Valentine's Day 2009

On Valentine's Day 2009, we ventured to one of Budapest's most famous sites: the flea market. If you can imagine the typical flea market back home, add about 3x as much crap, subtract about half as many booths, and add in the fact that we were all tired, cold, hungry and hungover and you have an adequate picture of what the flea market experience was like. At one station, a vendor was selling junk from their trunk. At another, there was a pile of random cell phone parts that had been obviously stolen from either a dumpster or stolen from the vendor beside him selling stolen cell phone parts. The parts were sold like produce; fill a bag, pay per kilogram of junk. The other peculiar thing was the absurd price of some items. A GPS system for your car, with no box, no power cord, no description or any indication that it works or not was $100. Tristan found a watch. The watch was in a box. The watch might have been new. But the watch was almost $400. It might make sense if the vendor displays a high price only to have it bartered down with a potential buyer. They don't budge though. Rock couldn't get a cell phone vendor to budge on a price, even though the phone had a few scratches on it. It probably has something to do with the fact that the vendor built the phone himself out of 8 or so kilograms of mix and match cell phone parts from the vendor next door.

Couchsurfing has its benefits. Mike, the American from South Carolina, was awesome. He brought bourbon, he plays the uke, he tells hilarious stories. He was a great addition to the house while he was here. Sadly, he's gone now. Off to Istanbul or something. Couchsurfing has its downsides as well. Two Austrian girls contacted us and were interested in potentially staying over. Thats cool except that we had Mike over so they checked into a hostel. We met for drinks anyways and had an enjoyable time out at this bar called Trapez. As the night wore on, the girls probably got tired of our antics (the crew here gets pretty loud after a few drinks) and left the bar taking Rock's coat with them. The details are a little fuzzy, but what we know now is that they took the coats (Rock had a girl's coat stashed with his) claiming that they wanted to make sure they weren't left behind at the bar. Rock was still at the bar however and when he went to grab his and his girl's coats, they were gone. The bartender was apologetic because nothing like that had happened before. We couldn't get a hold of the Austrians yesterday. We phoned them on Skype today. They are now in Prague. When asked if they picked up Rock's coats they hung up. I feel like we got, as the Hungarians say, gypsied. It makes me sad because couchsurfing is a great way to meet people from all over that you otherwise would not meet. There's a lesson in this somewhere. Don't talk to strangers? Don't drink with strangers? Don't put your coat on the back of a chair? Be careful around people you don't know?

Yes, its probably those things. At least we know we can buy the coats back at the Budapest Flea Market.