Escape From Istanbul

Day: 37

Today I am finally going to get out of Istanbul, my flight to Budapest is scheduled to leave 3:35pm and I don’t really have much to do until my flight. I woke up early and spent a leisurely morning in the hostel, blogging, editing, and talking to everyone. Around 10:15am I decided I needed a shave even if the hostel sink only had cold water. After a cold water shave (ouch!) I went back to my room to gather my stuff and pack my bag (dirty clothes on the bottom) for the flight. There I meant Carrie (an American with a masters in Finance), who had just arrived and is on her own 11 month round the world trip headed in roughly the same direction as me and we got to talking, and decided to head out to have some lunch in about an hour, before my 1 pm shuttle and after she dropped off her laundry to be cleaned.

I spent the next hour upstairs talking to Jasper and some others about his cabin on the coast of Maine where I am invited anytime I am in the region, he bragged about scallops the size of filets and fresh lobster anytime. Carrie showed up and was starving so her and I headed out to eat and just talked some more about impending adulthood, our careers and lack thereof and how she felt it was time to move on before she felt anymore like a 40 year old. I really agreed with her, and understand the need to just escape the forms that society agrees with. We wrapped up lunch and went back to the hostel to show her some of the pictures I had taken over the last 36 days. It was getting close to time to get to the shuttle stop, so I headed over and told Jasper (who was having lunch with Yasemine, the travel agent) that it was time to get to the airport for our flights. We said our goodbyes to everyone and I promised Carrie that if we ended up in the same region some time in the future we would meet up.

I am convinced that all airports look the same. The one here in Istanbul is about the size of LAX and the only real difference is that the beers cost more here ($8). It didn’t really matter though because I had spent my last 8 lire on lunch, so I was broke anyhow and didn’t want to withdraw anymore just before leaving the country.

A two hour flight and a hour into the past(time change) and I arrived in Budapest where I caught a bus to the metro station, and took the train to the stop of the hostel on the flyer I had picked up in Switzerland. I found the little hostel and walked in the front door and it looked like I just walked into someone’s kitchen, the hostel has 21 beds in three rooms and a common room, it’s probably smaller than the house I sold in Riverside. Well everyone seemed cool so I stayed. I took a shower and got directions to a restaurant that sold cheap Hungarian food, for dinner I had a bowl of goulash and a plate of pork cutlets cordon blue. It was basically a giant plate of fried meat and fried potatoes covered in cheese, with 2 beers it only cost $10. I am going to get fat.

When I got back to the hostel, with the bottle of vodka I bought, everyone told me it was poker night and was invited to join. I played for a couple of hours, and lost somewhere in the middle of the tournament to a stupid play (probably because of the Hungarain rule that if you win a hand you have to do a shot, I had won a bunch of small hands). After the game around 11pm we headed out to the club.

Three clubs and two taxis later it was 3:30 in the morning and I had been separated from the rest of the group of 10 that we had started with and I was surrounded by Hungarians with no idea where I was. I had another beer and tried to remember the metro stop where the hostel was near. After about 20 minutes I found that I still had the flyer in my back pocket with a map of Budapest, I found a taxi, gave his 1500 ($7) and got a ride back, and passed out.