Actually, I love Budapest (especially now as I'm sitting in the Club Alibi off the Szerb Utca, feeding off free wifi, and devouring a plate of garlic spinich chicken). However, on Tuesday I had my doubts. I was sitting beneath a low-lying, almost claustrophobic, caliginous sky, and found myself dreaming of the heat and blue skies of Muscat, Oman. Of course, that may have just been a case of the fact that I was freezing to death. Not only was it 30 as compared to the 95 I have left behind in Muscat (mainly because the heat had broken in Oman and everyone was happy for the cooler weather), but I didn't have a coat or a sweater, which were stuck inside my suitcase that had picked a particularly bad time to go missing.
To make a long story relatively short, I got stuck in the Air France strike the other day. I flew out of Muscat at 12:30 a.m. on Monday morning and arrived in Dubai around 1:30 a.m. Now, I wasn't scheduled to fly out until 12:30 the next afternoon and I had already thrown away $200 for a nine hour stay on my first trip through Dubai so I just hunkered down and slept on the floor of the airport. Wow, it was cold, really cold, which at least took my mind off how uncomfortable the floor was. That was the first time that I wished that I had my coat, if only to act as a blanket - instead, I used my extra pants as a pillow and my extra shirt as a blanket. My suitcase was already checked through from Muscat to Dubai to Paris to Budapest. Anyway, after a long cold night I woke up to the news that my Dubai to Paris flight had been cancelled because of the Air France strike, which led me to track down an Air France agent (who were, not surprisingly, lying low). I finally found a very nice young woman at the Air France lounge who confirmed that the Airlines had already moved me over to Emirates Air, and that I was flying out at 2:30, and passing through Frankfurt instead of Paris. Beggars can't be choosers so I didn't complain - plus, she let me hang out in the posh Air France lounge for several hours. So, I eventually boarded the Emirates flight at 2:30, although it then didn't take off until an your late, making my layover in Frankfurt a bit iffy. When I landed in Frankfurt I had to run throughout the entire airport and by the time I made it to the Malev (local Hungarian carrier) counter I was told it was too late to get on the flight - I had already been turned back by a security agent who had sent me to the Malev counter in the first place. I didn't accept that as an answer and they held the plane, thankfully, because Frankfurt is too nice of a city for that level thermo-Scudderian explosion. After some more running I made it onto the plane and on to Budapest, only to find, not to my surprise, that my luggage had not followed me. It could have been flying out of Muscat, or the layover in Dubai, or the Air France strike and redirection, or the short layover in Frankfurt because of the late Emirates flight, but my suitcase didn't make it. So, the next day I had to walk to all my meetings in just the shirt and khakis that had served as blanket and pillow the night before - and Budapest was pretty cold. I am staying at the Hotel Gellert, a spa that has seen better days, although they are fixing it up even as we speak. That said, I could look out my window and I could see Corvinus University on the other side of the Danube, so it could not have been more convenient. My luggage eventually showed up late Wednesday night, and the sweater and coat were greatly appreciated - I can now leave the hotel!
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