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...