{"id":18538,"date":"2017-10-12T03:24:52","date_gmt":"2017-10-12T07:24:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.runkevinrun.com\/?p=18538"},"modified":"2017-10-12T03:26:40","modified_gmt":"2017-10-12T07:26:40","slug":"october-11-2017-arriving-in-budapest-supplemental","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/?p=18538","title":{"rendered":"October 11, 2017 – Arriving in Budapest (Supplemental)"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Yesterday” – Lennon\/McCartney … though written by Paul
\n<\/b><\/p>\n

Yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away.
\nNow it looks as though they’re here to stay.
\nOh, I believe in yesterday.<\/p>\n

Suddenly I’m not half the man I used to be.
\nThere’s a shadow hanging over me.
\nOh, yesterday came suddenly.<\/div>\n

Why she had to go, I don’t know, she wouldn’t say.
\nI said something wrong, now I long for yesterday.<\/p>\n

Yesterday love was such an easy game to play.
\nNow I need a place to hide away.
\nOh, I believe in yesterday.<\/p>\n

Why she had to go, I don’t know, she wouldn’t say.
\nI said something wrong, now I long for yesterday.<\/p>\n

Yesterday love was such an easy game to play.
\nNow I need a place to hide away.
\nOh, I believe in yesterday.<\/p>\n

Mm mm mm mm mm mm mm<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s the morning of the 12th and I’m finishing up the details from yesterday’s arrival in Budapest.\u00a0 I had a strange night of it, roiled by memories and melancholia; adding to it all, my legs were (and remain) hurting and stiff, perhaps from the Medvedgrad hike of two yesterdays ago or perhaps just the ravages of space and age.<\/p>\n

Going through many photos already posted here and as I cull the ones from last night, I realize I hate my smile, my grinding teeth having exacerbated the crooked alignment, and the possible permanently stained molars the color of cola (Diet, Light, Zero, or whatever else they call the Coca Cola drink I abuse).\u00a0 I also only see wrinkles, receding and thinning hairlines, and the pockmarks of time.<\/p>\n

\u00a0So this should be a fun post, huh?<\/div>\n
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Having arrived in Budapest, I walked from the bus depot to my “Youthful Apartment Next To Corvin.”\u00a0 The exterior of the rundown courtyard looks like something out of a cross-over episode of “Melrose Place” and “The Shield.”\u00a0 The interior is a bit nicer, albeit weirdly faux-Lichtenstein-ian paintings dot the walls.\u00a0 It’s fine.\u00a0 Everything’s fine.\u00a0 It’s a little cold — they have a spaceheater to plug in but I hate those things.<\/p>\n

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The weather outside is delightful.\u00a0 Mid-60s in the afternoon.\u00a0 The forecast shows only circular yellow suns with dotted rays of the shine.\u00a0 I’m hoping for a pleasant few days here in Hungary.<\/div>\n

Wanting to hit the ground running so to speak, to make the most of the first day here in the capital of Hungary, I set out to hit a few things on my “must-see” tour list.\u00a0 The apartment airBNB is actually in a gentrifying neighborhood, adjacent to a large mall and lots of restaurants.\u00a0 It’s just this block I’m on that isn’t apparently quite gentried up yet… but they’re working on it.\u00a0 As I walked out of the building, a workman was literally pounding the roof to shambles, debris falling (mostly) within the CSI-styled cordoned off sidewalk.\u00a0 This is why those falling hammer signs exist I guess… albeit outside of the yellow warning tape and a guy with a hard hat waving frantically at me to get out of the way, there weren’t any signs.<\/p>\n

Here’s some shots of random “Budapest-ian” streets.\u00a0 I don’t know if any of these buildings are important or have significance; I just took photos as I walked.<\/p>\n

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I walked around outside the THIRD largest parliament in Europe.\u00a0 I type this only because I googled “capital of Hungary” as I’ve lost all sorts of smarts and memory lately.\u00a0 I couldn’t remember if it was “capital” or “capitol.”\u00a0 The results included the detail about the third place size of the building.\u00a0 And I know I should use the notion that “the capitol building is in the capital” or some such.\u00a0 But my shortcomings as a communicator and my failing memory banks are also why I continually failed Spanish classes — is it por<\/em> or para <\/em>for “for?”\u00a0 Is the noun masculine or feminine?\u00a0 No, your accent isn’t remotely authentic, Kevin… it’s borderline racist… like this restaurant in Budapest:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

The Bigot?\u00a0 Really<\/em>?\u00a0 Maybe I’m mistranslating.<\/p>\n

Man, I wish I could speak any language – my English is poor enough and I’m humbled anytime somebody can rattle off their Babel Fish-ian\/universal translator abilities.<\/p>\n

As an aside, here’s a brief text exchange I had with my brother:<\/p>\n

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<\/div>\n

And now some shots of the Parliament… nestled along the banks of the Danube River.<\/p>\n

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Having had my fill of cultural sights for the day, I headed to the pop cultural one I alluded to on the bus ride post of yesterday:<\/p>\n

The Budapest Pinball Museum… which is also known as the Flippermuzeum <\/a>or the Flipper Galeria or by various other monikers.<\/p>\n

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It wasn’t the biggest pinball museum I’ve ever been to — that’s probably the Pinball Hall of Fame<\/a> one in Las Vegas.\u00a0 But it had a number of cavernous rooms with a large swath of historical exemplars… and even a few non-pinball machines of skill and amusement.\u00a0 But not gambling… these arcade games are NOT gambling, no, sir.\u00a0 That’s why they didn’t fall under the purview of games of chance\/gambling regulations in the US anyway.<\/p>\n

Except, ya know…<\/p>\n

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And when you’re competing, sometimes it makes it more interesting if there’s, oh, maybe some money on the line…<\/p>\n

But I digress.<\/p>\n

After paying the 3000 HFT admittance fee, all the machines were free play.\u00a0 The place was open from 4 PM until midnight (I didn’t make it to the witching hour), and I tried my rusty skills culled from misspent youth at a number of tables.\u00a0 Some were good, some weren’t.\u00a0 But when it’s “free to play” I’ll give most any table a try.<\/p>\n

They were all mostly in good working order, albeit a few were out of commission.\u00a0 One of them was the appropriately colossal “Hercules” machine:<\/p>\n

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Those I played had some loose bumper action and less than powerful flippers that could’ve used some TLC to bring back more bang.\u00a0 But it was a fun way to spend a few hours.<\/p>\n

For me though the strangest game was replaying Terminator 2.\u00a0 This is a pinball machine we had in our basement when I was in high school, one of those latter day age crises my father went through that also plagues me so much nowadays.\u00a0 It brought back a series of memories and emotions, things I prefer not to speak of and things I shouldn’t since I’m sure there’s some advice about opening old wounds.\u00a0 Suffice to say, I played one game and found it haunted and difficult to endure.\u00a0 I walked away and tried to avoid making eye contact with the game thereafter… yet “AH-nold”‘s eyes seemed to follow me from room to room.<\/p>\n

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Even thinking about it now, as I type this supplemental post the next morning, that game and the nostalgic and melancholy emotions it dredged up seems to haunt me still.\u00a0 I’d go for a run but I’m headed to St. Stephen’s Basilica this morning to hopefully join a “free walking tour” of the city.\u00a0 But first I need to finish this up.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The Flippermuzeum’s older games, the classics before all the digital lit screens and bigger bells and whistles, had smaller point values — bumpers rang up points not hundreds of thousands of points like more “modern” games.\u00a0 Inflation hits home even in the gaming market.\u00a0 But given the latest press coverage of the vile sexual harassment allegations in Hollywood and businesses far and wide, the creepy graphics of women on these games could be a bit off-putting.\u00a0 I didn’t even snap some of them as it was just too much for me.<\/p>\n

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Some fascinating intellectual property licensing on the games too:<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0<\/a>\"\" <\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I imagine this one went something like, “Hey, fellas.\u00a0 We *could* license ‘Tom and Jerry’… or we *could* just do a generic ‘homage’ cat and mouse drawing…”<\/p>\n

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I appreciated the “musical” section — and for the record, I was no “pinball wizard” on the Tommy game.\u00a0 Honestly, that game should’ve been the ULTIMATE machine and it was just… fiddlin’ about.\u00a0 But the art design on the Guns n Roses one is top notch — the plunger to shoot the ball was either, yup, a gun or a rose, depending on which side the ball was starting on.\u00a0 And for some reason the notion that you had to “add band members” to start multiball ready cracked me up.\u00a0 You’d light up bandmates and they’d “come to the stage.”\u00a0 I preferred the “Slash solo” bonus combos myself.<\/p>\n

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The Stallone games were somewhat intriguing — “Rocky” had a count when your ball went down a gutter and might have ended play… but if you tapped your flippers hard enough, the ol’ ball would stagger back to its feet like a boxer knocked down but not knocked out.\u00a0 As for “Demolition Man,” well, they really failed to capture Sandra Bullock at her most positively Sandy Bullock-ian.<\/p>\n

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And this again was one of those brand marketing meetings I’d like to imagine:<\/p>\n

“Everybody!\u00a0 Great news!\u00a0 We locked down the Apollo 13 movie tie-in contract.\u00a0 Everybody signed on… except Hanks.\u00a0 But who needs Hanks, right?\u00a0 We got Bacon, Sinise, Harris… and best of all… we got Paxton.\u00a0 Game over, man!\u00a0 Game OVER!”<\/p>\n

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***<\/p>\n

I did take a dinner break between sessions of the ‘ball and opted for a Hungarian meal at a local corner pub type thing.<\/p>\n

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I ordered the Hungarian Letcho, which I googled and it was a vegetable stew… that they added sausages into making it decidedly NON-vegetarian. I found it hilarious that they were explicit in saying it would come in a red bowl — and even posted to Facebook about this.\u00a0 Is that traditionally how it’s to be served?\u00a0 I can find no answers on the internet.\u00a0 Maybe I should try using “bing” to get the answer.<\/p>\n

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Last night, I was debating between drink options; the server said with letcho it had to be a beer.\u00a0 I went with his rec, not realizing a beer here is the size of my ginormous head.\u00a0 It didn’t dawn on me until after I finished it to do the ol’ Bone Collector <\/em>photo size scale of using a dollar bill.\u00a0 And by that point I didn’t think a George Washington single was enough.\u00a0 Thus I used a fiver to adequately convey the gravitational pull this thing had.<\/p>\n

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That beer was my last call of the evening… even though it was only 7:45 PM.<\/p>\n

I went back to the museum and played another hour or so before walking back to my apartment.\u00a0 It’s a bit of a hike… about 45 minutes from the city center to the apartment on foot.\u00a0 There’s ample public transport but as usual I prefer hoofing it when I can.\u00a0 Besides, I have to do something to work off all this food I’m over-eating.<\/p>\n

Did I mention I stopped at a bakery?<\/p>\n

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I couldn’t resist the name — Budapest Bakery.\u00a0 And I couldn’t resist the pastry.\u00a0 But I forgot how messy powdered sugar can be.<\/p>\n

That seems like a sweet way to end this post.\u00a0 It was a ramble and a mess… but that seems to be what I do these days.<\/p>\n

Off to St. Stephen’s…<\/p>\n

–KSH, Budapest, 9:24 AM, October 12, 2017<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Yesterday” – Lennon\/McCartney … though written by Paul Yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away. Now it looks as though they’re here to stay. Oh, I believe in yesterday. Suddenly I’m not half the man I used to be. There’s a shadow hanging over me. Oh, yesterday came suddenly. Why she had to go, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18538\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}