Back to work...

...by which, I mean fencing.

The very next morning after the fencing, I travelled back to Paris on the 7am flight.

I trained as usual on Tuesday and Wednesday. I wasn't to be alone in Paris long at least as my friend, Martin, was visiting for the end of the week.

He arrived on Wednesday afternoon (and I still went to training) but afterwards we to the Chameleon Jazz bar, near St. Michel. Over the next couple of days we did all the touristy stuff that I've all but ignored since I've been in Paris - The Eiffel Tower, Musé D'Orsay, The Louvre (although I go there pretty regularly) and all that sort of thing.

...

Thursday night we ate in the Refuge De Fondue. I'd invited David from the Irish College along the day before but for some reason he thought it wasn't a fondue restaurant. I still maintain this was the fault of the temporary insomnia he was suffering when I invited him, rather than my sarcasm. Words cannot express the guilt I felt when after coming all the way over to the restaurant he decided to leave, as he hates fondue.

Eventually we were seated next to a group of Americans, who we got talking to throughout the meal. They'd been there 3 times in a month which is a true testament to Americans fondness for cholesterol. The loudest and most drunk soon pronounced herself to be Irish-American, her parents having left Belfast when the getting was good. A conversation soon erupted, spewed if you will, over the nature of origins. The other Americans, Two Jewish Americans (one Croatian-Jewish American man and one quiet polite Jewish-American girl) and one loud Romanian-American.

Like the congealing cheese in front of us, the conversation soon turned far too heavy, for our tastes and became some sort of rant on the meaning of existence by Romanian-American who was countered by the Irish-American girl telling him he was full of crap. Then there was some sort of debate over the validity of national identities - this nearly crept into questioning the validity of the Jewish-American identity, which was immediately rebuked by the Zionist Croatian-Jewish-American.

Myself and Martin, watched on amused at how these people who were obviously American to us could tie themselves in knots over such a trivial matter such as where their ancestors came from. Anyway, that provided plenty of entertainment for us for the rest of the evening.

...

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.

Turkish Delight: Part 2 - Travelling To The Palace

My room was exactly as it was last year... grim.

Two plain hard beds with non-existent pillows and a TV with bad reception and no english channels anyway. The bathroom was even worse. A sheet of PVC was attached to the back of the door in the toilet where the paint had either been chipped away or the door kicked in, above the toilet the paneling around the flush was missing and you could see the cinder blocks of the wall. There was the little hose in toilet - the very reason you don't shake a Turks left hand - but what really seemed to be just out of spite was having toilet paper which had shards of fibre glass through it (or at least that is what it felt like). It was as if punishing a Westerner staying there, who might have alternative views on hygiene. The next morning when I went to have a shower pure brown water came out for at least a minute.

But I didn't have time for a shower that evening as I was meeting a friend, Trevor, who was working in Istanbul for dinner. I had been texting him to let him know I'd arrived while on the minibus from the airport and we'd agreed to meet in his hotel, the Ciragan Palace, around 7pm.

I went back downstairs to the reception to see if they could tell me where the hotel was and also the name or address of the hotel I was staying in so I could find my way back. After a lengthy Bi-lingual discussion, I learnt that the hotel would not call me a taxi and that they definitely couldn't speak English. Giving up any hope or wish to deal with these people again during my stay, I asked several people in the lobby how I could get to the Ciragan Palace. Eventually one spoke some English and through a process of showing him the name of the place I wanted to go on my phone and a complex mime-filled dance, I learnt that the best way to get there was by bus and not taxi. While the man tried to explain in broken English where the bustop was I had already given up listening. I managed to get a card with the address of the hotel on it and set out to find a taxi.

It was duck at this stage and the streets were once again packed with cars (peak rush-hour lasts from 7am to 1pm and then from 2pm to 8pm in Istanbul, for the rest of the time it is just rush-hour). I hailed a taxi easily enough...

"djksfliuahsdflh;lkd adufoihaij asdfoichh;aoi asdoi;oiu aldciaewoij aweroi", said the taxi driver.
"Ci-ra-gen Pa-lace", I said, showing him the name and address on my phone and so it began again.
"asdkl;fa; a;oeija;idj awoidjc;poija asoie;oiejrios roi jre;oij fo;i", he shouted repeatedly stopping the taxi and physically reaching across me and opening my door.
"Thanks a lot you %*&<$%@ £$%^! Merry Christmas!", I smiled and waved as I got out. This process was repeated in another taxi but at least this one, was polite about it and made some attempt to explain the situation to me. I gathered that I would have to go by ferry probably because the traffic was so bad. I thanked this taxi driver genuinely and went to consider my next move. I asked in two chemists how I could get to the hotel and in the second one they explained to me that I needed to take a minibus to Uskudar port and the a ferry across the river. They even went so far a to stop a minibus on it's way down the hill towards the port for me. My faith in the Turkish restored once more, the bus trundled downhill to the port. I asked one man on the bus for Uskudar and the ferry and he very kindly told me where to get off and even directed me to the ferry I needed to get as he was getting one from the same jetty. It was as if the closer I got to the European side of Istanbul the nicer the people and places were getting. As we chugged across the bay, with the Bosphorus Bridge illuminated in the darkness and the constant flow of cars lights running across I was beginning to soften on the city somewhat. When I reached the other side a taxi driver informed me that the hotel was within walking distance so I set off. A long flight (including a sweaty near-death experience), a trek in a minibus across the city and I didn't even have time to change my clothes from the old torn jeans and hoodie I'd been wearing all day. Then I arrived at the Ciragan Palace and I'd wished i had been more suitably attired.

I walked past the doorman in top-hat and small group of security guards through the revolving doors into the lobby. Huge reddish white marble pillars rose in front of me up to the high marble ceiling, my old hiking boots clicked across the white marble floor as I walked across the marble lobby to some chairs towards the back marble (the last marble was just to make sure people realised there was a lot of marble, and I don't think the roof was marble either. I didn't want to be staring at the ceiling afterall, I was trying to play it cool). I sat down in a sofa and waited for Trev who was in a taxi heading down from Tacsim.

Within a couple of minutes a security guard came over wondering if he could help me but I told him I was just waiting for a friend. And wait I did, having not eaten since the miniture plane food and before that breakfast at 7am, I was very much in the mood for some food. After about 45 minutes of starvation, Trevor arrived in his work suit, casual friday so with a tie.

"You jammy bastard!" I exclaimed. Trevor agreed. We were in the MBS programme and Smurfit together and he had landed this job during the summer while I had been looking to move to Paris. His comany writes portfolios for potential investors on different countries. They had interviewed the GM of the hotel and he had agreed to put the up in exchange for advertising in the portfolio.

Trev's room had a giant kingsize bed, an entirely marble bathroom, a balcony overlooking the bridge and a large flat-screen TV (with English channels). A small bottle of wine, a fruit ball and nuts were delivered to the room each day. His room was nicer than mine anyway.

We went to a local restaurant and spent the time thoroughly amused at the thought of us two meeting up in Istanbul and the general bizarre nature of the world.

I got the doorman at the palace to call me a taxi and headed back early to get a good sleep before the next morning.