The Day in the Little Village on the Danube

Thursday, July 6, 2006


Wednesday evening was spent again at the Hobcoggins for the grand homemade fireworks display. While it could hardly rival the magnificence of the evening before, it sufficed for a pleasant way to wrap up the holidays.


Thursday was truly what could be classified as a quiet day at work. But Diana and Carrie were coming over for dinner and OLeif was to make chicken salad for them, a personal chef for the night.


Riding around Hungary had not been as quiet that same Saturday in the past. Szentendrei was the village they were visiting that day (after a tour of Budapest itself) – a smaller village north where the river ran almost touching it. They managed to already have had a scrape with “the law” on the train there. About the time that they passed the old Roman ruins, the ticket woman came by to punch tickets. Upon seeing that they had all accidentally purchased one-way passes instead of two-way, she heavily fined each one of their team members. She of course did not believe them – that they had unintentionally done so. But it was all soon forgotten, as soon as they paid up and they soon arrived.


It was there in the little village after a cafe lunch in the open air, that they saw the little dirty room connected to the public bathrooms where a middle-aged woman lived. She lived there to collect the money that people were required to pay to use the facilities. They could only see into the room because the door had been left open. It was full of rags, gloomy, one window which looked out onto the streets, the sort of place one might picture inside of a Charles Dickens’ novel. The only sign of life in that dirty little room was a vase of flowers sitting on a table. What a sad existence, Collette had thought to herself. The woman was tired and looked older than she likely was. She was as dirty as the room in appearance, and irritable.


Outside, back in the sunshine there were roses and cool breezes. Collette momentarily forgot about the woman as she and the girls explored old stone-walled alleys and walked along the river. Diana, who had just bought an ice cream cone, managed to let it melt down her shirt and then muddied her shorts in the Danube (which was never blue). And on the bus on the way back to the hotel, she sat in a patch of fresh graffiti. Her clothes were almost ruined by the time of their arrival. It was a good thing she had a good change of clothes because she was soon ready to join the other gals for a classical concert given by the Danube Symphony Orchestra.


Ah, but there was another caphophle on the way, in a manner of speaking. They were already late and the transportation needed to get to the concert hall was not available when needed. And so, an obliging taxi cab stopped for them. The cab seated four people plus the driver. Six girls squeezed into the little metal frame; European cars were never large. And despite the fact that each person, including the driver, could have been fined thousands and thousands of forints, they managed to arrive before the concert started, without being chased down by the police. Collette was rather huffed that they had to break the law to arrive by eight. But she wasn’t the one leading the expedition and she could hardly walk there by herself. Hadn’t she and Diana received a kind but good scolding from Cherithite for running around the city on the tram by themselves one morning?


Alack and alas… The concert was very pleasant. And afterward, they stopped for ice cream on Vaci in celebration of Sierra’s 15th birthday. She and Collette split the best ice cream Collette had ever tasted. Honeydew melon. And as the clubs began to hop with techno, they returned to the hotel with Sierra and Patty to spend the night, all of them most satisfied.

Subscribe to Book of Collette

Sign up now to get access to the library of members-only issues.
Jamie Larson
Subscribe