarian and that deeply saddened him.  For twenty years he lost touch with his family, his parents had died, his sister married, all behind the Iron Curtain.

Now, every summer, he come back to visit his sister.  They are still making up for lost time but feel the march of age.  Every visit may be their last.

And just when I thought my trip was over, that I had run out of time, I met one more single-serving friend.  A person that reminded me that the world is a bigger than just me, and more compelling.

Single-serving friends are one of the greatest gifts of travel, especially solo travel.  The thread of bonding sometimes too thin to see, you strike up conversations or even quiet companionship with a fellow traveler, for the most meager of reasons. A common destination, language or event is enough of a reason to bond.  Differences that normally seem insurmountable are ignored in favor of camaraderie.  Ten minutes, ten hours or ten days, a single-serving friendship is solid, in a temporary sort of way.  Serving you both until….well, it doesn’t anymore.

Having a drink in the Budapest Airport with my new friend allowed me to glimpse deeper into the heart of this country, to feel its pain and the joy of its rebirth, as seen through the eyes of a seventy year old man.  A man whose name I will never know.

My single-serving friend.

Budapest Millennium Line

I step outside my friend's Budapest apartment, into the blistering mid-morning heat.  Today's temperature has forced me to into the bowels of Budapest, into the subway system.  Skirting the sun, which is heating up the cobblestones at an alarming rapid rate, I head to the Opera stop on the M1 line, also known as the yellow line. 

I've broken into a sweat on my short two block walk to the Metro stop, from the heat and the anxiety
of  being by myself in a strange city.   I've only been here two days, and while the people are very friendly, the language is difficult and the city of Budapest has an odd feeling to it.    I am not yet comfortable here, amid the crumbling buildings and the smell of old sewer systems.

Being charmed by a subway line wasn't what I was expecting. .  Down one short flight of stairs, I smell the sweet chill in the air and I am transported into another time, a bygone era.   The M1 line is the oldest subway line on the continent, the metro in London being the oldest in Europe.  Constructed in 1894, the Millennium Line, was built for Hungary's  Magyar Conquest millennial celebration in 1896, and leads directly down Andrassy Street to Hero's Square.  The late 1800's were a prosperous time for the Hungarians, having just come out of 150 years of occupation by the Turks and the Hofburgs of Austria.  Little did they know they were living on borrowed time.  That in less than twenty-five years they would be involved in a World War and lose two thirds of their country.  And twenty-five years after that  they would be taken over by Communism after a second World War.

Budapest recently renovated all the stops along this metro line, capturing the elegance of the 1890's.
White and brown tiles adorn the walls, while wood cabinets bookmark each end of the space.  The exposed steel beams have been painted brown and are topped with gold molding.  The wooden ticket booths have also been lovingly restored, even though they are not operational.  The only modern equipment cluttering this area are the ticket machine, the stamping machine and the digital clock mounted above the rails counting down to the next train.

At one time the train cars were wood, but they have now been replaced by steel cars, painted yellow.
The cars are small and independent of each other.  Leather straps hang from the ceiling as
hand holds.  The track is loud and squeaky and reminds me of that first long haul up an old roller coaster, the clicking of the train moving over the tracks, slow screeches on the turns.

This metro line, the Millennium Line, is representative of Budapest and Hungary.  Renovating itself
after years of neglect under communist control.   Soon it too will stand tall and proud, restored to
the glory of bygone years and a testament to the longevity of perseverance.