Completely Lost in Translation

I got lost.

In a new city it is easy to do. You walk out of the hotel with a map and you take a left on NEPSZINHAZ UTCA when you should have taken a right and then instead of BERKOCSIS UTCA you end up on NAGY FUVAROS which turns into KARACSONY SANDOR and you are feketehazied…or whatever the word for a frustrating sense of doom is, in Hungarian.

I start out hopeful with some florints in my pocket and an apple stolen from the hotel breakfast in my bag and the map. Within five minutes I could be gone forever with no breadcrumbs to get me back to where I started.

I have tried to memorize some helpful words.

 hello : Szervusz

Yes and no : Igen and Nem

Do you speak English: Beszel Angolul?

Do you have vegetarian food : Vannak onoknel vegetarianus etelek?

Where are the toilets: Hol a vece?

Help!: Segitseg!

Another pharmacy....I think

a pharmacy. ...I think

I open my map to where I think I might be and people smile quietly and shake their heads.

I get on a tram where a nice woman’s voice announces the next stop which is BLAHA LUJZA TER. Which sounds  a little like the next stop which is BAJCSY ZSILINSZKY UT. So I stay on the tram until it stops and it goes back again and I recognize the big church which is where I was lost when I started and I get off.

I go into a bakery shop, starving after eating the apple slowly for four hours and ask if any of the pastry things have meat in them. The nice girl gets a man from the back who says, “ Meat, yes.” I say “ meat, no.”

He says, “ meat, good. " I say. “ Cheese, good.” 

“ Cheese? “ he says. “ Good,” I say.  “ No.” he says.  

I buy it anyway. It is a strange curd thing with apricot jam. 

But at this point I don’t care.

gallery baths. they weren't as rude

no talking the sign said. totally ignored

sorry swimming costume hidden by ottoman tiles

I go to one of the thermal baths that Budapest is famous for. Sitting on a geological fault, mineral water gushes forth from 120  thermal springs.

I took that from the guide book.

veli Bej baths

I went to Veli Bej Baths.  Because the book said it was the oldest (1575) of the Ottoman-era baths. Because the book said the water was piped in at 38 degrees through original clay pipes. The book said it was  good for joints and arthritis. The book did not say that the little band you wore on your wrist would lock you out of the cupboard in which you stored your clothes and the bitch of a receptionist would leave you standing there amongst a host of fully clothed Hungarian people in your rather sad swimming costume as you promised her that you would leave and never come back if she just opened your locker one last time with her magic key. And the book didn’t have the glossary for the words the bitch was shouting about you to everyone in the building as you put your clothes on over your still wet body because you didn’t dare ask for a towel. And the book doesn’t have a page for the facial expressions a bitch can pull when you apologize for the nineteenth time when you can’t make your wristband release the turnstile so you can go out to ARPAD FEJEDELEM UTJA and get lost all over again.

 ALLJON MEG ITT. ELTEVEDTEM.   stop this right here. I’m lost.