“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, I don’t know, she wouldn’t say.
I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday.Yesterday love was such an easy game to play.
Now I need a place to hide away.
Oh, I believe in yesterday.Why she had to go, I don’t know, she wouldn’t say.
I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday.Yesterday love was such an easy game to play.
Now I need a place to hide away.
Oh, I believe in yesterday.Mm mm mm mm mm mm mm
It’s the morning of the 12th and I’m finishing up the details from yesterday’s arrival in Budapest. 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.
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). I also only see wrinkles, receding and thinning hairlines, and the pockmarks of time.
Having arrived in Budapest, I walked from the bus depot to my “Youthful Apartment Next To Corvin.” The exterior of the rundown courtyard looks like something out of a cross-over episode of “Melrose Place” and “The Shield.” The interior is a bit nicer, albeit weirdly faux-Lichtenstein-ian paintings dot the walls. It’s fine. Everything’s fine. It’s a little cold — they have a spaceheater to plug in but I hate those things.
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. The apartment airBNB is actually in a gentrifying neighborhood, adjacent to a large mall and lots of restaurants. It’s just this block I’m on that isn’t apparently quite gentried up yet… but they’re working on it. 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. 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.
Here’s some shots of random “Budapest-ian” streets. I don’t know if any of these buildings are important or have significance; I just took photos as I walked.
I walked around outside the THIRD largest parliament in Europe. I type this only because I googled “capital of Hungary” as I’ve lost all sorts of smarts and memory lately. I couldn’t remember if it was “capital” or “capitol.” The results included the detail about the third place size of the building. And I know I should use the notion that “the capitol building is in the capital” or some such. But my shortcomings as a communicator and my failing memory banks are also why I continually failed Spanish classes — is it por or para for “for?” Is the noun masculine or feminine? No, your accent isn’t remotely authentic, Kevin… it’s borderline racist… like this restaurant in Budapest:
The Bigot? Really? Maybe I’m mistranslating.
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.
As an aside, here’s a brief text exchange I had with my brother:
And now some shots of the Parliament… nestled along the banks of the Danube River.
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:
The Budapest Pinball Museum… which is also known as the Flippermuzeum or the Flipper Galeria or by various other monikers.
It wasn’t the biggest pinball museum I’ve ever been to — that’s probably the Pinball Hall of Fame one in Las Vegas. 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. But not gambling… these arcade games are NOT gambling, no, sir. That’s why they didn’t fall under the purview of games of chance/gambling regulations in the US anyway.
Except, ya know…
And when you’re competing, sometimes it makes it more interesting if there’s, oh, maybe some money on the line…
But I digress.
After paying the 3000 HFT admittance fee, all the machines were free play. 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. Some were good, some weren’t. But when it’s “free to play” I’ll give most any table a try.
They were all mostly in good working order, albeit a few were out of commission. One of them was the appropriately colossal “Hercules” machine:
Those I played had some loose bumper action and less than powerful flippers that could’ve used some TLC to bring back more bang. But it was a fun way to spend a few hours.
For me though the strangest game was replaying Terminator 2. 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. 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. Suffice to say, I played one game and found it haunted and difficult to endure. 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.
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. 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. But first I need to finish this up.
***
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. Inflation hits home even in the gaming market. 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. I didn’t even snap some of them as it was just too much for me.
Some fascinating intellectual property licensing on the games too:
I imagine this one went something like, “Hey, fellas. We *could* license ‘Tom and Jerry’… or we *could* just do a generic ‘homage’ cat and mouse drawing…”
I appreciated the “musical” section — and for the record, I was no “pinball wizard” on the Tommy game. Honestly, that game should’ve been the ULTIMATE machine and it was just… fiddlin’ about. 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. And for some reason the notion that you had to “add band members” to start multiball ready cracked me up. You’d light up bandmates and they’d “come to the stage.” I preferred the “Slash solo” bonus combos myself.
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. As for “Demolition Man,” well, they really failed to capture Sandra Bullock at her most positively Sandy Bullock-ian.
And this again was one of those brand marketing meetings I’d like to imagine:
“Everybody! Great news! We locked down the Apollo 13 movie tie-in contract. Everybody signed on… except Hanks. But who needs Hanks, right? We got Bacon, Sinise, Harris… and best of all… we got Paxton. Game over, man! Game OVER!”
***
I did take a dinner break between sessions of the ‘ball and opted for a Hungarian meal at a local corner pub type thing.
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. Is that traditionally how it’s to be served? I can find no answers on the internet. Maybe I should try using “bing” to get the answer.
Last night, I was debating between drink options; the server said with letcho it had to be a beer. I went with his rec, not realizing a beer here is the size of my ginormous head. It didn’t dawn on me until after I finished it to do the ol’ Bone Collector photo size scale of using a dollar bill. And by that point I didn’t think a George Washington single was enough. Thus I used a fiver to adequately convey the gravitational pull this thing had.
That beer was my last call of the evening… even though it was only 7:45 PM.
I went back to the museum and played another hour or so before walking back to my apartment. It’s a bit of a hike… about 45 minutes from the city center to the apartment on foot. There’s ample public transport but as usual I prefer hoofing it when I can. Besides, I have to do something to work off all this food I’m over-eating.
Did I mention I stopped at a bakery?
I couldn’t resist the name — Budapest Bakery. And I couldn’t resist the pastry. But I forgot how messy powdered sugar can be.
That seems like a sweet way to end this post. It was a ramble and a mess… but that seems to be what I do these days.
Off to St. Stephen’s…
–KSH, Budapest, 9:24 AM, October 12, 2017