Eurotrip Update 3- The Homeland

Email sent July 20th, 2005:

I dont know how many of u know this, but im mainly hungarian... many people guess im italian or israeli or spanish, but the sad truth is im a hungarian... a man of (as someone once gracefully explained to me by reciting verses from Encyclopedia Britannica in a Laurel Avenue living room) Madyar descent, and my father was actually born in the fine city of Budapest... thereby making him a completely foolish immigrant on all matters American... he may have come to New York City at the age of 3, but his ability to speak trash about me at the dinner table to my grandmother in hungarian and his overt affinity for all things related to a dish called "coos-coos", make him a dirty immigrant in my jingoistic eyes... and yes i just used the word jingoistic...

so after leaving the ridiculously beautiful croatian coast for hungary, luke and i decided it would be wisest to take an overnight bus from Dubruvnik to the croatian capital of Zagreb (a small poopstain on the landscape of eastern europe), then take a train to budapest... what we didnt realize was what that entailed... heres the story: the 9pm bus from dubruvnik to zagreb is an 11.5 hour bus, so we were excited to find a somewhat empty back of this busride which would pay for itself by saving us overnight accomodation fees... at the first stop 4 late teenage croatian kids got on and took the rest of the backrow luke had claimed and their other friend sat in the empty seat next to me in the next to last row... i was reading away at the phenomenal Daniel Quinn book Ishmael (everyone should read it, its such a simple read with such a well crafted and profound premise) but after a few hours i looked back to find Luke stifled into the back corner, sweating profusely with the croatian teen doing that hysterical sleeping head nod and tapping onto lukes shoulder before getting off... then diong that over and over and over again... my teen did the same and it drove me crazy too but i woke him up and he stopped... fast forward 7.5 hours to a rest stop at 3:30am, and my fully bearded and mustached travel partner, had been inexplicably transformed into one of my favorite movie characters of the early 90s... TEENWOLF... and not the crappy michael j fox teenwolf who swished every 3pointer and was 5foot2 but somehow dunked on everyone a la wesley snipes in white man cant jump.. he was the boxing teenwolf... eyes bloodshot, sleaves rolled up, sweat dripping, full beard and head of hair frazzled, and his first words to me were "if there is hell on earth, this is it... im freaking out"... for the next 20 minutes i laughed uncontrollably while he convulsed at the knees, staring straight ahead and saying nothing while listening to his ipod... the kid apparently continued falling alseep on his shoulder in the back where he had to pee, was nauseous from the gross salami sandwiches wed made at teh supermarket, was sweating up a storm, and absolutely bugging out... his only words when we got off were "i never wish bad things on anyone but i hope that kid falls in a puddle of horseshit and dies... oh im sorry i didnt realize my shoulder was your fucking pillow, next time why dont u make my knees a fucking legrest!" ... the situation was so absurd i became delirious as well, and the fact that immediately after that ride we walked right onto a 7.5 hour train ride to Budapest in a cabcar filled with 13 year old socialist croatian kids who had a fixation with slamming their armrests throughout the car made things far worse... i laughed myself to death while luke freaked out and pulled a cromagnum man eye twitch... it was amazing...

last night we slept the days travels off cause we obviously slept about 2 hours each in our 19 hours of travel, and today we went on a winetasting tour in the countryside where we both got blasted and i lost it again when the 3 elderly women on the tour got into a fullscale debate about whether Richard Gere was a classically Broadway trained dancer... after that we went into a casino briefly and i felt i was on fire from the wine and fun of the winetour so i started throwing 5 dollar bets on black and other major bets for roulette... and walked away 75 dollars richer, which led to a fantastic reward of a steak dinner... thats it for now, random thoughts to follow

be safe and stay classy
adam