#Winning in the Winnipeg of Eastern Europe

Ököritófülpös or Bűst!

If seeing is believing, then seeing Ököritófülpös was entirely necessary to believe what the chemical fertilizer truck driver and several others in passing had been trying to tell me: Ököritófülpös is not a transit hub.  I assume that is what they were telling me.  Even the villagers in Ököritófülpös tried to convince me that walking to the train station was not worth the 20 minute diversion.  When I at last reached the train station on the appointed hour, I was expecting a cloud of steam from an approaching train and to see Sally disembarking with a steamer trunk and the help of a kindly porter.  Instead, I saw a group of men fishing in the tiny river, and a sign announcing Ököritófülpös without a station to accompany it.  I asked when the next train was coming, and while they didn’t understand me, they were almost certainly trying to indicate to me that no train would come, or has come in a long time.  Slowly, the pieces were starting to come together: maybe Ököritófülpös wasn’t the Winnipeg of Eastern Europe.  My assumption-based world was being torn asunder.

Hol van a Ököritófülpös Vásútállomás??? Nem van!

Disorientation is one of the worst feelings when travelling.  This is why I don’t like arriving in a new city at night, and why I need some sort of breadcrumb trail of sorts to ground myself.  Naturally, I left a note for Sally and decided to conduct a bit of reconnaissance of the village in anticipation of Sally’s arrival.  After all, we had a whole day of activities planned: we were going to look at the monument to the barn fire, and then we were going to just wing it.  The problem became readily apparent: so much emotional energy had been spent on the logistics of getting to Ököritófülpös that we never even paused to think about what to do when we got there.  

Did you know you cannot rotate pictures once they are in Blogger?

If we got there.  After waiting by the monument, I left another note indicating I would be at the (only) café soaking up the local scene.  Shocking the conservative small towners with my brash and urbane ways, I brought my barstool out onto the sidewalk so I could enjoy the sunshine and the ample people-watching opportunities afforded by this central location in the DT-Ö.  Instead, people watched me and mutter “tourist” to each other.  The town is about 80% Roma, so I got more than a few hollers from the local children, and an old man brought me a shot of the local plum brandy on the house to sharpen my senses.  The whole village was out and about, tilling soil, painting fences and preparing Ököritófülpös for what was bound to be a bustling and fruitful summer season.  Classic Ököritófülpös.

Scraping rust off of a wrought iron fence can only mean one thing: this pensioner is getting ready for a wild summer in the ÖK.

After a few hours, and several buses that arrived sans Sally, I began to lose hope and had to focus on finding a place to sleep for the night.  I left a third note at the café, bid adieu to my friends, and set off on the lonely road to Mateszalka.  Spring was in full bloom in eastern Hungary, vis-à-vis Romania and Moldova, with every tree full of cherry blossoms, and every yard full of red and yellow tulips.  I stopped to take a picture of one house and a old lady popped out from her porch and started hollering.  Worried I had offended her, I shouted one of the 10 words I knew in Hungarian, “Nagyon szep!” (“very beautiful”)  As it turned out, she was thrilled that someone had finally sat up and taken notice of what a kick-ass gardener she was and, assuming I spoke fluent Hungarian, trundled over to the fence to engage me in a long dialogue about her tulips. Instead, she had a long monologue about her tulips.

Getting told by the tulip lady.

The first thing I noticed once being back on the open road in Hungary is that not all Hungarians are fertilizer truck drivers, and consequently not all of them are keen on hitchhikers.  In fact, I would go as far as to say anyone who is “new money” and drives any sort of SUV, is a complete asshole.  As such, wasting a Sharpie and several pages of paper on signs to Debrecen, Mátészálka and even—a desperate attempt—Nyiregyhaza occupied a good 45 minutes of my time sitting on the side of the road.  As I was reflecting on how remarkably simple it was to get into Ököritófülpös but unnecessarily difficult to leave, I began to wonder if perhaps it was my destiny to remain there.  Just as I thought about turning myself around and going back to the charming café and negotiating a price on one of the many farmhouses for sale, a bus stopped to pick me up, and I paid 320 HUF to take me to Mateszalka, a bustling town on the Great Hungarian Plain that does have a Chinese food restaurant (in addition to rail connection and functioning infrastructure).  I trained to Debrecen, a metropolis rivaling the fair Ököritófülpös as Hungary’s second city in the east.  From here I was a mere stone’s throw from Budapest, arguably another reason to visit Hungary.