William Reardon’s Blog

Prelude

Deep Thought by Jack Handy:

If you met two guys named Flipper & Hambone, which would you think liked dolphins more? I’d say Flipper, wouldn’t you? You’d be wrong though — it’s Hambone.

Before traveling with Dan, I knew the following facts:

• While stationed in Moldova, during his two years in the Peace Corp, Dan traveled to many cities independently, requiring an ability to get around in unfamiliar terrain.
  
• Having previously visited several of our destinations, Dan would already be familiar with at least some aspects of the city.
  
• As a Marine who did two tours in Iraq, Dan had to execute several operations that required a good deal of planning , and had to find his way from point A to B until fairly difficult circumstances.
  

You’d be wrong though, it’s Hambone.

“I’m not lost, I’m just disorientated.”

The breaking point was somewhere the second night in Vienna, walking back from the symphony:

Bill: Dan, where are we?
Dan: Hotel’s just up ahead.
Bill: Far?
Dan: Naw, according the map just a few more blocks.
Bill: Okay, I really need to use the bathroom.
<Ten minutes later…>
Bill: Dan, I really gotta go.
Dan: It’s not far… gesturing… it’s behind that building.
<Ten minutes later…>
Bill: Dan, where the fuck is the hotel.

After a few more interactions, including me eventually staging a mutiny by grabbing the map and eventually figuring out we were in an entirely different part of the city than Dan thought, I more or less forced issue of getting a cab and having him take us back to our hotel, overriding Dan’s protests of “But now we know where we are!” and “That’s giving up and admitting defeat!” Defeat, schmeat. I needed to go.

That one incident is a microcosm of traveling with Dan.

Dan got us lost. A lot. Some of the times that I still remember:

Finding our hotel from the London Underground stop. (“It’s just two blocks from the tube stop.” After walking about a mile and half, and a lot of “it must be the next block”, no help from locals, we got a cab and found the reason we missed the street “two blocks from the tube stop” was because it was one block from the tube stop. We had gone right past it and proceed to walk an extra mile.)

Finding Piccadilly Circus

Getting from Piccadilly Circus back to the tube stop.

Walking back to the hotel the first night in Vienna

Walking back to the hotel the second night in Vienna

Finding out hotel in Budapest

The Boat (or lack thereof)

Now getting to Budapest in of itself was interesting. It’s a 3 hour train ride, or you take a boat ride down the river. It’s about 5 hours, but sounds a lot nicer. At dinner, the night before, we had the following conversations:

Dan: Hey, so if we’re going to do this boat thing, we’ve got to wake up early.
Bill: What time?
Dan: Like 8, since the boat leaves at 9.
Bill: That’s not too bad.
Dan: Yeah, but you’re not a morning person.
Bill: I know, I’ll back tonight & just make sure I wake up to take a shower & we’re set.

Dan summarily set the alarm on his watch for the next morning and would wake me after he showered.

Next morning:

Dan: *shake* *shake* Wake up… I over slept a little.
Bill: What time is it?
Dan: 8:30. Shower fast.
Bill: Okay…

Ten minutes later we’re checking out the front desk. Not bad.

Dan: We’re not going to make it if we take the metro, so maybe we should get a cab.
Bill: Okay. (To front-desk clerk) How long does it take for a cab to get here?
Clerk: Just a minute or two, sir.
Bill: Can you call one for us please?
Clerk: Right away, sir.
Dan: Hey, actually, do you have breakfast?
Bill: What?
Dan: Well, we’re going to do a cab instead of metro, we got like 5 minutes.
Bill: Shouldn’t we just go & get there to make sure we get on the boat?
Dan: Naw, let’s get some breakfast.

So what happens? Yep, we show up at the boat station right as the boat is pulling away from the dock.

Dan: Fuck, we missed it.
Bill: Damnit! Why did you want to go to breakfest?
Dan: The cab wasn’t supposed to be that slow! I think he went the long way. I bet he screwed us. Where’s the map. I want to see if –
Bill: Well, when’s the next one?
Dan: Tomorrow.
Bill: Fuck.
Dan: Yeah.

So now, having paid a cab driver to take us to an utterly pointless part of the city, we haul all our stuff to the nearest metro step (up a hill) and take the subway to the train station.

Dan: At least we’re here early, so we’ll be able to get good seats, you know, the ones that face each other with a table.
Bill: Nice.

The train arrives, we board. The seats are quiet nice and despite our car being empty except for us, a lot of people walk past our car & get on further down the train.

Bill: Hey Dan, are we in first class or something?
Dan: Naw, this is were we’re supposed to be.
Bill: Are you sure?
Dan: Pretty sure.
Bill: There’s a lot of people going further to go to other cars. Why would that do that otherwise?
Dan: Might be a commuter thing, they know which cars are closer to the exits… maybe they have a private car and are going past Budapest or something. I dunno know.

After about 10 more minutes of nobody getting on our car & a lot of people best, I pester Dan enough to go ask someone. (He speaks some German, I only know Farfignuggen, schietze, achtung, and various bits from World War II movies. Bits that might be helpful when hailing victory, but not when dealing with trains.)

Dan goes to find out & in Dan fashion, he disappears for 20 minutes.

I close my eyes to take a nap and in the middle of drifting off, I’m woken up by a loud bang. I open my eyes and a small group of Japanese people are taking the seating area in front of ours. In trying to lift their bags into the overhead, the two men must have dropped it. One of the women of the group says in mildly broken “Sorry”, clearly concerned that they have woken Godzilla sprawled out on the seats behind them.

The bags they were trying to lift where roughly the size of a grown child, and the men are muttering about the heaviest one, now fallen on the floor. I start to gather what was going on as they lift it again, get to about stomach level, stall, watch one of the women try to push up before the bag falls to the ground again. I get up and make some gestures towards the bag & motion it going into the overhead. The friendly woman who said sorry smiles & nods. The bag ends up not being that heavy, so I pick it up and place it overhead, causing a slight commotion. After a few seconds of buzzing Japanese that I don’t understand, I look at friendly woman & point at their other bags & she nods.

Friendly woman smiles & says “thank you” and I return to my seat. The men have a perplexed look of “A friendly Godzilla! Will Tokyo believe such a thing?”

About then, Dan returns saying he couldn’t find anyone. When asked where the hell he’s been, I get some mumbling that I decide is less important to try to understand than getting back to my nap.

Ten minutes into the voyage, the inspector comes through, punching tickets. And, yes, we are in first class. Coach (or whatever it’s called on trains) starts 5 cars back. We get our bags, wind our way to the significantly more crowed cars, and spend the next 3 hours listening to kids screaming, and running up & down the aisle.

Meanwhile, another Jack Handy quote came to mind:

If you ever go crazy, don’t go on a murderous rampage like a lot of others do. Instead, try to get some gardening done, because afterwards, you’d really be surprised.

I could do a lot of gardening.