Slow Train To Putnok

I take The IC "Takta" to Miskolc. The name gives the train a kind of importance - as if to suggest every other train will be diverted and held back to speed it's progress. This isn't the case, of course: it is only three coaches long, and waits for every freight and commuter train along the way. A few seconds before departure, a thickset, darkskinned younger man barges into the compartment I've found. He is dressed in awful, garish, cheaply made designer clothes, and has a large holdall full of similar garments that he has bought in Budapest. He unpacks these as we speed through the city's suburbs and holds each one up to himself, unselfconcsiously admiring himself in the compartment's mirror. I do not exist, it seems. Then he has a long, loud conversation on an old Nokia mobile phone. After that, he spends the next two hours drumming his feet, stretching, yawning noisily, flapping his arms and legs, getting up, sitting down, sighing, scratching, tapping on his armrests. I cannot read nor write, and the tapping drowns out my MP3 player. By the time the train reaches Miskolc, I have invented several scenarios in which I murder him.
I walk into town form the station, a good half-a- mile or so. I do not want to take a tram, as I'm looking for a room and might miss something on the way. There is nothing but the inevitable blocks of flats, hole in the wall bars, and cheap booze shops until I get to the pedestrianised main street. It is warm and humid. I find the Hotel Pannonia but it is too costly; they kindly tell me of a pension a short walk away, behind the restored theatre. It is above a pizzeria, the owners Italian, and neither of us has the slightest idea what the other is saying. This makes no difference: they speak only Italian, and understand no Hungarian or German; I speak a few words of German, nothing else; I have a room, they have some Forints, everybody is happy.
Miskolc is a small city close to the Slovakian border. There are a few architectural attractions dotted around, but it has no pretensions of being anything other than a provincial crossroads surrounded by farmland. It is certainly less wealthy than the towns and cities West of Budapest, and still bears the scars of the devastation wrought during the war. Where, in other cities, the damaged buildings have been restored or replaced with newer developments, Miskolc has large gaps or crumbling shells, just the odd 1960s shopping centre slotted between the old townhouses. The trams are older than any I have seen, and must date from the years just after hostilities ceased. There are few tourists, and I encounter no British visitors at all. I find the improbably named Ettrem Calypso in the narrow streets behind the theatre and have a meal and a drink for less than the price of a sandwich in England. Pork flavoured with paprika, garlic, and onions served with lechto - mashed potatoes with herbs and butter - garnished with seeded slices of fresh paprika. It is spicy and filling, typical Hungarian cuisine.
In the morning I take a train into the countryside, to Putnok on the Slovakian border. It has an M41 diesel at the front, built in 1981, and still in original condition. A number of these locomotives have been rebuilt with new diesel engines and air-conditioned cabs, new silencers, and a new coat of paint. This one is loud, dirty, the paint faded and peeling: it will shortly be rebuilt, or perhaps scrapped. The line is single track, and there are stops every few miles. The train is in no hurry, nor the handful of passengers. There is a chemical plant at Berente that stretches for 5kms, chimneys belching yellow smoke, thick pipes snaking alongside the line, carrying God knows what lethal cargo. After that, sawmills, power stations, and a vast derelict steelworks. The industrial decay is breathtaking: it is like the aftermath of an atomic bomb.
Then, incredibly, open fields, wooded hills, a small village with a horse and cart loaded with brushwood waiting at the crossing. It takes more than an hour to cover the 40kms to Putnok. I drink a beer in the Bufe at the station, and wait for the M41 to run around the train for the trip back. This takes an hour. The driver shuts the engine down and drinks an espresso in the Bufe, then takes a leisurely stroll back to his cab. Half an hour later I hear the M41 roar into life. Three and a half hours after setting off I arrive back at Miskolc, hoping that the M41 is never scrapped or rebuilt, and nobody thinks of speeding up the timetable.