Ticket control

Because we enjoyed yesterday’s day in Budapest so much and only got to see a small fraction of what there is to see, we decided to stay a day longer. “Let’s take the bus today. It’s certainly a good alternative to the train and we’ll see something new,” I suggest. “A good idea,” Tanja agrees. We cross the road in front of our guesthouse in high spirits. The bus stop is on the opposite side. Again we don’t find a ticket counter. “I’m sure I can buy the ticket from the driver,” says Tanja. When we board the modern bus, we realize that the driver is sitting behind a hermetically sealed glass wall and cannot be contacted by any of his guests. With an uneasy feeling, we settle down on one of the free seats and ride to the end of the line. “And where do we go from here?” asks Tanja. “The girl at reception said we should use the subway,” I reply and purposefully follow the passengers on the bus as they disappear into the ground on a nearby staircase. Beneath the street is another world. Lottery vendors offer their tickets to hurried passers-by. Flower stores brighten up the dull light of the artificial lighting with their colorful plants. The smell of freshly baked bread escapes from a store into the aisles, mingling with the smoke of cigarettes, the stench of stale, cheap alcohol and the dirt of the clogged pathways. A wave of air blows into our faces from a dark, yawning tunnel. Two glowworm-like lights flicker in the blackness, cutting through the darkness, growing larger until they suddenly reveal the dirty snout of a train that comes to a halt just seconds later with its brakes screeching loudly. “Somehow you can tell this place is the second oldest subway in the world after the London Underground,” I say aloud. “Do you see a ticket machine here?” “No,” I hear Tanja answer and ask a young man if he speaks English. “A bit of German,” he replies in a friendly manner and explains where we can buy the tickets. The man behind a glass pane pushes two tickets through my slot, which I pocket with satisfaction. Then we ask our way to the right subway that will take us to the center.

Just a few stops later, we get off the train in a great mood. In the end, we managed to arrive in the heart of Budapest without knowing the language and without getting lost once. We smile at each other in victory as we step onto the escalator to glide back towards daylight.

“Ticket!”, a bad-tempered voice snaps me out of my cheerfulness. In front of me is a fat woman in a dark uniform. Her grimacing face makes me flinch at first. “Ticket!”, the mouth moving in front of me repeats in a foreign accent. “Ah tickets. Of course,” I reply to the unfriendly woman who must have got out of bed with her left foot first today. I reach into my shirt pocket and pull out the two tickets. Confident and self-assured, I hand her grabbing sausage fingers my beautiful and brand-new receipts. The dark eyes in their bulging sockets seem to flash for a moment as they examine our pretty tickets. Suddenly a disgusting finger rises to eye level. The mouth of the face moves again. “2000 forints!” echoes in my ears. Then the body with the dark uniform turns to Tanja and the mouth repeats: “2000 forints!” Tanja and I laugh a little uncertainly at each other and don’t know what this woman wants from us. She now points energetically at our tickets and says something in Hungarian. Then we hear the number 4000 forints in English. “How?” I ask in surprise and realize how anger is building up inside me. “Penalty!” says the inspector. “Why? We bought wonderful tickets for both of us,” I reply in German. The officer, if she is one at all, apparently speaks no German and no English. Her face contorts into a laughing grimace. Her voice gets louder and repeats the number 4000 and punishment. “We’re not paying a fine. We have tickets,” I reply seriously. Suddenly the woman calls a colleague who appears out of nowhere. “Numbers!”, we think we understand. “Don’t pay!” I reply, whereupon the man, wearing the same uniform as the woman, pulls out his cell phone and dials a number. “Police!” says the equally unfriendly gentleman to us. We suddenly feel treated like criminals. Passers-by walk past us disinterestedly. “These are valid tickets and we’re not paying a penny!” I say louder now too. The man holds the tickets under my nose and tells me that we have not validated them. “What’s that all about? Where can you validate these things?” I want to know, to which we address each other in our own language. “Where is that written? We’re foreigners and we can’t read the language. You can see that we’re not fare dodgers,” I say, pointing to the tickets. The man leads us to a sign on the wall where it says in small print in German how to buy the tickets. “Nobody can see that!” I shout in horror and simply can’t believe that the Hungarian state treats its tourists like this. The inspector pulls out his cell phone again, babbles something about the police. Then he points to a sheet of paper written in English on which we can read that the price increases from 2000 to 6500 forints when the police are called. “Not fair. That’s not fair!” I rebel. When we explain to the two bad guys that we have no money, they want to keep one of us as a pledge. To put an end to the trouble, I pull 8 euros out of my money belt, which is roughly equivalent to 2000 forints, and hand it to the cutthroat. He also mercilessly demands the amount from Tanja, whereupon we more than overstretch our budget for the day.

“Mess!” I curse when I get back to daylight. For the first few minutes, we walk around disoriented with anger. Then we come to our senses. “There’s no point in letting these morons spoil your day,” I say. “That’s right. It’s best to forget about the tiresome history and enjoy the city,” Tanja agrees.

Once we arrive in the pedestrian zone, we immediately come across an information stand offering city tours. “Too expensive,” I say to the salesman and tell him I’ve just paid a fine of 4000 forints. “They can’t do that with us,” he says in perfect German. “How am I supposed to understand that?” I ask. “The inspectors are bad people. We hate them. They are usually very unfriendly and almost always look for the easiest prey, and that’s tourists. They know very well that a tourist doesn’t know how to buy a ticket. At the slightest mistake, people like them are asked to pay. They will think three times before fining a Hungarian. It’s easy to find out the address of a ticket inspector. And it can easily happen that he gets a slap on the way home. No, they won’t do that to us. They’re far too scared. Only the poor Hungarians, who you can tell have nothing, are asked to pay,” he explains. “Unbelievable,” I say in amazement. “But they still shouldn’t have paid. If they knew our law, they would have simply said in court that they had been detained. Or even better, they would have been treated like criminals. Then they would even have made money out of it,” he explains with a knowing smile. “Well, you need time for that. Or how long does it take to be summoned to court? And who knows where you’ll be kept in the meantime. Maybe even in prison? No, it’s better this way, although it’s really a mess when the Hungarian state lets such people loose on money-making tourists. “Well, I’ll give you the tickets for 2000 forints cheaper and you’ll only have to pay half the fine. Do you want to do the city tour under these circumstances?” Tanja and I look at each other and agree. One of the reasons we extended our stay in Budapest was the city tour. Who knows if we will ever come to Budapest again?

Until the start of the sightseeing tour, we stroll through the city center and enjoy the promenade along the Danube. Then in the late afternoon we get on the cabriolet bus and let ourselves be driven to the most beautiful buildings in Budapest. The tour guide talks about the city’s past in three languages. We learn about the seven tribes coming from the Urals whose leaders settled here. We hear about the coronation of Emperor Franz Josef and Empress Sissi in the 19th century in St. Matthias Church. From King Stephen, who was recognized as the first king of Hungary in 1001. We listen to the stories of the formation of the country, the presence of the Romans, the migrations of Germanic tribes, hear about the empire of the Huns under Attila, their expulsion by the Germanic tribes, their expulsion by the Avars, the conquest by the Moravians, the incorporation of the country by Charlemagne and so on. My head is buzzing with so much history and, to be honest, it’s impossible for me to understand and remember it all at once. What remains for us is an overwhelming impression, enough to leave the city tomorrow to follow the Danube further.

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