Paphos People

BUDAPEST 2021

This is the story of our pre-Christmas break in Hungary. It was all booked, our weekend break to Budapest from the tenth to the fourteenth of December 2021.
The Ryanair flights were booked.
The hotel was booked with a no charge cancellation option up to the day before travel.
‘Tino’ our dog was booked into Hilary’s kennels, he likes her and she sends us updates and photos of his holidays.
The car was booked into the long-stay car park at Paphos Airport.
There was a straight forward shuttle bus service taking you from the airport into the centre of Budapest and the Hotel was a seven minute walk from the bus stop.
In fact everything was booked and foolproof. We thought.

Two weeks before we went my wife spotted that the hotel was offering reduced tariff on ‘Black Friday’. So she cancelled the original booking in her name, and re-booked using my bank card and email address. During the following week the price dropped again, so she reversed the process using the original card and email details. Blow me down, a few days later the Hotel reduced the price again. So she reversed the booking again back to my card and email details. That was a total saving to us both of over one hundred and fifty Euros.

The tenth arrived, the dog trotted into his holiday camp with barely a second glance back at us.
The car parking space was accepted and the exit ticket printed off for the fourteenth at 20.30.
The formalities at the airport were straightforward and we were sat in the departure lounge in plenty of time.
Easy peasy we thought.
Everybody was obeying the covid rules social distancing, face masks and everything was going great. In walked a man with no mask, carrying hand luggage and a huge pillowcase sized plastic bag of bananas. Dumping his luggage on a seat he proceeded to wander round the airport. People looked at each other and we were waiting for the bomb squad to appear, surround the abandoned luggage, then take it away to a remote part of the airfield and blow it up! Bananas and personal belongings would be raining down on the surrounding countryside.
But no, he came back, sat down and took his shoes off you could hear them humming from where we were! One of the airport staff stopped and asked him to put on his mask. He took out a banana and began eating it, followed by another three, all the skins neatly laid out on the seat next to him. As long as he was eating he didn’t need a mask!
Eventually the flight was called and we all queued up to get on the plane we found ourselves behind BANANA MAN!
My wife said that if we were sat next to him she wasn’t going. For a start she has an aversion to bananas!
As luck had it he was seated four rows in front of us, no mask and munching bananas throughout the two and a half hour flight.
At Budapest airport there was a long snaking line for passport inspection, guess who we ended up behind, yes BANANA MAN, by this time he was about halfway through his bag of fruit but it was still heavy so he put it on the floor halfway down the line, scooping it across every time he came to it again.
My wife was getting concerned “If he is staying at our hotel we’re changing venues”
When we got to the passport desk, everybody was relieved to hear him ask where to go for a connecting flight to Moldovia.

Tickets for the bus were obtained from a vending machine and a debit card. By this time it was dark and quite cold and the half hour ride seemed longer. Alighting at the correct stop we looked for the route to the Opera Hotel, a seven minute walk, after asking three or four people and getting no results nobody seemed to understand the word Opera. It was getting colder and colder. We ended up in the underground station and were told to get two trains then ask again! That didn’t sound right to us so back up to ground level and try again. We asked a young couple who had a good understanding of English. He put it into his mobile device and came up with a map. Setting off in the direction he indicated we got lost. Bewildered we were discussing what to do next when a young man stopped to see if we needed help. We must have looked like an old couple lost in a strange place. Which we were! He couldn’t help with directions so we asked where we could get a Taxi.
My wife held her hand up and one stopped, piling in we found that the driver spoke very little or no English, taking out the hotel details we showed him. After a little thought, he spoke “HA!” doing a ‘U’ turn in the busy road he headed off. After about five minutes he turned into a side street and pulled up outside a smallish Hotel.
“How much?” I asked.
He held up two fingers, I only had some ridiculously large values of notes so I offered him a ten thousand Florents note. He took out a huge wad of notes and proceeded to count out my change. Picking them up we got out of the taxi and went into the hotel wondering what I had just paid the taxi driver. It turned out that we had paid the equivalent of five euro - worth every cent!
The hotel was warm and the staff very efficient from a smallish frontage it opened up into a huge premises with a hundred bedrooms, business meeting rooms, and a very comfortable lounge. In the warmth and safety of our room we decided to take an early night and were soon asleep.

Next morning we were awake at the ridiculous time of five thirty so we decided to take a walk and familiarise ourselves with the area. The hotel was next to a huge building site behind a long curtain one place back from the main street. After completing a huge circle we arrived back at the hotel in time for breakfast, a superb buffet with nothing spared. So well rested and well fed we set off to explore the City.
After a seven minute walk guess where we were? That’s right the bus stop from the night before DOH!
It is an amazing city, huge buildings all built of stone or brick as decreed in the 1840’s. This was after the devastating flood of 1838 when thousands of people lost everything as their houses were destroyed by the icy waters of the river Danube.
Taking the hop on hop off sightseeing tour bus, plus a river trip showing the city from a different aspect we saw everything worth seeing. But it was cold!
Stopping at a restaurant at lunchtime two cauldrons of delicious goulash soup with crusty bread and a couple of glasses of wine soon warmed us up.
During our travels we had spotted a genuine Irish pub and decided to go there that evening, run by two Irish lads we were welcomed enthusiastically. Ordering a pint of Guinness and a red wine, the guy asked me for about three thousand seven hundred florents.
“I bet you feel like you just bought a small car don’t you – but you will get used to it after a few months” he said with a broad grin.

The next day was a touristy day, shopping and stuff you know, at lunch time we were in one of the huge shopping squares when suddenly a commotion started Ho! Ho! Ho! the sound of many people approached. It was about two hundred nearly naked Santas raising money for the Orphans. Men dressed in bright red thongs and a Santa hat, Women dressed in red bikinis and the same hats. As they got to the big road junction they all linked arms and danced in and out of the traffic. IT WAS ONLY TWO DEGREES CENTIGRADE!! Barmy.

On Tuesday it was the last day and we had to go home. We had to vacate the room by eleven o clock. So all paid up we had a couple of hours to kill. “Can we just sit in the reception area for a while?” asked my wife.
“NO YOU MUST LEAVE NOW” said the receptionist. Instantly he burst into laughter. “Your faces are a picture” he said “I have watched your Fawlty Towers and know how to treat the English”
He added “Please stay as long as you need to”

The trip back to the airport was so much easier now that we had an idea of the layout of the city and half an hour later we were there. We had a quantity of small change so my wife said she would go and buy some food or something. She came back with a medium sized packet of crisps!

Home at last!