Two Beginnings,Two Ends

It is unusually quiet outside the window of my room in the morning; there is little traffic and few people to be seen. I drink an espresso in the etterem - there is thankfully no sign of The Hag - and walk into town to change some money. The K&H bank is closed, as is almost everything else, and I remember that today is 23rd October: 50 years ago the students rose up to challenge Communist rule, and a public holiday marks the start of a struggle that finally triumphed more than 30 years later. Piac Utca is festooned with Hungarian flags. They hang from every lampost and in every shop window, above every government building and the closed doors of the bank. A group of perhaps 300 people have gathered for a memorial ceremony in the square facing the church; there is vigorous applause for the speakers and a lot of flag waving, the achievement of independance recent enough to be in many of the crowds memories. I pass an apartment block with a cast concrete depiction of Soviet shock workers toiling under a Red Star fixed to the wall, the Hungarian national flag draped over one corner; there is barely any evidence of socialist times in Debrecen, and I am surprised this has survived in plain view when the statues have been removed from the parks and the hammer and sickle prised from the public buildings.
I take the tram to the park and walk the forest paths, past the empty boating lake and boarded up Hot Dogey stands, the zoo and the chained up fairground rides until I find a wood cabin at the edge of a pond where I buy a Borsodi to drink at one of the tables in the late afternoon sun. I watch families and couples stroll by, the younger ones chatting and laughing, the older ones respectfully quiet, perhaps remembering other holidays and walks in the park when times were not quite so free. I walk back to town in the gathering dusk; the square is empty now, the handful of etterems and bars that have opened attracting little custom. I buy some food at the Non-Stop ABC and go back to my room. Setting the alarm for the morning train to Szolnok and Szeged I have an early night, but I’m not tired and lie in the darkness listening to the forlorn sound of the few cars that pass below my window. There are no footfalls or voices from the pavement outside, just the faint echo of the announcer drifting across from the station – a lonely sound in the stillness of an empty night.
There are half a dozen people waiting on the freezing platform for the 5am train to Szeged; two men are sharing a bottle of vodka to ward off the chill, while a third sleeps across a bench, a blanket drawn tightly around him. Nothing moves in the station. The nights’ shunting is done, the sidings are silent, and there are no platform announcements. A V63 looms out of the misty darkness and clatters through the station with a train piled high with turnips. I watch as one tumbles down a heap and falls off the wagon, bouncing along the platform like something from The Dambusters, skimming the shoes of one of the drinkers and hitting the locked platform booth's door with an almighty crash. The man on the bench snores his way through this minor drama. My train arrives shortly before five, pushed into the platform by a diesel shunter while a V43 electric waits to back onto the lead carriage. It is cold and damp inside, the carriages having spent the last three days in the sidings with the doors and some of the windows open; it is fifteen minutes before my compartment seems less cold than the brown fields and grey dawn outside the window.
There is a ten minute stop at Szolnok and I stand on the platform with a cigarette and watch an M41 diesel back onto a commuter train for an unpronounceable town lost on the Great Plain. The driver revs the engine to full power to push the buffers hard together, sending a huge cloud of grey-brown exhaust rolling down the platform funnelled beneath the canopy, while the shunter climbs down between the locomotive and train to couple them up. When he emerges he is holding a posey of weeds he has picked from the track and offers them to the driver at his open cab window, eyelids fluttering, legs chastely crossed at the knees. There’s a ripple of laughter from the waiting passengers and the flushed driver retreats to hide his embarrassment in the darkened engine room of the M41.
I arrive at Szeged a few minutes past midday and walk into town to find the TourInform office. There is no map outside the station, but my research has provided general directions and fifteen minutes later I am standing outside the office: it is closed. I spend the next hour walking round the old town and a good deal of the newer town but can find nowhere to stay for less than two days budget. A cold wind whips of the Great Hungarian Plain, rattling street signs and chasing litter along the gutters. There is nothing to see in town, nothing that would make it an attractive place to explore, and there is a frightening number of impoverished and homeless beggars, many of which look as if they have crossed the nearby Romanian border. It is the last place in Hungary, literally and metaphorically, that I would care to spend time in, the very end of South-Central Europe. I walk back to the station and buy a ticket for the Bucaresti-Budapest EuroCity.
The train is full to capacity even this early in its journey; there are no seats, so I stand in the corridor. More and more people pile onto the train at every stop, until the corridors, connecting gangways – even the toilets – are shoulder to shoulder and crammed with luggage. Somehow the conductor still manages to squeeze through and frowns as he inspects my ticket. He slashes two diagonal lines across it, turns it over and writes 3950 Forints on the back, holding his hand out for the money. The ticket clerk in Szeged has booked me onto a later InterCity departure, even though I specified EC and have been charged the supplement. I try to explain this to the conductor, but he is insistent and produces his timetable, pointing out the difference between my ticket and the train number in his book. I tell him I have no money, producing a few travellers cheques to back up my deceit, but he ignores this plea and handwrites a new ticket. I refuse to take the ticket and adopt a tactic I have seen people just like this Hungarian ticket inspector use many times: I shrug, shake my head, and look out of the window – it is not my problem; it is not possible.
After three hours standing in the corridor I arrive at Keleti Palyaudvar. Through the carriage window I see the ticket inspector already on the platform, talking to two mean looking policemen, pointing to his book and scanning the mass of faces pouring off the train. I walk two coaches forward and find a door directly opposite the side entrance to Baross Ter, walk quickly out of the station, turn right, follow its length then turn right again back into the station and join the crowd of people descending the Metro stairs. I expect to hear a shout or feel a restraining hand on my arm, but there is nothing, my escape a success. I catch M2 to Deak Ter and change for M3 to Nagyvarad Ter; I walk to the pension I have used previously and they give me a room at a discounted rate – not through any loyalty, but to fill one of the 27 vacancies they have. I eat in the Etterem which has now moved inside from the summer terrace and contemplate the unsettling effect 10 hours on a train has on the digestive system; and that I am nearing the end of my journey on the railways of central Europe.