The Pre-Trip

The beginning of any good travel blog usually begins with a crazy story about planning for the trip and getting on the wrong airplane or packing a Halloween mask instead of a hat or some such nonsense. I will abide by this tradition. My story begins in Paris. Don’t be fooled. Many great love stories begin in Paris; this is not one of them. This is more of a drama. Actually, the real story begins in LA when my cousin crashed my dad’s car that I was borrowing for the week and I almost had to delay my trip. Luckily the car ended up in perfect shape and my dad said he still loved me even after the debacle. Great dad.

The next installment of the trip puts me in a tiny airport outside of Paris called Beauvais. The thing that makes this airport so interesting is that everyone that works at the airport hates their job. It’s the airport that people get sent to after screwing up at Orly (which is the airport that people get sent to after screwing up at Charles De Gaulle). I think it was built as a sort of prison airport for these employees since it’s basically impossible to fire anyone in France (I believe everything I read about Europe, especially clichés like this one). I was supposed to fly from Beauvais to Budapest on Friday at 8:45AM. Instead, the airplane got delayed 14 hours and I didn’t end up leaving until 9:30PM. When the airline people announced this change, you could see this look on their faces that said, “who knew New Years Ever could come twice in one year”. They were ecstatic. Finally someone else was going to have a crappier day than they were. I was unfazed. I’ve been through many worse situations and I’m sure I’ll go through many more (wait for future posts once I arrive in Africa). I went outside and found a nice patch of grass and wrapped my jacket around this laptop and used it as a pillow. I had a fantastic nap, although I was rudely awakened by a couple of Hungarian gypsy babies that were running around screaming and throwing grass in the air. Once again, I remained unfazed. I’m sure that in a few years I’ll have screaming babies that throw grass in the air.

Budapest has been great. I’m here for the wedding of a college roommate. Even though I didn’t know anyone in his family, I had a great time. The city is beautiful and the guys that work on the metros checking tickets are very slow. We took advantage of this today and hopped on a metro without buying a ticket. The machine was broken so we had no choice. Unfortunately, we picked the one metro where the ticket checker is still enthusiastic about checking tickets. He was a young guy, nice smile, no pinky. As soon as we hopped on board he began to make his way towards us. Luckily, I saw him just as he was about to check us and I pulled my friend off the metro and saved the day. Great leadership.

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