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Five Minutes in Budapest: A Very Short Travel Story
Why am I still thinking about this?
When I was in the flower of my youth, not long after the Berlin Wall came down, I spent a couple of days in Budapest, Hungary. After getting off the train and buying black market forints at regular market price from some sketchy characters at the station, I went looking for my hotel.
This was long before GPS and as is my custom I was woefully unprepared to self-geolocate in a strange city. All I had at my disposal was a spectacularly inaccurate map provided by a sneering ex-Communist in the tourist office and zero command of what is famously one of the most challenging languages in the world.
It’s entirely possible I’d be standing on that sidewalk yet, but two women passing by took pity on my obvious confusion and came to my aid. Through a combination of pidgin English, high school German, and gesturing at the aformentioned map, I got a general idea of how to reach my destination.
In a final fit of courtesy, one of my benefactors pointed at a passing streetcar to indicate that would the best way to get where I was going, and then asked shyly what we would call it in Canada.
Herein the crux of the story — I told her we called it a “tram”. Now that’s a perfectly fine and accurate word, but I come…
