Hungary: Day 3 - Not Unhumourous Chinese Food

After the drama of the day before Wednesday went pretty much to plan.

Training was to begin 9am. I awoke early, had breakfast and was ready in plenty of time to head over to the venue.

The camp consisted more more or less in its entirety of free-fencing. It was a great opportunity for me to get to fence these top fencers even if for the most part I was getting my ass handed to me. I fenced a good cross section of the fencers there and had maybe 6-8 matches in total on Wednesday.

Once training was finished for the day myself, Jason Rogers and Ben Igoe from the US team went to have a bit of a look around the city. We took a subway in the direction of the castle (which is on the Pest side... or was it the Buda side?) and after some deliberation and advice from locals we got a connecting bus to the castle.

Our plan was to head to the national history museum. When we reached the palace/castle which housed the museum we paused for a minute to take some photos of the outstanding view over the Danube and the city. We had our free visitors map laid out on the wall trying to recognise what was what when an old man approached us. He had a long mustache... but only on one side, the other side was far less impressive and shorter. The moustache as well as his grayish hair was stained yellow from cigarette smoke.

He began pointing at the map with his yellow-stained fingers. The fingers ended with bizarrely gnarled and rotten finger nails, which must have been result of some sort of fungal infection.

"Allow me to SHOW you someTHING", his intonation altered bizarrely as he spoke in English with a curious Bulgarian accent. My immediate reaction was that he was going to point out a few things on the map and then ask for a tip but for the mean time i was willing to see where the conversation was going and had no intention of ever giving him any money.

"Here is of BEing THe Hou..SES of parlia...ment. It is the largest houses of Parlia...MENT hon De ContiNENT", he looked around us mischievously - what nugget was he going to produce for us? "BigHu Benne and the BritEESH parlia...Ment are bigger... But they are not on the ContiNENT!"

I was barely able to contain my laughter as he continued.

"WherEH arE you Fromme?"
"We're from the States", I said quickly before the Americans could say we were Irish.

He unveiled to us the true meaning of this interruption - which was that he was offering us a tour of the surrounds of the palace. We had no interest and Jason started to tell him so but visibly annoyed he started once again.

"Allow me justE three sen...ten...ces and don't interrupt me, please." And off he went - he offered us a cheap and "not unhumorous" tour of the surroundings promising us that it would save us time and money "and of course time his mon-EY" he chortled in an obviously put-on way elbowing Jason slightly. He promised to show us the "hiiiden secReTS of Budapest that not even the locals were of knowing". And on and on he went "Ov coorse" punctuated nearly every sentence.

Having no intention of going on the tour we tried to tell him repeatedly until eventually at an aparent break in his spiel Jason attempted to tell him that we weren't interested and he flipped his lid. He began rocking back and forward repeating "I told of you not to be of interrupting me". Having realised long ago that he was absolute mentalist we took this oppurtunity to turn our back to him. He carried on ranting and raving until he eventually walked away about 10 metres... but continued yelling at us.

I found the whole thing histerichal and it was definitely the highlight of my day. After that it turned out that the museum was closed so we had to go round the Hungarian national art gallery which seemingly contained no paintings by none Hungarians and as a result no one I had ever heard of. Eventually we got a metro back to the hotel and got ready for dinner.

...

That evening the Chinese team invited the US team and the Irish team to a meal in a local Chinese restaraunt. The odd thing was the Chinese team had been eating in the restaraunt three times a day for the last couple of days. I know I don't go looking for hte nearest Irish restaraunt when I go abroad or even when I'm at home.

The Chinese team sat at a large round table and unfortunately there wasn't room for all of us, so I sat with the Americans at a seperate table. It was particularly good chinese and very very cheap so I was very pleased. When the meal was over the Chinese team were sent home to bed or so it seemed and we moved to the large table and talked with Christian Bauer (Chinese coach and former Italian and French coach), the head of the Chinese federation, the vice-coach of the Chinese team and also their translator over green tea.

The meal was the Chinese federations treat, so we are now endebted to them. Next time there in Ireland for the Easts we'll have to bring them out.