Oops!!

Last week was fun. We drank shots of palinka, entertained a new friend for dinner, and hopped a train to Moscow. That last bit might have been the highlight of our year–if our destination hadn’t been Bratislava.

Running a bit behind schedule, we had scurried onto the train that was parked on the usual Bratislava-bound track, rushed to grab one of the handful of scattered and available seats, and cajoled the neighboring passengers to collect their sweaters and books and salami sandwiches so that we could sit. 

The train was sweltering; despite the open windows, there was no trace of a breeze. I realized this was going to be a long ride. In our adrenaline rush, it didn’t occur to us to verify the train was, in fact, destined for Bratislava.

Five minutes before departure time, the train left the station. Hungary is a country where trains run fashionable late–never early. I glanced back at Pat, both of us clearly startled. Excuse me,” I said to the conductor, “Is this the train to Bratislava?” 

“Nyet.”   

The unsmiling people–to this point displaying no noticeable sense of humor–guffawed. Ten minutes outside of Budapest, at a stop which Igor christened let the Callahan’s off the train, we exited.

We stood on the platform and laughed–not a nervous oh crap twitter, but a bend over and grab your stomach belly laugh. The passengers raucously joined us, their laughter only fading once the train chugged on down the track. 

We snapped a quick photo of the Russian Railways and Moskau-Belgrad signs on the engine which only made us laugh harder. We reflected on the obvious signs we had missed: the forlorn, brown-garbed passengers; a sweltering car smelling of too many miles already travelled; a group of people with not one natural-born comic in their midst.

An attendant on the platform told us trains to Budapest Keleti don’t stop here (he politely left out that trains from Keleti generally don’t stop here either). He pointed in the general direction of the number 1 tram and did his best to describe the route back to Keleti. 

Fortunately, Pat and I were familiar with the 1 tram. We had taken it by accident a few weeks earlier on our way home from the market instead of the 14 tram.

We easily found the tram stop and deciphered the route map back to Keleti, returning in time to unwind over a beer and get all the Moscow jokes out of our system. Everyone agreed the story value offset the inconvenience. Not until days later did I realize the misadventure could fill my blog writer’s block.

Still and all, in spite of the laughter, my internal critic chastised me and wondered if our life will always be a series of trains to Moscow. 

The rest of me was pretty excited. 

How cool that we actually can take a train to Moscow. We managed to laugh off one of our bigger mistakes yet. And we recovered. It was a bonus that we found a restaurant at Keleti with good beer and seemingly decent food.

We caught the next train to Bratislava, tucking ourselves into our seats only after repeated validations that “Yes, this is the train to Bratislava.” The car was cooler, the people friendlier. They didn’t look like people who laughed at misfortune. As we sat down, I told my husband “All’s well that ends well.”

This weekend back in Budapest, after the embarrassment and silliness subsided, I sat down at my desk to catch up on my journal. Years ago I had scribbled a bucket list in the back. I rarely look at it:

•  Live overseas (Done)
•  Start a blog (Also done – I had forgotten this one!)
•  Read Don Quixote (Picked up a copy on my way home Friday)

On the bottom I appended “Take the train to Moscow.” How cool would that be? And to think, before last week, I hadn’t realized it was possible.

Categories: Ruminations

Tags: Expat life, US Expats in Europe, US Expats in Hungary