A Town On The Duna

I find the TourInform office in Gyor and they make a booking for me without fee, or complaint. I ask for a beer in the Bus Pub, but they cannot understand me and pour me a large glass of pale fluid. I have no idea what I am drinking: two equal measures of nameless liquid, mixed to form a slightly oily, universal, alcohol laden drink. It tastes like a very mild cheese, and leaves my mouth parched; I am drunk before the glass is even half empty. The pub is a half-basement, a few steps down from the street, and I sit at eye level with the pavement outside it's open door. On the walls are reproduction enamal Coca Cola signs, a large colour photograph of a naked, open legged woman, and an advertisment for something called Zwack. Could this be what I am drinking? I watch sandals, shoes, and trainers clatter, slap, and shuffle by the open door; these, and an awful Hungarian rap song that plays on the jukebox are drowned out by an M41 diesel leaving the station. I smell it's diesel exhaust a few moments after it passes on the line accross the street.
A fat woman with a dark, deeply lined face leans over my table, snapping her fingers at the cigarette hanging from her lips. "English?" she asks as I light it for her, "Sex?" She has a weepimg sore at the corner of her mouth, her eyes deeply bloodshot.
I walk unsteadily to my hotel. It is modestly priced, and I do not expect much. It is a converted three storey house in a quiet, leafy street behind the station, and is lovely. They give me a spotless, airy, attic room; it is tastefully decorated, and has a dormer window with views over the treetops outside. I look out over the town, like Mr Hulot on his summer holiday, then turn out the light, any thoughts of dinner lost in the haze of my anonymous drink.

It is a warm, sunny, early Autumn morning in Gyor. I change some money at a bank where a sign tells me my details will be checked with Interpol. There is no problem. The cashier thanks me, enquires about my stay, and wishes me a nice day. This is typical of the people I meet in Hungary; an export market in manners to their Northerly neighbours? I spend a fruitless hour searching for an Internet cafe in the cobbled streets and winding alleys of the Baroque old town. It is charming, but, defeated, I have to return to the TourInform office: I am directed back to a narrow street I have passed half a dozen times before.
I go to the station to find a way to Szeckeservhar. Timetables for every line in the country are pasted along the walls of a dim corridor along the station's axis. Table 3 will take me to Cellendolk, table 2 onwards to Veszprem; I find timetable 12 beside the Tabak kiosk, but it advises me to use table 14, or perhaps both 7 and 5 to reach Szeckeservhar from Veszprem. Backwards and forwards, from one side to the other, a frustrating paperchase in the gloomy corridor. I gather the component parts of my journey, and piece them together to form a crooked, ill-jointed line south from Gyor; it is such a tenuous link that it will snap with the slightest delay or diversion. I could take a train to Budapest and make a simple connection there: why would anyone want to do that?
I walk along Vagany 1 and take some photographs, pointing my lens into the evening sun, hoping to capture it's dying warmth amid the long shadows. There is a small apartment block behind a wooden fence at the end of the platform. It has a small shady garden, with washing on the line and a black cat asleep in the cool grass. An old man comes out of the front door and feeds and plays with the cat; he says something to me in Hungarian, smiles, and goes back inside. It is very quiet. The station is empty, and there are no trains. It is a tranquil, pleasing scene, played out a few feet from the mainline, a stonesthrow from the seedy Bus Pub.

I shop for provisions, and eat a simple meal of bread and cheese in my room; for company, I have evensong in the trees outside my window, and the baleful horn of a late evening train leaving town.