David: Memories of 1985

Do you remember much from 1985? That year, Wham's Careless Whisper was the #1 song, Back to the Future was the #1 movie (Out of Africa won the Oscar), Rock Hudson died of AIDS, and Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union. I was 23 years old, and living in Redondo Beach, California. In September of that year, my friend Marty and his mom, Bev, invited me to join them on a three week road trip through Europe--and one of the stops was Budapest, Hungary. I was having a hard time remembering anything about the three days we spent in Budapest except for a few flashes of recall, so I emailed Marty and asked him to help me remember a few things. Of course, he sent back a reply that not only traced what we did, but the streets we explored, the places we ate, and the location of the hotel we stayed at! Why is it that I can barely remember what I ate yesterday, and Marty knows what we ate 24 years ago?

Bev's mother was born in Budapest, and I do remember the day we tried to locate one of her relatives. We hailed a taxi and showed him the place on a map we were looking for. As we reached the outskirts of the city center, the cabdriver suddenly pulled over and made us get out. We didn't quite understand that, but left his cab and got on a bus. This took us most of the way, and then we started walking through a residential neighborhood, looking for the house number we had. Back and forth we went, peering into yards, staring at homes wondering, is this the house? Or that one? Strangely, no house had the number we were looking for. Suddenly a helicopter came swirling in our direction, circled around, and swooped down towards us again. Considering we were in a communist country, we guessed--perhaps illogically--that maybe the government was wondering what three Americans were doing snooping around in the middle of a suburban neighborhood, and sent someone to find out why. We got nervous and ran to the nearest busy street and hopped on a bus. We were quite relieved when we arrived back in the city center without being arrested! Sadly, we left Budapest without finding Bev's relatives. Marty discovered later on that the street we were looking for had two locations, and we were on the wrong street...

Another thing I remembered was the Fisherman's Bastion, and after describing it to Allan, we located it in the Castle District, which was near our apartment. We walked there one day, and it looked just the same--except now it was a tourist attraction.A cafe was now positioned where we once stood and took pictures of the view of the Pest side of town, and they now charge you to walk up some stairs and see the same view from one level higher. (Odd!)Many cafe's and shops in the surrounding area are eager for your business--perhaps they were there in 1985, but I just don't remember them. Like Rome's Colosseum, commercialism has taken over, and if a buck can be made from a tourist, it will be!

The other day I decided I would retrace some of my steps from 1985, and try to locate the hotel we stayed at to see if it would jog my memory a bit more. Back then, Marty had found this new resort-type hotel in the hills above Budapest. It was a really nice place--a collection of cabins in a somewhat forested area, and though we drove our rental car there, we took a flatbed cogwheel railcar down the hill to the city. Marty gave me the location of the cogwheel train station near our apartment, so I walked there, bought a ticket, and hopped on. But this was not the flatbed car I remembered...it was a normal train car with upholstered seats. Hmmmm. Maybe I got that wrong. Up the hill it went, stopping at some rather run-down stations, picking up a few people along the way. Nothing looked familiar. Finally, when we reached the end of the line at Szecheni Hill, I got off the train and my memory clicked! Sure enough, it was the exact station we had waited at so many years previous--even the small ticket machine where Marty bought our tickets looked just as I remember it 24 years ago--only now it cost $1.50 rather than 50 cents.Someone also planted a few flowers--something very rare in communist countries back then, at least from what I saw. I walked around the area, and yet nothing else looked familiar, and I had no idea what direction to walk in to find our hotel. I'm not even sure I'd recognize it; Marty told me that the cabins had been replaced by a huge tower hotel. But in my wandering, I discovered the "Children's Railway", a narrow gauge railway that originally was staffed by Soviet Young Pioneers, and today is still staffed by children, shown here working the controls:I bought a ticket from a young girl (only one of the children working spoke some limited English) and I enjoyed the open-air 45 minute ride to the top of the Buda Hills.The young boy taking tickets was so serious and adorable, I just had to take his picture.At the top of the Buda Hills, I unfortunately didn't have time to wander around and enjoy the view because Allan was meeting me that afternoon at our apartment in less than 2 hours....so back down the hill I went, not finding the hotel I set out for. When I got to the end of the train line, as I walked past the station, I noticed an out of service train car, and behind it was a flatbed "open" car--was it the car that I had pictured in my mind? Could it be the same one?Next I noticed a round building across the street called Hotel Budapest, and that triggered a memory of where I believe we waited for taxi's to take us to the city center.So even if I didn't locate the hotel we stayed at, the day wasn't a total loss.

In 1985, one night Marty and I went to a gay bar. I was terrified. The hotel had my passport, and as the taxi drove downtown, not a soul was to be seen on the streets. My heart was pounding....Gay Bar. Communist Country. No passport. Were we crazy?? And I really couldn't believe that a communist country even had a gay bar. Was it safe? Yet inside the bar were many young men, and I started talking to one guy who spoke some English. His name was Axel, and he was from East Berlin. East Berlin? But that's impossible, I thought, it's surrounded by a huge wall! Axel explained that Budapest was the one city he was allowed to visit on holiday (vacation). We talked the rest of the evening about his life, and what it was like to live in such a confined, horrible city. We exchanged addresses as we bid goodnight, and once back to our respective countries, we became pen pals. He would send me books on Berlin, and I would send him fashionable clothing and warm sweaters--items he said were very hard to come by. I'll never forget a letter he sent me in late 1989, postmarked from Cologne. He had left for work one day, just like he always did, but instead of go to work, he went to East Germany, which had removed its border restrictions. From there, he traveled to Cologne. He was now a free man. His recount of leaving that day, leaving everything he owned, not knowing if he would survive, or ever see his family again...it was unbelievable to me. It made my little, easy life seem so trivial. What on earth did I have to complain or worry about in comparison? Ironically, just a few months later, the Berlin Wall came down, making his "escape" unnecessesary. He eventually moved to Amsterdam, and returned to Berlin many times over the years to visit his family. He even sent me a small piece of the Berlin Wall one Christmas, which I still have. Axel and I lost touch in the late 1990's, but it was a great human connection that I owe to my first visit to Budapest--and to Marty for coaxing me to go out that night!

Over the years, I didn't really think about Budapest very often, but when Allan and I were making plans for this trip, he had Budapest on his list, and I thought it would be really exciting to see how much the city had changed. From what I can tell so far, a lot has changed, and more changes are yet to come. I asked a woman at a coffee shop what has been the hardest thing about the change, and she said that many of the older generation are still mistrustful. For years they heard propaganda on the radio and read it in the paper, and now they don't know what to believe, or who to believe. Whereas the younger generation have totally embraced this new free society, and seem ever-eager to adopt a western lifestyle. American TV shows like Scubs, House, and CSI are dubbed in Hungarian, and are playing on TV here every night. The shopping malls here are no different than any city in America--when I was here 24 years ago, I went into a department store and saw two choices of suits, and two choices of shoes. It's amazing how an entire country can change in one generation.

But not everyone is so happy about the changes. While walking home one day, a man was waiting for the bus, and I noticed him staring at us, laughing. As we walked by, he said to me, "Are you tourists?"

"Yes," I said.

"Where are you from?"

"The US."

We talked for a few minutes, and he said that "Hungary is no good anymore". He does not like our American TV and movies and way of life that democracy has brought here. He said we (America) treat Eastern Europeans "like we are shit". Some things he told us were a bit hard to understand because he couldn't think of the English words to explain his feelings, but overall, we felt he clearly did not like what was happening to his country. Parts of our conversation were quite nice and friendly, and he suggested a few things we should do and see while we are here. As he got on his bus and left us, we looked at each other and thought, what was that all about? We figured we needed to hear that there are other perspectives to the current political and social landscape in Hungary...and not all people see them as favorable.

I hope to meet more people while I am here, and learn more about the many changes that Hungary has experienced. It appears to be still be in the midst of transformation, and I am excited to be here to experience some of it.