the Orient Express

arise early, before the sun, stumble to the WestBahnhof here in Wien, and board a EuroCity, the Orient Express, which it isn’t really, as it is only running from Paris to Bucharest. nothing more. (has any murder happened on this train?) heading East in the former Bloc, nine years after. unknowing how things have changed for lack of reference points. velvet green fields, uniform hedge-grows. raptors abound. (death-from-above, as the 1st US Cavalry called themselves in Viet Nam, chopper-bound in Bell-Hueys and Loaches…) north wind is blowing. and I am acutely aware of the weakness of my English. that it does not burst or bind spells on any reader. where are we? I ask. I forget my English, I forget time. it’s the middle of March, she says, her forehead is almost touching my shoulder. I am aware of this. the middle of March, almost spring, well, it is spring this year. the weather is strange. It is the National Independence Day for Hungary today, an auspicious day to arrive in Budapest. Diana’s bus is late and I wander around the Keleti station for 30 minutes oscillating between a helpless feeling and a self-critical distance — seeing myself as being way too soft as a traveler. not able to cope with a simple foreign environment where I can not interact with the language nor rely on (m)any people speaking English. good thing I have bought some Hungarian forint (money) on the train from a guy who was wandering through the first class car. I changed 20 Deutsch marks and got 2100 Hungarian forint. I took the 100 forint piece and stuck it into a phone to call Diana, but it jammed in the slot. so much for knowing the local system. I couldn’t get a feel for the costs nor could I work up the nerve to get into a gesturing match in order to get smaller change. out of shape and soft, no doubt. (I have been suspicious of this as I ply familiar routes across Germany, England, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and the other few countries that I bumble around in). what about China or India? but just as I hang up the phone (I bought a phone card), Diana walks up. we go back to her new flat, and then head out to meet a friend of hers, Margit, to take a walk and visit other friends, Atilla, Roza, and their daughter Anna.

Atilla excepted, we start out on a walk, but lose Roza and Anna on a detour to the playground which later is discovered no longer to exist. Diana, Margit, and I continue, at Margit’s urging, to the glider port, a huge open field that is defined, to me, primarily, by a strong cold wind blowing from the north to the south. there are a few hang-gliders coming off a nearby hill crest, and the wind is so strong that they have some difficulty flying into it. no thermals today. the three of us huddle on the grass for a time watching. we meet Roza and Anna later and all of us pile into their Lada and drive into town to Roza and Atilla’s flat. Roza has made a plate of snacks so we sit in the living room and talk. Anna begins to sing:

she is astonished when I start to sing along with her, as I have not said anything to her that makes linguistic sense so far that day, she overcomes her natural shyness completely at this point.