The flight was immensely forgettable. Cramped up in the middle row, with barely room to move my legs; my sleep was filled with nightmares – one of which was the dinner served to me. Waking up in the morning was of no help since the first thing I saw was the nightmare playing on the in-flight monitor – Dhoom 2. Needless to say, I was quite relieved when we arrived in Frankfurt. And to my surprise, the flight from Bangalore seemed to have got a promotion today, as we were directly led to a gate, instead of having to suffer the ignominy of waiting for a bus on the tarmac.
We had an hour and a half to kill, and I pointed out the Duty Free Shops to Pragati. She was completely enamored by what was on display. Little to wonder since, even after making three previous trips to Frankfurt, the airport never ceases to amaze me. And perhaps, traveling with a girl who loves to shop (thought I’m yet to come across one who doesn’t love to), can sometimes be useful since you can also indulge in something which you have absolutely no idea about. I vowed that on our way back, I’ll buy something from here. Memories of my last stop at Frankfurt brought a smile to my lips. I had held up the flight to Bangalore because I had to buy a Brazilian football jersey.
Pragati spent the rest of the time frantically trying to make calls from her calling card, but to no avail. She finally gave up and chose to immerse herself in her i-pod instead. By the time our flight was called, she was ready to go to sleep again. This time, we could not escape the bus. Pragati was quite amused that except for a couple of aircrafts, the only airline visible anywhere was Lufthansa. The flight was, as expected, a small one, with barely perhaps a hundred passengers. We were seated next to the emergency exit and that meant that we would at least have enough leg room. Pragati immediately curled up and went to sleep. I too, gave myself up to the temptation, and slept for half an hour, before the smell of food woke me up. Breakfast consisted of a chocolate and a sandwich. It was good exercise to the teeth and the jaw muscles as the bread as well as the cheese was really hard. Pragati gave up after a few brave attempts, but I managed to finish it.
We landed in Budapest at 10:30 AM, to huge applause from the passengers. “Umeed nahin thi kya?” Pragati asked me jokingly. Perhaps they were not expecting a smooth landing. The Feirhegy Airport looked comparable to the Bangalore Airport, and just when I was about to dismiss the airport as fairly commonplace, my eyes fell on an impressively huge Delta Airlines jet stationed among all those small and ignorable planes from the Hungarian national airline.
The terminal though, was spic and span, and resembled a mini-Frankfurt. It took quite a while for Pragati’s gargantuan suitcase to appear on the baggage belt, and after dilly-dallying for a little bit, we were finally on our way to the hotel. As soon as we exited from the airport, Pragati gave a gasp at the speed at which cars we flying. “We’re going at 80!” she exclaimed. I reminded her that German highways would see speed up to 150. The old gentleman driving the taxi was exuberant about what a nice country India is. We could not help agreeing, though I had the impression that he was talking about Indianapolis, since he happened to mention it once.
The hotel was situated just on the outskirts of the city, and resembled an apartment complex from outside. The first thing that I noticed about it was that it was located in one of those “Zentrum”s. Opposite to the hotel, there was a bus station, a tram station and to top it all, a huge Euro Park shopping mall, replete with Pizza Hut, Mc Donalds, KFC etc. The hotel closely resembled that nice place we had stayed in Leimen on my last visit to Germany. We split up and decided to catch some sleep before lunch. Once in my room, I promptly headed for the tub.
At 2:30, we decided to hit the road. The weather was not much different from what we have in Bangalore, though it was not sweltering hot. My first job was to educate Pragati about crossing the road. She however, seemed to be keen on frequently running across the road at most junctions, and I had to frequently keep reminding her that over here, it does not exactly work like India. We headed to the mall for lunch, and I need not explain what the effect was on Pragati. I wanted to get a decent tourist guide which we could refer on “what to see in Budapest”. Unfortunately, I could not lay my hand on a single one in English language. In fact the whole place doesn’t sport many English words or names. Most of the Hungarian names seemed unpronounceable, with the Magyar language seeming to have a curious aversion to the use of the vowels in words.
Pragati solved my problem about the tourist guide by promptly declaring that she wanted to see the chain bridge. I concurred that she wanted to see the famous suspension bridge across the Danube – the Széchenyi Lanchid (you can realize what I meant about pronunciations in the previous paragraph) – that’s been made famous in innumerable photographs. So be it, I decided, and led her into the metro. The Budapest metro is not as complicated as the one in Singapore, except for the fact that the station names can be easily remembered in Singapore. After getting off at a station with yet another unpronounceable name, we came up to ground level, for our first glimpse of the beautiful city of Budapest.
We were in a grand square, with plush modern buildings on one side, and the looming facades of old-style apartments on the other. The huge dome of the Szt. Istvan’s Basilica dominated the surroundings. For a moment, I was completely disoriented by the surroundings, and forgot our bearings. I rummaged through the map for five agonizing minutes (for Pragati), before I finally found the way to proceed. We walked around for quite some time. The roads were lined with exquisitely laid out parks. All kinds of mighty motorbikes were whizzing around. Pragati spotted a casino and wanted to immediately go in. I restrained her pointing out that European casinos would perhaps require a proper dress code of an evening gown and a tuxedo, and we cannot simply walk in dressed as tourists. As we looked ahead, the Danube sparkled in front of us. Across the river loomed the castle district. And to our right, spanned the majestic bridge, made famous as “Rome” by Sanjay Leela Bhansali.
I wanted to walk on the bridge, but Pragati was not exactly in the mood for that, so we decided to proceed to the city centre. But halfway through she declared that she could walk no more. So it was back to the metro.
No comments:
Post a Comment