I'd like to buy a vowel, please

Üdvözöljük szállodåankaban! Kérjük, vegyék figyelembe, hogy az eltünt értéktárgyakért!

Holy diacritical marks, Batman! Such is Hungarian, I have found. But here's my question: if you emphasize every vowel, doesn't that....doesn't that nullify the point of accenting one in the first place? Baffling, yet delightful. Slavic languages are a new and bewildering experience; it's the same alphabet, to be sure. And yet nothing is recognizable because it isn't a romantic language; it has wholly other origins. The best way to think about how Slavic languages make you feel is to say they're a tease. Like a man in a tux with a gin martini. Hungarian is step up from Chinese, which is utterly alien to the unstudied eye (and ear)...and yet, this Slavic langauge has the false appearance of being manageable, and though it sounds like it could be a kissing-cousin of Russian (so to speak), it isn't. At all. Hence, the language as a tease-- a great big tease.

As you've probably surmised, I've arrived in Budapest. I actually landed (after leaving my B&B in Aberdeen at 4:30 am) about 3 hours ago (2:30 pm), but it took me a bit of time to get to my hotel. Not only is traffic crazy downtown (and I am smack downtown, *awesomeness*), but then you've got to take into account (you knew it was coming) Misadventure With "Public" Transport In A Foreign Country, Part the First (of the 2010 series).

I write "public" with scare-quotes because it had to do with a short, rotund taxi driver...and his taxi..and I can't decide if taxis count as public transport. At any rate you get the picture. So here's the story:

Alta Moda Fashion Hotel--which is brand-baby-spanking new, is across the street from where the conference will be (Central European University), is 5 minutes from the river, and is where I'm staying these next 4 nights/5days--was supposedly going to collect me from the airport and drive me to the lobby of selfsame hotel. No one showed up for "Crull". In fact, no one showed up with a sign at all except for one poor guy who was searching intently for straggling "Music History Conference" participants, and who saw my curious glances in his direction and mistook me for one of his own misplaced flock.

Although I toyed briefly with the idea of ditching my own conference and joining that one instead (and this may or may not have been in part due to the fact that the guy with the sign was rather handsome), I decided in the end to stick to the original plan. Which is to present on Friday a talk I have yet to finish on the history of the philosophy of quantum mechanics. Yes, I am in Budapest for this. Hurrah! The conference is called "HOPOS", which stands for History of Philosophy of Science. Fantasticalness, yes?

Back to Misadventure with Public Transport in a Foreign Country, Part the First. Once I realized that my hotel had stood me up, I went without stopping to think much (hmm: the more I reflect on it the more it seems these Misadventures involve going without stopping to think. Ah well. I embrace the fact that I'm a Head in the Clouds, Feet in the...Altostratus sort of person. Or something. Aaaanyway...). I jumped in the first taxi I found, and immediately noticed that the price meter thing was NOT in units of Euros. I had paid for my room at Alta Moda Fashion Hotel in euros, and apparently made the badly grounded inference that Hungary operated on that particular currency. Which in fact it does not.

So I tell the taxi driver, whose English is middling-to-bleak, I need to stop at a cash machine.
"Cash machine?" He asks.
"Caaaash MaahSHEEEEeene" I say more slowly, and loudly, as all Americans do because somehow we think this makes English magically intelligible.
"Cash machine?" He asks again. I take out my debit card and wave it.
"CASH machine," I say. He says,
"Oh! Cash machine!"

After about 20 minutes of hairy driving (it reminded me of Beijing taxis-- fast, furious, and confident beyond all reason), the taxi driver pulls over, puts on the hazzards and says, pointing to a building: "Cash machine!"

I jump out and run up the steps. There are two machines. I try the first one four times, and it refuses to dispense any Forint (which I had at least managed to calculate during the drive is approx. 1/200 of a USD). I freak out, and try to run back to the taxi. Only..there is now an entire lane of cars filling the space where MY taxi had once idled. And of course I didn't pay any attention to what color, make or model my taxi was. I didn't even really pay attention to what the driver looked like. I make several noises of frustration, run up to open the rear-left door of a car that looks somewhat familiar and realize *just* before opening the door that, given the look on the driver's face, this was NOT in fact my taxi (or a taxi at ALL. I'm such a ninny). I despair of the situation and turn again up the stairs to try my luck at the second cash machine. After three tries I am SITLL having no luck, but now the taxi driver has parked and come over to me to help the poor dumb blonde American chick.

Though, I must here pause to make confession: whenever I do air-head stuff like this in other countries...I (oh man this is an embarrassing confession)...I feign a British accent. So they won't think I'm a stupid American. That's right. I really do it. And have done it, a lot. Sorry, it's true. I don't have enough pride to stop being an air-head, but I do have enough to fake a different accent.

Anyway, I tell the taxi driver (in faux-British English) what's happened, and he says "Cash machine at hotel?" I say yes, and scamper behind him like a freakishly tall fluff-nugget back to the taxi, whose color I at least have the presence of mind to notice. (It was black. And shiny. But I still don't know the kind of car it was. European?)

We drive into the heart of downtown Budapest, all the while my taxi driver is answering his cell phone constantly and speaking in frustrated Hungarian voice to various other taxi drivers, no doubt telling them something like
"Geez, I got this STUPID American chick in the car. She doesn't have any cash on her, not even a Euro to her name, and she keeps fading in and out of this STUPID British accent. What does she take me for? I am going to charge her SO much more than the usual fee. Stupid American."

I start to feel like, well, a stupid American, sitting there listening to him converse in this foreign tongue while I sit dumbly in the back, praying that I can find cash at the Alta Moda Fashion Hotel. I start peering intently out the window, scanning the streets for the address of the Alta Moda Fashion Hotel, at Nádor Utca 13. Points for knowing the hotel's address, right? Am I right?

After an eternity I spot the street sign and practically shout (in my best Hungarian accent, after listening pensively to the taxi driver's many conversations): "NÁDOR UTCA!" Of course I pronounce it horrendously wrong, but if I've learned one thing it's that one can always save at least some (dumb) (American) face by making charming though naive attempts at the local language. The taxi driver laughed, and corrected me. Several times. But at least he was laughing. And then we had arrived at the lobby of the Alta Moda Fashion Hotel.

The entire building is gorgeous, and less than one month old inside. Everything is done in classy black/white/gold/silver, and the reception desk is manned by 2 endlessly kind Hungarian young men and 1 endlessly amused Hungarian young woman. The taxi driver, who has of course followed me into the lobby of the Alta Moda Fashion Hotel, commences a string of (so I gather) partly amused, partly annoyed, partly sympathetic conversations with each of the receptionists, after which one of the young men opens a tiller, hands my taxi driver 5200 Hungarian Forints, and checks me into my room.

Which is where I am now typing. I unpacked my things, took a few deep breaths, and have now told my story. I'm pretty wiped out, and the light isn't exciting outside right now (it's a bright, beautiful, sunny day...but there is too much sun so as to make photographs flat), so I will take a little nipper, as they say, until the sun is ready to set. And then, onward with the adventures, and the subsequent photos which I shall post, post haste.

I can always finish writing my talk later, right? Of course. For now there's too much adventuring to be done (well, save for the napping part). As Bilbo would say, "It's a dangerous business, going out your front door."