Itali and Efrat, two Israeli girls I met because they were walking behind me, singing opera. Both live in Jeruselem and go to music school and were practicing a duet while walking between sights. When they finished, I turned around and applauded. Slighlty embarassed that they had been overheard, we made introductions and then the three of us saw Mathias Cathedral and Fisherman's Bastion together. It was the last night of their trip, though, and they left shortly thereafter.
I met a group of Brits at the hostel and we all went out to a club called Rio, a club I would end up going to every night I was in Budapest. How could one resist? Huge, open air, pumping techno and FREE, it's easily one of the best clubs I've been to. Here, the British crew is chilling on one of the many mattresses there for lounging. I ended up sitting there for twenty minutes, debating the pros and cons of Chuck Palahiniuk's writing style with a long-haired Irish man named Tom before I hit the dance floor.
This was the gimp at Rio. I have to admit that I didn't actually meet him.
Claire. A British medical student with a lip piercing. I'll have to admit that we not only met, but made out on the dance floor.
Hugo, from London. I met Hugo the day after making out with Claire. That crew had already moved on, going to Romania, but Hugo, hearing my accent stopped me and said: "you're Dan, right? You were with Claire last night, yeah? She's my mate." Apparently they had grown up together and she told him she had met an American named Daniel. This made me his mate's mate and therefore part of the group.
The group happened to be ten guy's from Hugo's rugby team, which had taken over two rooms in the hostel and the balcony and were exceedingly good at getting blitzed every night. Hugo introduced thusly: "This is the American named Dan. He knows Claire. We have to show him a good time." Apparently, I also have a dozen places to crash in London now.
Hugo
Finding out I was going on to Prague next, Hugo then pressed about $10 worth of Czech crowns in my hand since they had just came from there and didn't need them. Almost every night I was in Budapest from then on, we usually killed an hour or two talking about nothing on the hostel's huge balcony that faced a gothic church. Hugo, the team's appeaser and a constant people pleaser, is probably one of the nicest blokes I've ever met. He also calls everything that he likes "quality". "Ah, Dan, Prague is quality." "Check out that girl. She is quality." "I love this beer. It's so quality." British slang is fun.
In any case, the night I met them, the rugby team was going to a strip club, and going to a strip club with a drunk rugby team seemed like a prime seed for an interesting night. Hugo refused to go, though, for moral reasons and I didn't want to bail on him since he was the one who introduced me to everyone else. Instead we ended up back at Rio and met Fera.
This is Alex and Fera. I had no sooner mentally lamented that my sights/hostel circuit would never lead me to actually meet any Hungarians when Hugo and I met these two while the rest of the rugby team was at the strip club. A raver, Fera came up to me and started battling out moves. Alex was her friend, but didn't speak much English. It turns out she goes to film school and was a production assistant on movies with both Ed Harris and Diane Krueger (I had forgotten that a lot of movies were being filmed in Prague and Budapest because the costs were cheaper; in fact, I saw them prepping for a scene for a movie in a under-street crossing: setting up lights with a girl I didn't recognize getting done up in make-up). Fera's boyfriend was a bartender at Rio and she invited us back for a third night, which is how we ended up there with the entire rugby team and Anna and Amy.
Dowat, me and Hugo
The shot above is from the next night at Rio, the third night at Rio. By then, I had also gotten to know Dowat, another of the rugby guys, who had scored so high on his exams that an accounting company was not only paying for his University tuition in exchange for working for them after graduation, but "sponsoring" (AKA paying for) a month long vacation to America.
Anna and Amy were also met at the hostel, on their fifth week of travel through Europe and with another month to go. Anna is Swedish by birth but in possesion of both Swedish and British passports. Amy is, as Hugo describes her, a "London bird", and also British. They went with us to Rio and, since they were going to Prague as well, they exchanged e-mails with me so we could meet up there.
Anna, me and Amy
Anna, Amy, Dowat and Hugo
Needless to say, I had fun.