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A tale of two stories
Susan's story
“Let’s take the boat up to Ezstergom tomorrow!” blurted Sailor Bill, my husband with the river fetish.
“But it is supposed to rain”, I protested. “Why don’t we wait until we are guaranteed a nice, sunny day?”
My reticence was well-founded. The last time Sailor Bill suggested a day trip, it was in February and he wanted to head out on the HEV to check out the Sissy Palace at Gödöllő.
I had been to this movie before.
“But it is supposed to rain”, I had protested. “Why don’t we wait until we are guaranteed a nice, sunny day?”
But the sun was out and the sky was blue and Sailor Bill prevailed. So off we headed onto the metro and then onto the HéV, north out of Budapest. Unbeknownst to us, there are three HéV stops in Gödöllő and, of course, nowhere in the tourist books was there any indication that there was more than one nor the name of the one where the palace was located. So we went to the final stop and got off. No palace to be seen (or much of anything else other than rail yards) so we started walking back the way we had come. By the time we got to the second last HéV stop, there was still no palace but there were the first drops of rain. By the time we got to the third last HéV stop, there was the palace, seen through the downpour that was now thoroughly drenching us.
But hey, we’d made it. Up the drive we went. Right up to the big sign that said Closed for Renovation.
So my confidence in Sailor Bill’s travel planning was significantly compromised and Ezstergom was not an hour by HéV but 4.5 hours by boat. I was understandably unenthusiastic about our pending adventure but got up at dawn to head down to the Danube to catch the boat. There were high cirrus clouds already, a surefire harbinger of approaching weather, but Sailor Bill remained obstinately optimistic.
We boarded the boat and off we sailed. And, surprise, surprise, we encountered no rain. The sky remained blue, the sun shone and the trip through the Danube Bend was amazingly beautiful. There was only one little hitch. Seemed every time we had to take on or let off passengers, the captain had difficulty getting the boat even remotely close to the dock. He would eventually make it but the clock was ticking and we ended up arriving 45 minutes late. Even if it had been on time, we would only have had 3 hours in Esztergom. Now we were down to just over 2.
After a quick tour of the town - one where we will return, although perhaps by train - we re-boarded for the trip home. This time we had the current going with us, so travel time was scheduled to be reduced by an hour. However, in order to dock, the captain would now have to pass the dock and then turn the boat around so it was sailing into the current. This was going to prove interesting.
When the first stop, Nagymaros was approaching in the distance, the captain suddenly made a hard right and, in the middle of the Danube, did a complete doughnut. Yup, a full 360 with not a dock in sight. Not the 180 he would have needed to make if he were in fact remotely close to the town and attempting to dock. Nope. A full doughnut.
We were in the dining room when this occurred, apparently a pretty safe place to be as we later found out. In the bar, all the glasses flew from the shelves and crashed to the floor, cutting off bar services (and revenue) for over half an hour while they cleaned up the mess.
We never got an explanation for the doughnut but wondered if, perhaps, the captain was new to the job and practicing his u- turns without the inconvenience and hazard of a nearby dock. It gave a whole new meaning to on-the-job training. Only God and the captain know for sure. Imagine you were flying somewhere and the pilot decided to do a loop without informing the flight attendants serving drinks - you get my drift, so to speak.
The early evening return gave us a spectacular view of the city, that time of day when man’s incandescent light complements natures’ cobalt blue skies. It was stunning. However it did not distract us from our new mission. As anxious as Sailor Bill was to get on the boat, after experiencing the captain’s docking skills, he was equally anxious to get off.
While we had boarded the boat on the Pest side, when it stopped at Battany ter, we fled the ship. Figured we better get going while the going was good.
As we headed down to the safety of the subway, we saw the ship crossing the river to Pest. We assume it arrived safely. As we travelled home, the night sky was filled with threatening clouds, but this time the rain held off. From downpours to doughnuts on the Danube, life in Budapest is wonderful and always made the more enjoyable by a brief sojourn to the city’s surrounding sites.
