TRAVEL DIARY

A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.

Thursday, November 3, 2005

5:04 PM
Posted by jodi rose

if it's wednesday it must be budapest...
woke up at adam and anita's lovely apartment to views of russet orange trees up the hill of the citadella, and a smoky haze across the river. they took me to a38 for dinner last night - very cool converted russian gravel carrier boat - amazing restaurant upstairs local delicacies wild boar & wild mushrooms, I had the soup but not the boar. then a band started downstairs and were screened on a tv in the restaurant - average rock covers of the clash, followed strangely by a salsa band with singer in green satin tights. reminded me of the inflight muzak on air malev, panpipe version of 'nothing compares to you' and salsa 'hotel california'.
I was planning to take the train this morning to sturovo, but having discovered the gellert baths are at the bottom of this hill - literally - am being persuaded to go down and soak the travel stains away before taking a later train this afternoon. elvira is the name of the website for hungarian trains - she's excellent. my choices are the express to berlin or another one going to prague - may have to investigate later. It's funny how much easier everything is to work out once you're there, on the ground. I've been stressing about which train goes from where (there are three major stations here), and how to get into the city from the airport - in the event the minibus service was cheap, fast and reliable; and both my trains to sturovo and ljubljana leave from keleti station. once you have a place on the map to orient yourself to, it's much easier. we're also very close to one of the most beautiful bridges I have ever seen - sweeping curves, huge metal rivets, sand tower castles - apparently it has a museum in one of the rooms on the end which is open for 3 hours once a week.
tamas imparted this information - he thinks the man drives in from 50 miles out in the country to share the wonders of historical bridge photos with the public - will have to try and come back at the right time. wonderful meeting tamas, he worked with tuomo on the float piece at isea (where the ship is the playhead and the route is the score - so the navigation systems on the boat became like the needle playing the baltic ocean floor as a slowly evolving musical work) and he is now doing something very high-tech with gps inaccuracy and infrasound - hope to be here for the opening.
adam working on beautiful projects with interactive solar radio's, and another piece for the recent reaktor festival/conference where people could upload messages around the city and pick them up via mini fm transmitters. ah what fun I want to play!
maria valeria is calling me, and it's time to meet.