Free On the Road to Babadag by Andrzej Stasiuk

empty square. Curious thoughts enter your head. For instance, should you follow the lead of that couple at the next table, who ordered two 300 ml glasses of aszú, or ask yourself quietly a question in the vein of "What am I doing here anyway?”—the fundamental mantra if not prayer of every traveler? For it is precisely on a trip, in the morning, in a strange city, before the second cup of coffee has begun to work, that you experience most palpably the oddness of your banal existence. Travel is no more than a relatively healthy form of narcotic, after all. Have another cup, wait for the rain to let up a bit, and walk to the river, the green and twisting Tisza, and your imagination will speak to you as unmistakably as a growling stomach. Because the water that poured at your feet here was on Montenegro a few days ago and will join the Danube near Novi Sad a few days from now. That's the way of it: geography orders space but muddles the head, and a man would rather be a fish than mentally straddle north and south, east and west.

    Persistently, if indirectly, we tended east. Somewhat in the style of Å¡ vejk's peregrination to České Budejovice. From Tokaj we ran to escape the rain, only to have the sky open on us in Budapest. From Budapest we ran to escape the crowds, chaos, and homelessness, only to find ourselves, at four in the morning, escorted off the train by an over-six-foot conductor, in the unknown yet sizable city of Nyíregyháza. Four in the morning is an hour when you either sit and weep or keep going. At the platform just then, an antique narrow-gauge pulled in, so we didn't hesitate. In the car was a genuine coal stove, its pipe going right through the ceiling. We rocked the whole way to SóstófürdŐ, because our pretty green choo-choo ended there. SóstófürdŐ still slept. A health resort at five A . M . is an uncommon sight. Between the trees gleamed the saucer of a salt lake. An old-fashioned water tower; huge umbrellas with the inscription
John Bull Pub;
an exquisite hotel, in the Swiss style yet standing here on the eastern border of the Great Hungarian Plain. Limos agleam in the morning sun; villas reminiscent of Chinese socialist realism; blocked signs that said no longer Z I M M E R F R E I but W O L N E P O K O J E , "rooms available" in Polish; and no movement or sound other than the chirp of birds at dawn. Except a dog out of nowhere sniffed at us and continued on its way. A spa without people always seems like a stage set. We found a pension on a sandy lane. A woman in an apron swept the steps. We said we wanted to sleep, nothing more. She told us, in an English German, that we could sleep until five in the afternoon, because a disco started then.
    We woke to the sound of our native tongue. Before the pension, three guys in baggy shorts urged their girlfriend, "Andżelika, fucking take it!" "You have to pose," replied Andżelika, trying to get the swaying group in her lens. "We're all standing here, take it!" the guys pleaded, steadying one another. Our trip had become a little too Polish.
    We took our leave of SóstófürdŐ with a modest lunch. In the square where the pub was, a wild show advertising Sprite. Gangsta rap over loudspeakers while Hungarian kids on skateboards slalomed in and out of giant green bottles, imagining themselves black brothers. At a table nearby, the father of a family called to the waiter in Polish, "
Kotlet schabowy z frytkami!
Veal cutlet with fries! Veal cutlet, dummy!" No matter how much the man raised his voice, however, the Hungarian dummy didn't understand a word. It was time to go. I couldn't find Kossuths in any kiosk or shop. I had become dependent on them, flattened and twenty-five to a pack. Those orange packs mark the divide between provincial and urban: they are a provincial attempt at urban. You can get them in any village or Zemplén town cut to the human scale, but not in Tokaj, and no way in