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I wrote previously about an encounter with the shelf toilet and how I was quite disturbed by the matter and the realization of how this toilet worked. There's no need to go back in to it, but if you're curious, read the link. I give the goods in there.       Needless to say, I knew that that wasn't the last I'd see of Mister Shelf, so naturally, when making a quick stop to a restroom at a cafe in Budapest, I ran in to my old friend again. I was perturbed. I was confused. I was scared. I took a photo of course. Countries should really put down a mandate to get rid of these things. They weird me out even more than the restroom in the N'Djili Airport in Kinshasa, Congo, which has to be the most sordid room I've ever made the mistake of entering.       But while the Shelf is getting to be a somewhat common encounter throughout my Eastern European journeys, one item I ran in to was even stranger still, which was the Advertising Urinal. I encountered this new bastion of marketing in the restroom in a mall near Moscow Square in Budapest. At first, it doesn't seem all that strange, but once it detects your presence, it lights up a message on top of the urinal. It's a wee bit unnerving. If an establishment must, putting advertising on the wall above the urinal is one thing. Putting said advertising with back lighting on top of the urinal is something altogether different and unholy. I have no idea how this came about and I hope that it stops where it is lest fleets of illuminated urinals spread forth across the Western World. Watch out ladies, or the backlit toilet dispenser will be next.

Prior to going to the airport for Budapest, I heard many accounts about how great the taxis or minibuses were. "Just a mere 24€!" some people said. Locals told me that taking a taxi out to the airport was the best way to get there as well. But, with taxis costing about 5,000 Forint (20€) for two people (if they felt like being honest) I thought that there must be a better way.       Yes, of course there is a better way, but naturally it involves public transportation which an amazing amount of people loathe. I don't know why as it's generally about as fast as a taxi, much cheaper, and eschews the whole issue of having to deal with taxi drivers who are, the devil.       So, here it is. This is how you get from the center of Budpaest to the airport on public transportation. If you can take the #3 line directly to Kőbánya-Kispest, then you don't need to transfer and the whole trip will cost two people, 1,000 Forint or 4€. If you do need to take two lines and transfer at a station like Deák tér, then the trip will run you 1380 Forint or about 5.50€. Once you get off the #3 Metro at Kőbánya-Kispest, then you take the #200 bus out to the airport and get off at your respective terminal.       That's it. It takes between 45-75 minutes depending on if you hit the train and bus connection right, but otherwise, it's incredibly simple. Just know which terminal your flight is at (this really only matters if it's 1 or 2A/B) and you're set. Taxi avoided. Flight reached. Money saved. It does help if you buy your tickets at the ticket window in the Metro. Just say, "airport" and they'll give you what you need to get to the airport from the station where you're buying the ticket.

While staying in Budapest, I found out that decently big employer in the area was Ebay Germany. It turns out that they are running the bulk of their customer support operations in Hungary. For those in the US, the question is bound to be, "Why?" India is supposedly the cheapest place to outsource this type of thing, so why on earth would Ebay outsource part of their business to a country in Europe and one that is in the EU at that? The answer is quite obvious in the fact that Indians do not speak German, whereas a great many Hungarians do. Then of course there is the fact that Hungary is on the Forint and not the Euro, plus the fact that Hungarian wages are vastly lower than those in Germany.       It is quickly obvious for a US customer calling customer support that they are speaking to someone in India due to the heavy accent and the odd beeps and blips over the phone connection. But when a German calls or emails customer support for Ebay Germany, the fact that the person on the other end of the line is not only not German, but not even in Germany isn't made clear. Much like a number of Indian call centers who have their workers take on a more "American" (WASPish) name to communicate with the callers, the Hungarians take on a more German name like Lara or Hans for all their communications. While this is done partially for the ease of the German speaker, it is also done so that the German caller doesn't know that the Hungarian on the other end of the line is in Hungary. If this were to become common knowledge, the Germans would be terrible unhappy about it as it is seen as taking away jobs from Germans, which is quite justifiable concern.       Keeping these jobs in the EU where the wages are lower is a lot like what some American companies are doing where they, "insource" jobs to areas of the US where wages are lower. Is this an inherently bad practice? It is a method to keep costs down, but at the same time jobs are created, so I would have say it's a neutral to slightly positive action despite it being purely motivated by the almighty financial bottom line. Because it's within a singular economic environment (the EU) it's not the artificial invisible hand that can ruin local economies like the Western-backed manufacturing facilities in Asia do. As I've often stated, any external force on a local economy that cannot be removed without it collapsing the lives of those who are employed by this external force and the community surrounding those lives, is an incredibly malevolent entity.       The only truly bad part of this is that Ebay Germany is not being honest with their German customers. It should be known that those working in their customer service department are at least Hungarian and not German. Then beyond that, it's the customer's decision in how to use this information and decide if they want to continue doing business with the company knowing the truth of their business practices.

It was while dining at Liszt Ferenc tér that I really got a taste of how tipping works in Budapest. I have to say that I'm a rather big opponent of the tipping culture in general, so what I found in Budapest what shocking to find in a European capital.       Here's the thing in that if you generally stay out of touristic areas, tips aren't such a problem in Budapest, but even still, the general system works in such a way that the tip is mandatory. A low key restaurant will only put on 5% or so for a tip. This is tolerable, although it still goes against the grain of Europe at large wherein the customer completely decides the tip based upon the service received. But, if you move in to an area that is more touristed, this automatic tip grows a great deal. It will often be a minimum of 10% and can be as much as 15%. The customer is not informed of this either at lesser restaurants, due to their inclusion of how much the tip is in clandestine spots on the menu.       Beyond this, you can also have an experience like I did where you go to a place, the food was okay and the service atrocious, only to find that a whopping 12% tip was added to your bill without your asking, which is out of line even in a tip-happy place like San Francisco. In addition to this they say the take credit cards, but the machine is supposedly broken (a common ploy.) So then you want to pay in Forint only to discover that you don't have quite enough, but they give the option of paying in Euros as well. The only catch is that when you calculate the exchange rate quoted, it's 20% less than prime, which in this case was 200 Forint to the Euro instead of 250. So, suddenly, you're giving a rather bad restaurant a 35.4% tip!       What is one to do to avoid this? Well, when faced with a bill like this, you pull out every scrap of local currency you can find in order to pay it without using foreign currency. Secondly, you avoid touristic places to eat. Thirdly, you wait for the day that Hungary is on the Euro so that at least one of these scams can be done away with. Fourthly, you just try not to eat out to much, which is hard because the food is usually so damned good.

I am a bit of a fan of trains. I think until I was 10 years old, my main career path was focused on being a train conductor. So, whenever I'm in a place and they have some kind of mechanical or train museum, I usually try to go.       Budapest has a museum that is better than most, which is the Underground Railway Museum. It's at Deák tér in what used to be the platform for that station until the mid-20th century. The museum is rather small and one could probably whip through it in about 30 minutes, but it is definitely cheap, costing just one Metro ticket (a bit less than 1€) and it's really quite informative, with everything in Hungarian and English. You have to be a geek like me to get in to the history of the whole thing, but Budapest did have the first underground railroad on the European continent, which opened in 1896 (London being the first in Europe as well as the world in 1864.) So seeing the history and construction of the three lines, as well as the work on the fourth, and seeing the original cars that they used is quite cool. It appears that I might be one of the few people who feels this way as the museum was completely empty when I was there, which is too bad as it's a great spot to take kids if you're traveling with the family.       Unfortunately I didn't make it out to their full Public Transport Museum which has an even bigger display. Perhaps the next time I'm in Budapest I'll make it there.

I feel weird when running around Hungary. It's as if Germanity will break out at any moment. You see, whenever I go in to a restaurant or a store or have any kind of interaction, people always want to speak to me in German. I guess because of the glasses, blue eyes, and height, I could have been in the Gestapo, but you'd think that saying, "Hello" or "Good evening" or "Is this table free?" would point to the fact that I'm not German, but it doesn't seem to help. When I ask for an English menu, then it helps for a second only to have them hand me the menu and then say something in German as well as take my order in some odd German. It's weird. It's really weird.       I understand that I don't speak Hungarian and so I'm the crappy one in this deal, but I'd almost rather that they spoke Hungarian so that I would learn some basic words and not be such a dunce in their country. But it seems that my choices are either: German, Hungarian, or Germglish, which is this "English" that some Hungarians speak that consists of one or two English words and then a whole bunch of German words spoken very slowly as we apparently speak English very slowly; and Germanically.       This isn't to say that all Hungarians are at best only able to speak two languages. A friend of mine who has shown me a bit of her Budapest can fluently speak, Hungarian, German, English, French, and a good deal of Russian. I'm sure she could speak a bit of Serbocroatian if put to the test as well. She's quite sensible about it though. When asked how in the hell she can speak so many distinct languages, she says, "Well, no one speaks Hungarian." And this is true, although on a purely practical level, I'd much rather be speaking Hungarian in Hungary than German in Hungary.

I think it was our second night in Budapest where we wandered over to Liszt Ferenc tér in the center for a meal. By and large, there are restaurants just about everywhere in Budapest. It just happened that when we headed out with some friends, we really couldn't find anywhere to eat in our vicinity. After a bit of walking, this tree-lined square came in to view. It seemed that our prayers had been answered with one restaurant after another to choose from.       Once walking around though, it quickly became apparent that this was the Budapest version of Belden Place wherein it is just an endless line of restaurants that all have outdoor seating, similar menus, and similar prices. We walked through all of this for a bit with various hosts shoving menus at us, again just like Belden Place. It got to be more than a bit discouraging and it seems that the two Belden Place owners based most of their ideas on hospitality on annoying places like this, only to have the nerve to claim that it's "European". I've had hangovers that were more European than this.       We really should have gone. There was only one restaurant that looked promising, but it had this damned reservation system and it was impossible to even wait for a table. We were getting tired though and committed the "Italian sin" which is that we sat down to eat at an Italian restaurant in Europe that wasn't in Italy. This should never be done and again, we really should have gone.       The meal was so-so. The prices were high. The service was horrible as the girl waiting on us was an idiot with an attitude. The tips were forcibly included. I have no doubt that the situation would have been the same at any other restaurant as out of the 20 or so restaurants that are here, only one makes it in to any guidebook.       Then there is the scene. It is very much a crowd of people out for a night and wanting to be as hot as they can be. All the guys look like thugs. All the girls look like hookers. I'm not really sure if these are Hungarians or not, but all of them were unappealing. Then, in the middle of this, an old man walks along wearing a worn suit, his body skinny and crooked with age, as he tries to sell roses to all these fancy people who just ignore him. From table to table he bounced like some dog begging for table scraps.       Let me just state that it is so incredibly wrong for children or the elderly to be begging. I'm not saying that they don't have a right to do it. I'm saying that if a society has pushed them in to this, then there is something wrong with that society and there was very much something wrong with this microcosm of a society out for a night on Liszt Ferenc tér. Of course the irony is that all these glamorous people out spending all their money will inevitably end up like this fellow someday.       Anyways, #1 Fan and I felt pretty rotten with this whole scene. We are not fancy people and this square was an ill place. I bought one of the roses this old man was selling. I paid him the equivalent 4€ because I didn't have anything smaller. He tried to explain how he was selling them, but he only spoke Hungarian and German and me, well... neither of those. Of course, all of the fancy people were watching me do this transaction, apparently stunned that someone would give a damn about someone, because that's just not done.       Yes, in the end I did overpay for a rose that really wasn't that good, but I would much rather blow my money buying a rose from him than being forced to pay a 12% tip to the restaurant we ate at with crappy service and so-so food. Admittedly, I did wonder if maybe this was a scam by this guy, but later the next day, I saw him coming out of a Metro station, wearing the same wrinkled suit, dragging his aging body up the stairs with a small bag of cheap groceries. My guess is that he's on his own and just squeaking by until his days are over. Or maybe he's scamming everyone, but I prefer to not think that. I would rather think ill of the dining crowd.       So, to sum up, Liszt Ferenc tér: bad. Watching an old man begging to sell roses to glitterati: even worse. Blogging about how horrid this square is and telling everyone who reads this to avoid it at all costs: priceless.

I mentioned previously that the Czech language is difficult, but in reality, it's nothing compared to how tricky Hungarian is.       The mother of a friend in Dubrovnik who speaks Croatian, Italian, and English once bemoaned to me about how much she hated Hungarian. She said, "Only the Hungarians have a different word for piano. Every other language in Europe just says, 'piano', but no, the Hungarians have to have a different word. It's such a terrible and ridiculous language." Obviously she has a modicum of logic there, but I wouldn't go so far to invalidate an entire language just for using different words. I actually have to commend the Hungarians on the fact that they've been able to maintain their language despite be surrounded by Slavic and Germanic speakers, while only being a nation of 10 million or so.       Even still, Hungarian is a very tricky language. You can hear it in the sound clip below of the longest Hungarian word, which in text is written “megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért” or roughly translated in to “For your (plural) acts of putting something in the state of being impossible to desecrate.” (from utazni) This really isn't a word that anyone uses though and is a lot like 'antidisestablishmentarianism' in English.       While I do this to over prove a point, it is true that there are 44 letters in the Hungarian alphabet making it a tad onerous at first. There are a huge number of vowels. There are also some consonant changes as well, like the single 's' that becomes 'sh' which make things really tricky or 'cs' being a 'ch'. I won't even go in to all the details as that Wikipedia article I link to does a far better job than I ever could. Toss on top of this the fact that all modifications to root words appear at the end of the word and you end up with a system and a set of pronunciation rules that drives foreigners crazy. I know as I tried to learn what I could in the week and a half I was there.       It's easy to sit back and say, "Ugh, this is crap. I've never going to learn this. Next please." But there is one salient point that English speakers need to take away from Hungarian and that is the fact that if we really wrote out our alphabet in the manner in which it is actually pronounced, it would look a good deal like Hungarian. We think that English is simple, when it really isn't. In Hungarian, once you learn the alphabet, that's it. In theory, you can properly pronounce anything you read, although maybe with one or five tries. But with English, the only way to know how to say a word for certain is to hear it first. If we used an alphabet like the Hungarian one, we would know when we mean to say, 'lead' as is to lead a group as opposed to 'lead' as in the heavy metal. There is more than a little to be learned in this.

Barack Obama has a secret he isn't telling America. Covertly, he is selling Pálinka in Hungary under his own name. I can understand why he wouldn't want this to get out. Pálinka (also known as Rakija in the Balkans) is heavy duty stuff. It's got quite a nasty kick and I won't touch it because I like to wake up after a night of boozin' and know a) where I'm sleeping and b) where my pants are. None of this seems to matter to Barack as is he is recklessly selling this high-spirit alcohol across Hungary with complete disregard to the health of the population.       So, at this point, I back up and laugh. Of course Obama isn't doing this. He just happens to have the unfortunate coincidence of having a first name that is spelled the same as how the Hungarians spell 'apricot'. Yes, Pálinka Barack is indeed common and you can find it in any store as you can see below. But, it naturally have no affiliation with the Obamster. In truth, it isn't even said the same way, sounding like 'baratsk' when the Hungarians say it.       The joke is not lost on the Hungarians though and all the ones that I've met during my stay in the country laugh about it. I'm sure that if he ever came to Hungary, he'd get some gilded bottle of the stuff in good fun, although apparently, Hilary could handle it best.       In a related note, in Kenya (from where Barack's father was born) there is actually a beer called 'Senator Keg Beer' that everyone has just started to call 'Obama'. The man simply can't escape the booze. Someone send him a pizza, stat!

After a talk about dentists naturally moving in to the food of Hungary makes a great deal of sense. Hungary has tasty, tasty food. It can be huge in portions, but it is always delicious. I attribute this to two things: paprika and sour cream.       Paprika is a well-known Hungarian specialty. They grow it in massive amounts and they consume it in massive amounts. While a great deal is made about how spicy it is, I don't find it all that "caliente". It is flavorful though and it adds a great touch to any meal that has it.       As for sour cream, the Hungarians should consider themselves blessed. This fine dairy product never seemed to make it much further than Eastern Europe and is a constant frustration when in Spain and I try to find it to add to dishes. I think that we really take it for granted in the US, because I've realized that it's a crucial part of many good dishes. But the Hungarians got it. They use it. They love it. It seems that it mostly makes its appearance in sauces on meats where it is a welcome item. But, it can be found in some desserts as well.       Then there are the actual dishes. Read more about them if you like as that article goes in to more detail than I ever could. I think that my favorite dishes were the ones where they took one meat like a turkey and then stuffed it with another meat, like a bacon. Good stuff. The desserts are full and cream-based. At times I found them a bit too filling, but for those who like their sweets not so sweet, Hungary is the place.       On a side note, in Sopron, the best restaurant is Graben. Some of the worst places to eat at in Budapest are the restaurant in the Novotel as well as just about anything on Liszt Ferenc tér, but that is for a bigger article. One of the best places I ate at in Budapest was Cafe Déryné which is a bit of new Hungarian dishes that are really good.