budapest

I got the train back to buda with the gang minus vlado who had to stay in serbia for his family’s slava, that uniquely serbian form of guest torture. We started out on the second class wagon (logically as we had second class tickets) but the heating system was broken down, so the 3 boys put masha and i up to using our serbian skills to get moved to the first class wagon, which was warm and nearly empty anyway.
We talked the 7 hours from belgrade to buda, except volodia who sat quietly. I had always assumed that he just took no interest in earthly affairs, but it seems i was wrong in my assumptions. At one pôint marton and balazs launched into some complicated and lengthy chat in hungarian which masha and i couldnt follow so we started to gossip in russian about boys and our personal lives, but at a certain point i looked over to see volodia had ceased his meditations and was listening very attentively to our bimbo conversation. He was not even trying to be discreet he was litterally hanging off the edge of his seat straining to catch every detail....we were shocked, it had just never occured to either of us that he was interested in anything other than karamzin and 19th century historiography. So i guess we learned something!
When we got back to buda, masha and i headed for ceu so i could download stuff off JSTOR, which i printed out on markos account, and then we moved on to menza, our favourite lunch/ dinner stop. I dont know any other place to get a decent meal for 850 forints. We then moved on to simina and bogdan’s house (where vlado lives as well, when he is not in belgrade) bogdan is a surprisingly good cook, so he insisted on feeding us some of his specialities, despite the fact that we had both just eaten and had no room left. But we drank champagne and smoked cheap romanian parliament’s and gossiped. I think i talked to simina more that night than during the whole year we were together on MA, but at a certain point she stood up and announced that she had to go to bucharest in 10 minutes....so she got up and left.....
Drained by our serbian zurka, masha and i headed off to bed.