What Happened in Hungary: Day Three Part One

Another midnight passes on a bus. We should be asleep in a hotel now, refreshed and well-dined rather than digesting resthaus schnitzels from a cramped seat, still with 50km of Austria and half of Hungary to go. Vienna is unrecognisable from the ring road. No trace of what heights of art and imperial history the city represents can be inferred from the power stations, gas holders and lights of the airport, visible when the road is allowed to surface for air from the many tunnels it takes under the outer districts.  Once again, such a landmark invites wildly optimistic speculation over how much longer the journey will be.  Less than an hour to the A-H border, surely, and then perhaps two to Budapest?

There was a gentle slowing-down and I realised we were - perhaps, yards, feet? - from Hungary itself. I had no knowledge of the border procedure, assuming that despite remaining in the EU, at the very least a passport check would be required to enter the former Warsaw Pact (this had been the case at a Poland-Slovakia crossing five years previously).  Nothing.  We paused, then drove on straight past buildings that were clearly no longer used - as if to emphasise the nature of what had changed here, one of the greatest divides of history was now little more than a cafe.  Some indeterminate time later we made another short stop.  I remember deciding that a little fresh air would be a good idea and taking a few steps outside the bus in the dark. I was so drowsy the chill of the night air and the breath of traffic going by seemed detached from my senses but this temporarily alleviated the dry throat and cough that occurs after breathing in an air-conditioned environment for too long. People are beginning to feel ill now, which is unsurprising given that there are numerous contributing factors available.  Every time I almost sleep my brain wakes me up because it's still aware that there is motion and I am not properly lying down. Hungary is simply darkness beyond the glass, and offers no clue as to how much of herself remains to traverse.

Somehow, at 4am I was not only still alive but was actually at the (metaphorical) gates of Budapest. I rank this amongst completing a Masters' degree, writing The Sun Rising and cooking perfect crispy duck pancakes as one of my greatest achievements.  In fact the previous 40 hours ceased to matter at that moment, not so much because we had reached our destination but because of what the destination was, a city I had been aching to go back to for nearly seven years.  Driving through the streets of Buda again was enough to restore all of my downtrodden optimism about this trip. I started to recognise with delight places I'd known before - trams in Moskva tér, the great statue high up on the citadel, the Danube river which had shadowed us all the way from Germany (and what a distance that seemed like now) - and with equal delight saw they had not changed at all for the worse but were every bit as magisterial as I has remembered them.  Better still, sleep would be coming, hours of sleep after which I would be restored pretty much to full health and ready to consume the glories of the city.

If all this sounds rather gushing, it is partly for dramatic effect. Because what actually panned out wasn't quite so encouraging. We reached the hotel in the north of Buda with no further delay. Looks alright, lots of wood and palm trees in the lobby.  And then the plan of what would be happening tomorrow was announced. It should be explained at this point that the becalmment in Aschaffenburg had put us behind by approximately fourteen hours. As the time was now 4.30am, we would have arrived on the original plan at about 3pm, and then had a few hours to sleep, relax and take stock before having a dinner cruise on the river and then a full night's rest.  Obviously there was no chance of any of this happening now - but to top that, it was explained that tomorrow's schedule (technically today's, but the sense of what hour belonged to what day had become either blurred or irrelevant by now) had to go ahead as planned. This involved leaving at 9.30 to get to a rehearsal at the Museum of Military History, a rehearsal which cannot be postponed because the Hungarian Police need the building for a ceremony of some kind. There was a largely silent but very apparent collective groan from the orchestra as this was announced. A maximum four hours' sleep was being offered to us after over two days of restlessness. I didn't wait to hear much more and stood in line to get the keys. The room was a little basic with the obligatory mysterious stain on one wall and arcane shower system, but it wasn't a high priority right now. The thin pillow didn't make much difference either.

As in real-time I am sleeping, now might be a good point to take stock of events up to this point.  We have reached our hotel fourteen hours behind schedule.  Our English bus is still in Germany being repaired and will not be available for us for another two days at best.   At the request of Companion, I had been making notes on the times of various events (border crossings, pit stops), knowing that I'd not be able to remember things accurately.  Applying as much mental arithmetic as I can manage, I work out that I have been awake for some 45 hours, far longer than my previous effort of 36 going to Hong Kong a few years ago.  In addition, Hong Kong was spent on the relative calm of an airliner and ended in a  very comfortable hotel. By the second day there I was fully adjusted even for the eight-hour time difference.  Here, the fact that I have now actually slept should not be confused with any pretence of feeling rested. It has simply put the level of tiredness back by perhaps a day, similar to how I was feeling in Aschafenburg.  In practical terms, this means that I would feel decidedly unsafe about driving, my playing ability will be noticeably diminished and my patience with any irritations lacking. But worst of all, it means I have to delay proper sleep by yet another 24 hours, and arguably have a more strenuous day to get through (although I have long questioned whether travelling, even as a passenger, is ever stress-free). But back to the real world...

Breakfast is ample enough; a big cup of coffee (but disappointingly weak and of poor quality for Hungary; read more about this later), bread and the cold cheeses and meats typically offered on the continent. Let's be honest, I am functioning - meaningful conversation is possible and I feel as if I will just about be able to play today's concert. The early start is offset by news that a previously scheduled sightseeing tour being postponed to another day, so that we can at least return here and rest in the afternoon.  This makes things work a little better.  We are also told that the rehearsal will be like a good haircut - short and efficient - and that we will have a little leisure time afterwards to get lunch. I have the impression that the orchestra is generally unperturbed by all the disturbances and lack of sleep and is prepared to just go at it and see what happens, but I can't be sure. 

Still, we have to go and rehearse now, because it's our only opportunity to do so.  Stepping out into the bright daylight of Budapest for the first time, we find that the stature of our transportation has shrunk still further, as we now have a squat red bus that's basically the same as those in service round the city (although markedly younger and rust-free) which makes fitting the entire ensemble and all hangers-on even more of a challenge. The cello goes next to me by the window; it's survived six years of being carried in a Corsa and the worst of Austrian roads in it's case; it will cope with this.  Predictably, we get 100 yards and have to turn back for somebody who ignored the departure time, but it's little matter. We swing out again onto a wide avenue with dense trees in the island between roadways and the railway on the far side.  I can see far more detail and character of Budapest than in the dark a few hours ago. We come out of the northern suburbs, past the amphitheatre and colonnades of Aquincum, Budapest's Roman predecessor, and the green-painted stations of the HÉV suburban railway, over a junction where yellow trams (the same Soviet-era models that had been rumbling along the streets for ever) crossed under road viaducts, and then onto the riverside. Over the water is the unmistakable umber dome and Gothic pinnacles of the Parliament building, and beyond it the suspension bridge and, where a gap in the skyline allows a view, the castle mount where we are headed.  I'm already trying to take pictures from the bus window, albeit with limited success, so take in the more immediate surroundings. The landscape is a pleasing mixture of the Germanic and also something more Eastern: churches have yellow walls but also onion domes at the base of their spires, signage is ostensibly in the Latin alphabet but spelling words and vowel sounds that are baffling and exotic in equal measure. Not only do I remember the correct pronunciation for all the diacritic marks, I actually learn a few new words in Hungarian just by reading shop signs and street names. I am starting to love this city and culture.

We make a sharp right turn at another place I remember well: the Buda end of the Chain Bridge, which leads either over the water, further along the riverside or into a tunnel under the Budavári-hegy (vár means castle; hegy a hill), but we are going on neither.  Instead we make the climb up a switchback road that ascends above the rooftops into the castle district.  The final turn brings us past Fisherman's Bastion and onto cobbled streets, crowded with visitors and officials for whatever ceremony is happening later. It's a jolting ride for the last few hundred yards and then we shove each other off the bus as soon as the doors are open.  The Museum of Military History is at the far end of the elongated hilltop, and occupies three-and-a half sides around a courtyard, with the far wall partly open above a sunken garden to reveal a panorama of the city.  Last time I played here the venue was an outdoor stage, but this is no longer in evidence and we are shown into a hall with a high roof and a long and somewhat romanticised painting of a cavalry charge by a Magyar army of antiquity.  It is impressed on us that speed is of the essence and we waste no time in setting up a semicircle of chairs and unpacking. I'm relieved to see that my instrument is none the worse for the journey; in fact it's even (almost) in tune. 

I try to set out that I'm taking care of my section, making sure they have sufficient room to play (something that should be instilled into everyone who ever sets out a stage) and are comfortable.  Our Conductor has brought along our fixer, and briefly introduces him, to much appreciation by the players.  We now have one hour - exactly - to rehearse the entire programme.  We breeze through the Beethoven Prometheus overture (a short and easy piece) and then I finally find out the reason why we have brought such a huge amount of trumpeters for the repertoire we are performing - eight in total. it is this: as a prelude to the Haydn symphony (the Clock, No.101), they will be performing an arrangement of the Tuba mirum for Verdi's Requiem. By the time all the players have entered, it is biblical in volume and spectacle, the mighty force of the sound amplified and swept around in the hall's reverberating space. The redundant string players gazed in delighted awe until, as the last chord rolled away, the Conductor readied us to start the symphony - a unlikely transition that turned out to be utterly convincing. It also worked wonders for confidence about our performing ability - if we sounded like that even now, then clearly sleep levels weren't too relevant. And so through the Beethoven symphony (No.7) right up to the hour.  With five minutes to go, the coffee wore off.

Next time: we climb across some boats, and how things started to go bad again...

What Happened in Hungary: Day Two

At midnight the bus is still trundling along the A3 at full speed, currently past Frankfurt Airport. I'm riding shotgun in the cab with another guest, keeping the driver awake on the last part of his shift. He appreciates the conversation and in return we learn a lot: the coach has a six hundred - litre fuel tank and is actually the team bus for the Harlequins Rugby side (this explains it's slightly familiar multicolour decoration). Our driver and us swap travel stories, with intermissions whilst he explains a few of the many extra controls and buttons laid in front of us not found on cars. It's something of a novelty to actually see where we're going, despite it being only 24 hours since I last drove but having faced backwards behind a dividing wall since.  The traffic is light by now and most of the native drivers are taking advantage of the lack of any tangible speed limit, shooting past the lumbering coach in which the lights are dimmed and most occupants are sleeping.

The sat-nav beeps and an ersatz English voice makes several announcements. A few minutes later, the driver indicates, slowly eases off the power and brakes to a gentle halt in a rest area populated by trucks from all over Europe - French, Dutch, Slovak, Romanian - and a small toilet block.  Looking a little overshadowed is a little Transit minibus with a UK license plate, in the coach company's colours. From here two new drivers will take us the rest of the way and drive us around in Hungary. There's time to do a running repair job on the ski box. One of the drivers climbs onto the roof of the minibus and out comes a roll of gaffa tape, to cheers from the orchestra. It's not a permanent fix, but it'll stop the rain getting in and puts the side light back in position. The mood is convivial: we ignore the slightly grim toilets and enjoy the opportunity to converse with people sitting in different areas of the bus.  The Transit drives off, on a short hop to a Frankfurt hotel, to another cheer from the passengers.  From here we'll have fresh drivers and cross Germany in the dark until the sun rises again somewhere near to, or even in, Austria.  Back to our seats and onto the dark autobahn.

That's odd, we're stopping. We've only been going about twenty minutes but the bus has just pulled into a smaller lay-by. Bit of low conversation from the cab, but it's probably just that the emergency door isn't shut properly or they want to check the ski box lights are still working.  We move off again a few moments later and proceed to rejoin the autobahn. Orange light from the indicator, back up to full speed. Some kilometres pass by without incident and I try to doze again.

And then suddenly, a very sharp tap on the brakes, much more forceful than before, somebody's wandered out of their lane close in front of us, perhaps, but the voices from the cab aren't swearing at a German driver, they're more panicked than that.  Something is wrong, properly wrong; because now we're braking again, taking the next exit ramp, round a tight bend and up to some traffic lights onto a minor road, so it's not even something that can wait to the next service area.  I'm holding the curtain open to see anything that can be seen: the bus turns left at the lights and onto a wide-ish street with buildings, then indicates once more, pulls slightly to the right and stops. Engine off. Lights off. Silence, apart from muffled voices and a car going the opposite way.

A few other people are starting to wake up, aware that Something Has Happened. I'm trying to work out firstly what; and second: where we are.  My initial guess is the clutch cable or disk, because the coach seemed to be juddering when moving off the last couple of times; or perhaps the auto box is playing up, it's jammed or the computer changed down suddenly which would explain the sharp braking. But perhaps not, because we made several gear changes coming off the autobahn and it's been fine this far.  Burst tyre?  I'd have heard it go.  The second question is a little easier to answer. We're obviously still in Germany, and quite near to Frankfurt, probably to the south-east, but in the dark I can't tell if we're in a small settlement or a larger town.  There's a load of cherry-pickers outside a shop down the road, and I remember going past a VW dealer further up it, and some kind of car wash on the other side. Looking backwards outside the bus, I can see that we're in a lay-by with tourist information panels by the side, but by dim street lights am unable to make out the name of the town or the details of the map.


(It turns out that the problem was the alternator - or rather the lack of it.  You may recall that people upstairs reported smoke and burning back in Belgium. I later learned that this was the belt that drives the alternator becoming caught or slipping, with the result that it burned out the alternator itself. Large buses, with their huge electricity consumption, have two backup alternators, but they weren't enough to keep everything going. By the time we were at Frankfurt, having had the DVD on and with lights, air conditioning and engine management systems all running as well as having just started up the huge motor, the electrics simply couldn't keep charging the battery fast enough and it was only a matter of time before something failed.  This eventually happened in a particularly dramitic way - the sudden braking was actually the driver reacting, quite naturally, to the headlights suddenly going out! It hardly needs pointing out that this is a truly terrifying prospect for a bus with 50 passengers going at 100kph in the middle of the night. Mercifully, the co-driver quickly switched to emergency power which got us out of trouble for enough time to ditch. We can only conclude that it is a very good thing no fire broke out and that none of this happened whilst in the Eurotunnel).

The driver, who by this point has poked around the bus and consulted his colleague, climbs into the crew area and draws back the dividing curtain. His announcement to us is brief, and whilst I forget the exact text, the gist is that we will be stuck here for some time and the best thing to do would be to sleep whilst the relative quiet holds. Sleeping is not an easy achievement even with the removal of road noise and motion. The seats do not really recline and there is insufficient with for any but the smallest person to lie across two. I close my eyes but am far too restless, still full of the sensation of motion and passages of Elgar flooding around my mind.  With the electrics out of service, and thus no heating, it also becomes quickly apparent how cold it is at night, even in summer.  You will recall that, due to being rushed around whilst loading up, I stupidly neglected to have any kind of warm clothing in my hand luggage, and am now deeply regretting it.  Companion lends me a blanket, which I'm highly grateful for, but it only just does the trick.

At 3am an engineer arrives and proceeds to confirm that the problem is serious (the implication is that, sadly,gaffa tape will be of little use). This sets in motion a series of frustrated communiqués which will last the next ten hours. The coach drivers contact the coach company who begin negotiations with, simultaneously; at least one German coach company; the drivers' pools of said companies; the nearest garage able to work on the make of coach; potential hotels in the area should we not get a replacement bus.  We, charging phones on the coach's remaining battery power, attempt to keep contact with László, our contact in Hungary who contacts the hotel in Budapest; and, coming full circle, the drivers - who are being fed frustratingly vague excerpts from the various dramatic twists in the negotiations via head office - attempt to keep us informed what is being done to get us going again.  If all that makes your head hurt, the result on the ground is that: on every alternate hour we are told that a German bus is at most an hour away.  When the expected time of arrival has long since passed, we are told we will be getting another different bus to a hotel in the area whilst we find a bus to take us the rest of the way. Then, two hours later, the German bus is coming again - oh, no, we're definitely going to a hotel - yeah, that's what was going to happen, except they've now found a driver willing to take us to Hungary, except he was an hour away from us two hours ago. The night is punctuated by phone calls and repeatedly dashed hopes of a quick escape.

Fast forward to around midday. We've been here nine hours and already tensions are beginning to crack with the lack of developments. Bear in mind that we've also been in the same clothes and not had any chance to wash for a day and a half, and you can probably appreciate why at least one person nearly lost it.  Still, we've learned that the name of the town is Aschaffenburg (twinned with Sopron in Hungary) and that the main source of food and toilets is a conveniently adjacent filling station of a company we don't have in England, whose staff have severely limited English to match my severely limited German.  After joining everyone outside the bus during a rare half-hour of sunshine, I decide to take a walk with two friends and see if there is any food nearby other than the filling station. It decides to rain - in fact it decides to chuck it down with thunder and lightning right overhead - and we quickly discover there's not much in the way of eating in the neighbourhood.  After plodding around for half an hour, sheltering under bus stops and taking five minutes to cross the road, we end up back at the same forecourt again.  The only consolation is the purchase of the first (and only) schnitzel sandwich I've ever bought.  I really want some hot food but have no idea where the next meal is coming from. Banana chips are keeping me alive.

Having to wait an indefinite period of time, coupled with a lack of sleep, starts to cultivate curious mind games.  I keep trying to accept a pact with myself that if nothing has happened by a particular time, I shall find the station, withdraw, say, 100 euros, and get trains the rest of the way to Budapest.  To pass the time, I start trying to work out how this might be done: presuming Aschaffenburg is only a local line, I assume I would have to take a regional train to Frankfurt, then if I'm lucky perhaps an express direct to Munich, then Vienna or Linz, and then another to Budapest. On the other hand, I'd probably have to leave the cello int he care of somebody staying on the buses. Car hire is probably out: way too far to take a German car all the way; I don't have any insurance documents and I'm far too tired for my first foray in a left-hand-drive vehicle on a de-restricted autobahn.  A strange phenomenon, which the more psychologically inclined may be able to clarify, is that my capacity for forming short-term memories seemed noticeably diminished. I find I can't remember things that happened only a few minutes ago, (nor, more worryingly, which side of the road cars are coming from without a prompt) yet can still recall all my Hungarian and other deeply ingrained thoughts. Being in a semi-dream-like state starts to become normal.

There's another false alarm, but at 2.30 we finally achieve deliverance. A white, German-registered bus become visible on the roundabout at the end of the road, draws nearer and eventually pulls in unceremoniously behind the British one. It's a rather anticlimactic moment, given its significance. The new bus also has a ski box so we set about transferring as much luggage as we can into it.  Loading the instruments and remaining bags into the underfloor area is not easy. Although the bus is parked off the main carriageway, gaining access to the luggage doors on the driver's side involves standing feet away from passing traffic, all whilst arranging unwieldy timps, cellos and whatnot into the hold space.  I slam one of the doors shut and climb up to the seat Companion has saved for me.  At 3pm we are finally under way and back on to the autobahn, approximately fourteen hours behind where we should be. It's a depressing though that, had all gone to plan, we would be about an hour away from Budapest at this moment.  As such we now have to face a second full day travelling and, at an optimistic estimate, an arrival time of after midnight. 

The new bus is a more normal single-decker and isn't half so accommodating as the original one. There are barely enough seats for us all, what with having to put the contrabass inside the bus, and not nearly as much legroom or potential sleeping positions. There's also no segregation of decks so the luxury of being in the quieter area is gone.  Worse, we run into a traffic jam just half an hour after setting off, the type that are caused by tailgating so there's not actually any real obstacle up ahead, just stop-start traffic. I'm sure if I were well rested I'd appreciate the increasingly mountainous scenery more as we progress gradually across the huge expanse of Bavaria, but not at the moment.  A rest stop approaching Nuremburg is welcome. The toilets charge, but are actually worth are actually worth paying 70 cents for as they have an interesting party piece when you flush - the seat revolves 360 degree to be sanitised and the towel dispensers are automatic, I can't help feeling that this fastidious level of cleanliness is undermined my the fact that were I in my car I would probably check the oil or some other unhygienic task immediately afterwards.

More road, most of it still two-lane.  Some hours later we cross the Danube, the first of several times.  Southern Germany rewards our persistence with a double rainbow as we near Passau, which provides a brief distraction from the situation in hand. It's a town I have a former house-sharing friend in, one foot either side of the river and indeed either side of the border, for we are close to Austria now. We make another (horribly short) stop and I finally get a hot meal - schnitzel and chips with almost the last of my Euros.  More speculation about how long the journey time remains. We've got the whole of Austria and half of Hungary to go, several hundred kilometres. Once again, we plunge into the night.

Next time: I finally get to sleep, and then play the most nerve-racking concert ever

If you're gonna do it, do it right for me

As only a very few people in Britain have failed to notice, the Proms began this weekend. It's an event of such monumental importance that they don't even need to put it on the news -  everyone just knows it's happened. 

Owing to scheduling commitments, my reception of the First Night was intermittent.  I caught the interval feature and the first two movements of the Janacek whilst driving, and the first two items of the first half on iPlayer this morning (go on, watch it), but I have yet to witness what I have heard from rumours is a mind-blowing display of virtuosity from Benjamin Grosvenor. (Actually, I'm still more interested in Janacek than a Liszt concerto no matter who's playing it, but still).  I must laud the venerable BBC for continuing to broadcast every single concert on the radio and a now sizable selection on the telly. But if you sense a 'but' coming - that was it.  I already have a few gripes with the TV presentation, and actually it's a subject I've been meaning to get off my chest for a while now:

There's a new title sequence this season, with dancing pianos and new theme music. In fact the Proms as a whole has been given a makeover into a slightly indie-band retro-modern montage frame-of-mind.  Not to put too fine a point on it, it's not nearly as good as the old one, which had a more grown-up abstract quality and a nicely Stravinskian fanfare by Joby Talbot adapted-from-a-piece-by-Bliss. The slightly low-rent 'picture frames' of some famous conductorly and soloistic faces going by gives it the look of a rather naff 80s kids' TV show, not helped by the dancing violins and the graphics in general, which are barely above the level of a Year 8 Powerpoint presentation. The music is decent enough but not a huge improvement over Talbot et al.

Secondly, something which has started to creep into a lot of live classical music programming in the past few years: interviewing whether the moment is appropriate or not. This comes across as a a rather cheap counter-attack against the hackneyed 'classical music is elitist (and despite complaining so to the point of harassment we secretly want it to be continued to be perceived that way to make us look really 'with it' and PC)' lot.  The idea is that we in the cheap seats get to see that those brilliant musicians who have put years of study, practice and devotion into mastering some of the most difficult skills known to humanity are human after all, indeed basically the same as the rest of us. Yes, it might be interesting to know some trivia about the number of pipes on the Albert Hall organ or what household objects the percussionists have found to play in that contemporary piece.  But shoving a microphone in the face of the principal horn is never going to facilitate enough airtime for him to explain even slightly sufficiently how his instrument works and thus why sometimes splitting that top D# is unavoidable. Few questions posed seem to actually merit grabbing hold of a justifiably rather weary (but still attractive) young soprano and asking her 'how you fink it went' (as happened several times during this year's Cardiff Singer of the World) when her first language isn't English and what she really needs is a long drink and her paycheck.  She's done a stunning job with that Strauss, and the audience can hear it clearly enough in her performance.  Nothing more needs to be said or asked.  A memorable and much needed rebuke to this practice came out of the horrible dumbed-down Young Musician of the Year 2008, where, seconds after a concerto had finished, an over-exited young presenter lept at the competitor's mother and demanded 'So, how do you think he'll have felt about THAT performance then??!!' With timing bettered only by those in the very highest echelons of stand-up comedy, she replied, poker-faced 'I don't know - why don't you ask him?'  But surely the main objection to this should be coupled with the (again ever-increasing) habit of showing lots of backstage shots of formerly majestic performers now looking very normal under unflattering lights. It takes all the magic and mystery out of music performance, which is, fundamentally, a piece of theatre and so relies on illusion and monumentalising the performers. I don't suppose audiences would care to watch The Lord of the Rings and in between scenes see the guy playing the massive warrior orc take off his headpiece, chat to a cameraman and smoke a couple of Marlboro Lights, would they?, because it ruins the trick.  You can show the baritone being interviewed in his untidy flat or crammed in with everyone else on the tube, but just not in the middle of his magic show please, because it ruins everything. Isn't it enough for us just to enjoy the music?

Luckily; as I mentioned, I was driving around during the concert and caught a fair chunk of the interval feature on Radio 3. The station's not been immune to certain needless messings-around in the name of capturing a phantom 'young' audience whilst alienating your core loyal listeners, but it's still a million miles better than the shouty box.  The interval feature was on Janacek's beliefs, a perfect subject given that it is pertinent to the concert programme, short enough to fit into a twenty-minute slot yet wide enough to have plenty to say and scope for further exploration, and a quiet triumph for accessible intellectualism. Chalk one up for the radio. Also, Judith Weir's new opening fanfare did a very impressive job of being simultaneously contemporary, personal, accessible and uplifting. Chalk one up for music too.

Postscript: I've got a gig with my trio tomorrow night, which mean I will miss the live broadcast of Havergal Brian's gargantuan Gothic Symphony.  This I can live with. However, it transpires that a friend has got some returned tickets for the circle, which I would give at least one limb to get hold of were it not for prior commitment... (In a double blow, the lovely BBC have scheduled the final of The Apprentice in the middle of the Prom, too).  Such is.

What Happened in Hungary: Day One

Now that the dust has settled and photos have been tagged on Facebook, I have decided, as promised, to relate the experience of my visit to Hungary. As usual, I have kept fairly detailed notes whilst there as an aide d'memoir, but it must be pointed out that what you read here is only very loosely based on them, and is mostly an entirely new piece of writing. I've added pictures where they are a useful illustration, but, like any good storyteller, will leave the rest to your imagination.

A few caveats, before we begin:

- As this blog is public, I've (almost) not mentioned anyone by name. It should still be pretty easy for anyone who was there or around my circle to work out who's who, as I've called most people by the name of their instrument. I'm sure this will offend nobody.
- Timings and descriptions of events are as accurate as I can make them, but if anyone knows better do leave a comment and I'll correct.
- I like detail and narrative, so in parts this account is rather more lengthy than a normal blog or a diary. Find a comfortable seat...
- I can't promise to update this every day due to the amount of time needed to type it, but it will be chronological and each day posted regularly.

Thursday morning.  I've woken up with plenty of time - too early, probably.  I don;t sleep well on transport and am fully anticipating having to stay awake for up to forty hours.  I've  done nearly as long before, but am aware that this is only successful if the previous night is good.  I've already packed my large bag the day before, so all that needs doing is to eat and collect up everything.  The other people whose house I am staying over in are up too, all but two coming on the tour and thus engaged in much the same activities as myself.  Having such a large car at my disposal, I offer to drive the luggage of four other people over to our meeting point - I didn't fancy lugging mine and the cello, so why not make the journey as useful as possible?  I get the back seats of Meg folded down pretty easily, which is lucky as my friends are forming an quickly-growing pile of bags on the pavement.  Five suitcases, a cello, a stick bag and all our 'cabin baggage' go in with room to spare and I drive off round to dump it all at the meeting point, accompanied by a flautist friend, whose leg has been a bit dodgy over the last couple of days.  Having the passenger seat still free, I'm happy to give her a lift over to 'the bus stop by the tennis courts' which is the usual departure point for coaches leaving on expeditions from the university.

There's nobody there when we arrive, despite the official meet-up time being ostensibly only a few minutes away.  [Flautist] stays with the bags and cello whilst I take Meg back to Best Mate's house. No driving for a week now, unless some unforeseen emergency involving the need for a hire car emerges, but I doubt it will.  I hand Best Mate the key card to keep in a safe place, along with my house keys. In the meantime, somebody else has turned up, a contrabass player who is a friend of Best Mate's Girlfriend.  Amazingly, she's got her instrument into the back of a little Peugeot and drives it over to join the pile of stuff by the tennis courts. I gather up my cabin baggage and wait for her to return, as Best Mate's Girlfriend has promised to take us both back over in her car.  As a guest, [Contrabass] is going to be made quite welcome, considering a few days ago we were missing one entirely.  That's at least three of us from other unis or not students at all.

There's quite a crowd gathered by the time we thank Best Mate's Girlfriend and make our presence known to the tour manager. The pile of bags is now sprawling over the lawn under the tree and it's getting warm in the mid-morning.  I greet everyone I know - which certainly isn't everyone there - and find Companion, one of the (two) violas in the orchestra. We've been all over the place in the last couple of years, and apart from sharing many common interests, her and I tend to fill in the gaps in each other's knowledge very well.  I'm told my previously arranged room-share with an old mate has been altered, which is a little annoying, but it's no real bother. I've also forgotten to put any warm clothing in my hand baggage, but that won't matter for making a quick toilet stop in the evening, I'm sure.

Ah - the coach has arrived. Goodness me, it's big; a six-wheeled double-decker, black with a distinctive diamond-based decoration and adverts for a Middle Eastern airline.  There's a rather more workmanlike white attachment hanging off the rear, which is our ski box.  Double-deckers don't have any more luggage space than a single-, and with two timps, a 'bass and four 'cellos loaded the bags need somewhere else to go, somewhere that's cheaper than a trailer.  All our luggage is carefully stacked and prodded inside until the box is full and the remainder go in with the instruments, through the angular hatches round the rear wheels. Better hope those bolts hold.

Companion has found us some seats downstairs, which will be quieter and easier to board than climbing the stairs. I've not been inside yet and am amazed to see two microwaves, a fridge and an oven next to the generously sized main door, as well as the more commonplace toilet, sink with tea and coffee and TV screens positioned so everyone can see.  There's another kitchen unit upstairs, so I'm told. Better still, there's no crammed-in airline seating on this bus.  Everyone gets a table, with two seats either side and enough room to stretch out, as long as you don't mind going backwards.  There's room for just twelve passengers down here, apart from the three crew seats up front separated by lockers and a makeshift bed between the front wheel arches.  At least we'll be comfortable.

A noise from the engine, and we're off, carefully negotiating the narrow road between the hedge and the tennis courts. A left, then another at the lights, and now we're pointing roughly the right way towards Hungary.  It's not long before we hit a queue, but at this time of day there are plenty, especially when you're joining a roundabout near the M25.  Travelling Companion and I have by this time compared guidebooks (Lonely Planet vs. DK Insight), journey snacks (a bag of banana chips apiece, cheese rolls and real banana vs. breakfast bars, nuts and chocolate-covered coffee beans) and the relative merits of our cameras (she wins by some margin against my little Olympus).  I talk to the group of three sitting opposite us for a bit.  The first part of our route is familiar indeed, the M25 for ten-or-so junctions until it becomes the M26 and then the M20.  I've only found out this morning that we shall be taking the Eurotunnel, which although quicker is less preferable than a ferry. Give me an extra half hour travelling in exchange for a view of the White Cliffs of Dover and a bracing wind, chugging across the waves out on deck instead of holed up in a train under them.  The White Cliffs are a reminder of why this stretch of motorway is so significant to me - it follows, by and large, the route of the North Downs Way that I walked last year.  I know by heart all the places you can see the NDW from the road as it climbs up and down the ridge of chalk that sculpts the landscape of Surrey and Kent. That footbridge we're going under, I crossed that at the start of my fifth stage. Doesn't look like much, but the personal significance is very close.

We queue in a jam round Leatherhead and I decide to listen to one of my Reith Lectures. It's uplifting stuff as Aung San contemplates freedom and struggling against tyranny. Perhaps appropriate too, given the political disposition of Hungary for much of the previous century. But there's another struggle going on today that's less momentous but equally pertinent: a strike against the government by public sector workers. Companion and I are in support of it, but as it includes customs and border police we've been worried about delays at the Channel Tunnel.

On reaching Folkstone, we find our fears are unfounded - twofold. Firstly, the UK side of the Eurotunnel is controlled by the French authorities (not that they have no reputation for striking) and we get through in little time. You don't even need to show a passport going this way. Secondly, it turns out that the Tunnel can quite capably manufacture its own delays. Just our luck, there was a broken-down train earlier this morning, and departures are over two hours behind.  We were supposed to leave at 1.15 - it'll now be 3.30 before we even get on the train.  Time to pay over the odds for coffee and sandwiches and watch the strike on BBC News 24, there's little else to pass the time. I purchase a pasta pot and wine gums with my remaining English money - we can't spend Euros here yet.

Fast-forward a few hours and we're being called forward. A quick dash to the toilet, then back on the bus, head count and move off.  There's lot's of twists and turns to get near to the trains: out of the car park, round the service building to boarding lanes, then a few more corners and down the ramp to the platforms. It's horribly industrial, brightened only by a white horse on the cliff overlooking the giant marshalling yard (on which the NDW makes its last push towards Dover on its the southern loop), and a Eurostar speeding by without needing to stop here.  It's almost exactly ten years to the day since I was last on this mode of conveyance between England and France and little has changed - for a start, the trains look as if they haven't been washed much in that time.  They're great steel boxes with a few windows in the emergency doors, the largest railway wagons in the world.  The trains for lorries are little more than cages, but at least the drivers get a normal carriage for the journey - we have to ride in, or close to, our vehicle.  Entry to these 'tubes' is novel: the train is split into two haves. The rear section has a 'door' at the side and a ramp in the last carriage, and cars can drive into the train at an angle and then occupy the upper or lower deck.  For buses, the middle of the train has a flat car with a roof and sides that retract right back, and ramps over the gap at the sides: a bus can then drive onto this open platform and line up with the roadway into the carriages. It's actually quite a tidy solution to getting everyone on and off quickly.

Our giant coach was a tight fit. In fact, it was only just a fit at all, because besides clearing the roof with only inches to spare, our ski box was no longer in perfect repair. A slice was sticking up at the top right corner, and the bottom corner and width light spur were hanging loose.  Must have caught it on the entrance or one of the internal doors; there's very little width to spare and we had to keep right in order to have the main door open properly once parked.  The journey is not particularly exciting. Once the train starts moving, there's about 40 seconds of daylight if you're lucky enough to be able to see a window, and then it goes black outside. You can feel the train picking up speed and going downhill a bit, and your coach rocks a little when the train does, but otherwise you might as well be in an underground car park or a ferry.  It's jolly quiet, so after queueing to gawp at the damaged ski box, I put on some Elgar. We're all glad to be moving but now have twenty-seven minutes to kill.

That's not to detract from the sheer scale of the engineering here, in the world's longest underwater tunnel.  If you know where to look, you can catch a very brief glimpse of the doors to two crossover points - where the twin rail tunnels and service tunnel meet in a huge man-made cavern deep under the sea, just in case a train ever needs to cross from one to the other. After this, more blackness, until the train goes uphill again, at a noticeably much steeper angle than the English side due to following the rock strata. Blinking, we're in daylight again, running round the huge loop at Sangatte so the train is already reversed for the return journey. They get everything off pretty quickly, as the company's operating principle relies on quick turnaround times and being able to drive straight from the train onto the French autoroute network. Also there's rather a large hole in the finances after the 60 million euro repair bill from that fire in 2008...

The relatively few miles of northern France we have to traverse to reach Belgium are not particularly interesting.  There's a railway depot, wind turbines and a distant glimpse of the ferry terminals at Calais and Dunkerque. I'd left my MP3 player going and found that the next folder was The Apostles, a lengthy enough work for the coming hours.  I'd not ever really listened to the piece all the way through, knowing only excepts, and quickly realised what I'd been missing. The third movement makes a particularly strong impression, where Elgar uses an actual shofar to depict the dawn call, over the full orchestra. For the next two days I'd hear little else but the upwards sixth of the ram's horn and the rush of the strings as I tried to doze.

The flat fields of Belgium took on a muted light as the afternoon turned to evening, looking almost like a eighteenth- century landscape painting save for the giant turbines and the railway viaducts that followed the motorway. A silver and red Thalys train shot past, scheduled to reach Brussels far sooner than we would.  Elgar finished.  We could turn off the individual audio speakers overhead so when DVDs were procured I ignored Mongrels but decided to half-watch Casino Royale, despite having seen it many times.  As luck would have it, we made good time round the normally congested Brussels ring road, even making up what we had lost waiting at the Tunnel, and arrived at a large service area on the German border just as sunset began.  It was still a little warm in the calm evening, and as we are far from the sea now there are hills beginning to appear.  I remember thinking that choosing food necessitated a slightly puzzling choice: to explain; almost every purchase would have required just one additional item we didn't have. We had a microwave, but there were no items that could be cooked in it. There were loaves of bread and butter, but we had no knife. In the end I opted for a large cheese roll, water and, of course, a waffle.  Naturally, the opportunity to converse with people sitting in different parts of the bus was also seized with relish.  I overheard some conversation that people had smelled smoke and burning coming from the rear of bus a while back, but clearly nothing had come of it. We were not, as Top Gear would put it, 'slightly on fire'.  It's nine in the evening, which is about what it should be at this stage.  In fact, the Conductor and I were both allowing ourselves to entertain the thought that we might now reach Budapest sooner than the thirty hours we'd been working on when we departed from Surrey.

We got going again and headed out onto the de-restricted autobahn, a clear run for the next three hours until out changeover point south of Frankfurt. I draw the curtains but can't resist peering out at the last embers of the day.  Germany is a land of small lights and distant shadows, and I have a slight regret I probably won't get to see the hills of the south going in either direction.  Floodlit, immobile industrial plants are passed at speed by automobiles, some at over 200 kilometers an hour in the light nocturnal traffic.  Our bus cruises on; slower but with gentle passage over the asphalt sea, occasionally sidestepping to overtake a lorry. Companion is asleep, along with most of the other occupants, and although I will hardly be able to do so myself, I try.

Next time: What can and can't be fixed with gaffa tape, and we all become very familiar with a certain German town...