Life and Times of AlieMalie

I tried to think of the scariest thing I could put at the top of my blog that would make everyone jump and run screaming into the darkness but I was having some trouble. Jack-o-lantern? Nope. Black cat? Naw. Ghosts? Perhaps, but no. And then I thought of it:

Continued from Part Three.

Cecilia never called, as was to be expected by this time. If I’d paid attention to the red flags leading up to the trip and then the other red flags that appeared in the first two weeks, I never would have stayed in Romania as long as I did, but then again, I wouldn’t have this grand adventure to write about. At the time I was terrified I’d never get home, at least now I can laugh at it and think of all the crazy things that happened. It takes some time though.

I finally decided that I was going to go back to Budapest, collect my things and fly home. This would require me to buy a new ticket to London or Paris, rebook my tickets for December for October and go home. I wasn’t exactly sure how this would play out, but it was a better bet than continuing to wait in Romania for Cecilia to call. I managed to tell Tony and Ilonka that I wanted to go to Budapest and then to the airport. This caused a great amount of consternation on Tony’s part because he wasn’t ready to go back to Budapest, he had to take care of things around the farm and in Borsec, but thanks to Ilonka, things were eventually smoothed out and we decided that we’d take the bus down to the train station and get us a train to Hungary. This was after much screaming and yelling on Tony’s and my parts. At each other. I have no idea what he was trying to tell me since I don’t speak much Hungarian, but each time I shrugged my shoulders he said it a bit louder, ya know, ’cause through divine intervention, the louder you say something, the more likely it is that the other person will understand. It escalated to the point where I’m almost 100% sure I was having profanities yelled in my direction in Hungarian. So what? I decided that I could yell too! I think I did the healthiest thing possible for me at the moment and yelled, “Fuck you!” at the top of my lungs and went outside to cool off. Not the most gracious of guests, but Tony and I really didn’t get along too well.

Anyway, the day to go back to Budapest arrived and Tony and I made our way down to the bus stop in town that morning. The train didn’t arrive at the station ’til about 9 in the evening, but there was only one bus and it came through town pretty early. This gave us the opportunity to kill quite a few hours at the train station. Tony spent the majority of the time pacing up and down the platform while I curled up on one of the benches and started writing in my journal. I remember a woman going completely nuts, screaming and yelling about something, going through hysterics though no one was giving her any mind. Then there was the extremely drunk man who came over, sat down next to me and started a barrage of questions aimed in my direction. I shrugged my shoulders, shook my head, and tried to communicate that I had no idea what he was saying, after awhile Tony came back and told the man, in what was definitely no uncertain terms, that he needed to leave and never come back. I definitely understood that part. hehe.

The train finally arrived and we packed on for the 13 hours back to Budapest. We arrived into Nyugati station (as an aside, Nyugati was designed by none other than Gustave Eiffel of Eiffel Tower fame, click on the link and you’ll see some similarities in design with the steel) and immediately caught a cab to the home of the people who were holding my violin. As it turned out, they were super nice and spoke flawless English. We had some tea and spoke for a bit before I decided it was time for me to continue on to the airport. I bid everyone goodbye, well, really good riddance to Tony, hopped in a cab and high-tailed it to Ferihegy. I was sooooo happy to be at the airport because one of the big metal birds could take me back to what I would consider a safe and happy place: home. Whee.

I managed to buy a super cheap ticket to London for something like $150 and the woman even managed to rebook me from London all the way home at no extra charge. I’d have to change airports once I reached London from Gatwick to Heathrow, but that was no problem, the trains and Tube work wonders. Wonderful. I checked my bags and went through customs. I handed over my passport, had it stamped that I left Hungary, and proceeded to the waiting lounge. I had hours to wait since I’d arrived at the airport in the early afternoon and my flight didn’t leave ’til sometime in the late evening. I didn’t care, I had my ticket in hand. I sat and read and wrote and watched the planes taking off and landing. Finally the plane that would be taking me to London arrived at the gate and unloaded. Unfortunately, it had a hydraulic problem and wouldn’t be leaving Budapest that evening. Not only that, it was supposed to be the last flight for this particular carrier so they were going to have to rebook people on other flights either the next day or on different carriers.

When they started announcing cities people needed to go to, everyone just converged on the ticketing desk. It was a sheer mass of humanity. I tried to tell them that I needed to get to London but there were no flights on this carrier and no available seats to London on any other carrier leaving Budapest that evening. I had no idea what to do. I tried volunteering to go to other cities such as Rome or Paris thinking that I’d be able to then catch another flight to North America and then rebook my connecting flight in the US back home. Nothing was working, apparently I fell pretty low on the priority list when it came to cities other than London. Then they started announcing cities in the US and Canada. I volunteered to fly to Toronto because in my mind, at least I’d be on the same damn continent as my home and if all else failed, someone could then drive to pick me up. I didn’t care that it was nearly 2,000 miles from my home. Hell, I could start walking. I just wanted to go. Well, no luck there either. Eventually, British Midland managed scrounge around to book me a ticket on the last flight on British Airways leaving for London in a matter of minutes. The only thing was that I had to get my baggage and recheck it on the BA flight. This required me to “reenter” Hungary through customs since I’d technically left, reclaim my bags, recheck them on the BA flight and then “leave” again. So my passport has four stamps entering and leaving Hungary all on the same day. Anyway, we get to the gate, they’ve actually held the plane for a couple of minutes and it turns out that not only have they booked me a seat, but they’ve gotten the only one available: in first class no less. wo0t!

So I made it to London-Gatwick and needed to take the train to London-Heathrow to make my connecting flight. Unfortunately, one of the worst disasters in London train history had occurred earlier that day and some of the trains weren’t running. This included mine. They had a bus running from one airport to the other, but by the time I reached Heathrow my flight had already left. They promptly rebooked me on an early morning flight and gave me a room at a super swanky hotel. Was very nice. At least I was well taken care of with regards to the airlines.

So I eventually made it home despite nearly missing my connection in Dallas as well. As it turned out, Cecilia ended up in the hospital in Paris with an ecoli infection that caused her to miscarry her pregnancy. When she returned home to Houston she had the audacity to call my mother and tell her that the reason she had miscarried was because I had caused her to have so much stress and anguish. What a total crock. Then she called later that year to wish us a Merry Christmas. I was the one who ended up taking that call since my mother couldn’t stand to talk with her. I spent about 30 seconds on the phone before telling her I had to go.

I thought that would be the end of this story when I wrote it a couple of weeks ago, but strangely enough she called a week and a half ago. I was not amused, to put it lightly. Hopefully she’s gone for good now.

As for traveling, I’ve often wondered why this particular trip didn’t put a damper on my want/need to go. In reality, once I finally got settled back home and into my normal routine, it seemed as if this trip only made me want to travel even more. I guess if I could go through all that, everything else travel wise would be a walk in the park.

To those of you in Canada and certain parts of New York who have already had snow, have snow at the moment, or are predicting snow, I have three words: DON’T TELL ME. Telling me only increases my snow lust and seeing the photos that I – for reasons unknown – inflict upon myself after hearing of said snow is like a stab to the heart.

Just remember though, when you start grumbling about how your seven feet of snow keeps you from getting out of your house in the middle of January or you’ve only seen the sun for 23 seconds in the past 12 days or when you start telling me that it takes you half an hour to get dressed in the mornings because you have to put on 17 layers of clothing, JUST REMEMBER THAT I SHALL RETALIATE BY POSTING PHOTOS OF THE BEACH THAT I JUST RETURNED FROM WHERE I GOT A TAN. Oh, and I’ll also say something about the fact that I can wear my flip-flops 365 days a year.

Hmph.

I still want snow.

I never thought that one margarita, a fajita dinner, and one shot of tequila would leave me feeling hung over the next morning. It’s not a terrible hangover but this slight headache could leave and I’d be a lot happier. I think it’s a myth that college students and people in their early twenties can drink a lot and be perfectly fine the next day. That’s happened once. But meh, maybe I just don’t drink enough and need to build up my tolerance. Bring on Halloween. We’ll see what happens then.

My fuse has been a bit short in the past couple of days, I think it’s because I’m becoming a bit depressed with this lack of sunshine – no joke, shorter days make me grumpy, even though I like the cooler weather.

Anyway, there are a couple of boys who sit at the very back of my Language class, two rows behind me, who hold a continuous conversation during the entire class period. Normally I’m able to ignore it, but that takes some conscious effort. Today I wasn’t feeling it, and to be completely honest, I’m getting really sick and tired of constantly hearing this whisper going on in back. And I’m not the only one, there are other people on my side of the classroom who are annoyed by this as well. So today I tried getting to them to shut up. I first attempted the AlieMalie death stare. Didn’t work. Tried the really short and mean, “Shh.” The antagonistic type reserved for the most annoying types of morons – you know those types in movie theatres who will just not shut up? That. Anyway, that didn’t work either. Finally, before I knew what was happening – my mouth started moving before my brain registered that I was talking – I whipped my head around, looked the main guy dead in the eye and hissed, “Would you please be quiet? It’s really difficult to hear the lecture when all I can hear is you. This has been going on for weeks.” The professor asked what was going on and I just launched into classic AlieMalie bitch mode and told her that these two fools have been going at it since the first day of class, it’s really difficult to pay attention to the lecture because I can’t hear her well over the rumble at the back of class and that I want it to stop. Hah!

I did stay after class to apologise to the prof. She said that while she understood, next time I should mention it before or after class as I’d really embarrassed the two students in question. I understand the asking before or after class to save face for myself because, to be honest, I really wasn’t very diplomatic about it and normally it’s more my style to try to be nice to begin with, but I couldn’t care less that the two boys in back were embarrassed.