Welcoming in the 21st Year of My life!
...This might have been one of the worst 24 hours of my life. But that's also great because I can get rid of all the bad luck for my 21st year! ...so where we left off yesterday. We went to a little place to celebrate my 21st birthday! It was good. I had a pina colada for the first time. Then we just chatted and had fun! It was a true girls night out, except that Peter (Flora's new boy) was there, but he didn't know English so I don't think he counts that much.
It was already 2 when we were done, and Flora said that her bus was coming but we should be able to find our way over to Kossuth Nyomda (we didn't know the Nyomda part yet. We just thought if we got to Kossuth we'd be golden) using the bus 997. That sounded easy enough, so we waited for 20 min but 997 never arrived. Then we looked at the boards and 997 wasn't there so we decided to take the bus to Ors Vezer tere where we usually do and then take bus 168E back to the dorm. Everything was fine, we even met this guy from Minnesota who was really nice. He was telling us about his adventures, then we got off the bus and someone followed me off. He then followed to point at me, and then point at him and went "You, Me?" I looked at him "What?" Then he proceeded to keep saying "Me, You, Wot?" I wasn't sure what he wanted but we just said no and kept walking. Its about 2 am now and we arrive at the Metro stop.
The next bus leaves at 5:05 am and its 2:22am. That's problematic because its about -2 degrees Celsius and waiting is one of the worst things ever to do! Therefore, Frances and I decided that we are smart, capable, young women who can walk back to the dorm! Usually it takes about 15 min by bus so we thought it'd be about an hour walk which is MUCH better than waiting for the bus for three hours...so we start walking. (Oh we also saw a Taxi there are the station and asked him how much it would cost but the said that he already had people. So we asked if he could call another taxi and he asked us if we had a phone. I had a phone but I didn't have a sim card so he said no. But that was okay because would just walk...) We follow the bus posts 161, 168E, 161 everything seems to be going great! We even made this big turn and kept finding the bus stops but then soon we couldn't find the bus stops anymore. They started being 85 or 909 and we didn't recognize them, but we thought it was just because they were different stops and 161 or 168E would show up eventually. We never saw them again.
The area that we were walking around was the industrial factory area, so it was pretty frightening but it was pretty well lit. We walk for about an hour and we know for sure something's wrong so then we found this police who had pulled over someone and asked him for directions. He told us that's its pretty far but if we walk about two kilometers down and then make a right we would be able to find it. That sounds simple enough, so we keep walking. Another hour passes and we were FREEZING by then. We walked by an abandoned hospital and all these industrial buildings. Finally the police comes up again! I think they were worried so they tried to come find us. They asked us if we were trying to find Tarkarét utca 6 and we said yes. I think he said "Get in!" but I wasn't sure so we didn't dare approach the car. They then told us to go three blocks to our left and we should find it. Even though it was in the opposite direction he just previously told us, we followed it. He zoomed away and we never saw him again. Going to the left brought us back to the main road which seemed to be good and finally we saw a bus stop 909 that would bring us to Kossuth Kispest. We were SO excited! We thought it was the right place!
After waiting for 12 min, the bus came and we were cheering and ecstatic we were already going to be going home. It was about 4 am by now...but something was wrong. We saw this bus go over a bridge and it seemed to go further and further away from where we needed to go. We thought maybe it would go around, but it actually just brought us to a completely different "city!" So then we tried talking to him and telling him we were at the wrong place but he didn't speak any English. He decided to bring us to Kobanya which was the bus station half way from where we were supposed to be and where we were. We then went into the train station to find someone to talk to. We asked the train station guy who said he didn't know so he told us to go across to the Fornetti guy who was younger to ask for help. This guy then gets a pen and paper and brings it over to the bus stop lady who then tries to explain to us where to go. We can tell she wants to be helpful but has absolutely no idea what we are talking about.
We go outside, and see that the tram lines 3 and 57 or something started running! Its 5:10 am. Of course we knew that we would miss the 168E to our dorm but we thought we could take another one.
That's how far we were...
Finally we got back to Ors Vezer tere where we started up and take the bus that's at 5:40 am. We were ESTACTIC! Fighting on even at Budapest!
By the time we arrive back at our dorm, we were jelly legged and ready to shower and sleep! We run in laughing and asking the guard to let us in. Something was wrong because he started saying that the key is already upstairs and that we just had to go up. That either meant that 1) Flora got worried and came back or 2) She forgot to give the key to the guard. When we get to the door we knock and no one responds...That meant that we were locked out.
Now it was deciding if we should just sleep outside in the common room, or try to figure something else out. I decided to go down to talk to the guard and see if we can get a spare key. However, after talking to him he realized he looked at the wrong box! WE GOT THE KEY! And we ran back up. It was time to shower and rest, but because I was so wound up and scared I only ended up getting one hour of sleep.
I know you're probably worried, but its okay everything worked out just fine! I'm alive and nothing bad happened. We are strong, young capable women! :)
