We love our pre-Christmas in Germany. Because what can get you in holiday spirit better than Tannenbaum-flavoured Glühwine and Heiligenacht-spruced grilled sausages?
Full of mulled wine and sausages, we returned to Budapest on December 24, fully prepared for the “everything closed!” days to come — we had food in the fridge, heating on, and a couple of bottles of Hungarian red.
Stupid idiots, we took the public transport from the Budapest airport — you know, easy, bus 200, metro blue line, 40 minutes, you are home, sipping Hungarian red. It was around 3 o’clock in the afternoon when we left the airport building, what could go wrong? We have an all right public transport in Budapest, don’t we? They even tell you some things in English in some buses and trams, how cool is that?
So, we reach Kőbánya-Kispest metro on bus 200, no unusual announcement there, everything apparently works. We rush to the station (noticing on our way the “yet again out of order ticket machine” and lack of any other method to get tickets), get to the platform (having validated the tickets we bought days before leaving Budapest), and hear the voice from hell knows where: “Nem, nincs, no train, kein service”. A man wearing the authoritative fluorescent vest stands far far away on other platform and shouts to the passengers who keep coming to fuck the fuck off, because it is Christmas, and the last train has left. Obviously, he does not understand, why people are not home yet, stuffing themselves on stuff, but need to go to the Budapest downtown from the international airport of the capital of Hungary. In our turn, we do not understand why there are no announcements in the 200 bus and written information with maps of alternative routes by the metro station? And why one can still enter the station, if it is closed? Oh, so many questions!
It is 15.20. The bus 200 keeps bringing more and more unaware tourists from the airport, many Asians (Christmas-curious, not practising) among them. We tell to the bewildered visitors to Budapest: "No more trains, we need to take bus to the downtown." Germans laugh, they can’t believe it. They say: “In Hamburg we have more trains on Christmas, not less! People need to get to their places!”
We return to the bus stops, there are many diesel-fuming Ikaruses, and we look for the one in front of the metro station that goes the same route the closed metro line does, because we think this is a logical thing — Christmas or not, people need to get from the international airport of Hungarian capital to its downtown, but no, no such thing. There are many buses that go to unpronounceable places, many drivers who do not understand bewildered English-speaking tourists, many drunken beggars asking for “a few forints”, darkness is falling, visitors to Budapest walk around in herds, map-less, lost, scared, hungry! There are no maps on the bus stops, no announcements, no one at all to help you get from Kőbánya-Kispest metro to anything remotely downtown. Welcome to Hungary!
All right then, we think, BKV, or BKK, or whatever the Budapest public transport company is called these days, has failed both with transport and information, let’s call taxi then. We try the numbers, it takes us some time to get through, then they tell us to walk away from the station, because they “are not allowed to stop at the public bus stops” and wait for 15 minutes. We drag our bags, feet wet by now, high on diesel-fumes, we wait. And wait. And wait. At last, taxi company calls back: “No. It is not possible. Try other taxi company. Good bye.”
By now you should be almost as tired of reading this story as we were by our attempts to get home, to our fridge with food, our heating on, and Hungarian red. We even had a validated ticket, but no transport to take us downtown.
We trudged around for another hour or so before finding night 950 (914 works too) bus far far away from the Kőbánya-Kispest metro, and became quite a crowd in the meantime — Germans, Swedes, Slavs, exchanging food, customs and jokes of our respective regions, and sharing travel tips too. The Hungarian guys managed to get taxis on our way to the bus, and left.
When the 950 night bus came, it was shabby, dirty and very noisy. It smelled of diesel fumes to which we got used by then, and also of homeless people, and one of them was inside too. The time was around 17.30. But on the bus display there was some alternative time: 11.28. It felt like time travel, and not into sleek future. 'So, we have all day ahead of us! said Sara, a visitor to Budapest from Hamburg.' We all laughed, bitterly. It took us 1 hour 05 minutes to fly from Berlin to Budapest. It took us over 3 hours to get from Ferenc Liszt (aka Ferihegy) airport to Budapest downtown. We all were savvy and experienced travelers, and we spoke 6 languages among us. Welcome to Budapest!
