MARCH 21, 2022 – I didn’t let my parting, negative experience in Budapest shade my otherwise positive impression of that beautiful city and the people I’d encountered there . . .
. . . For the whole of my sojourn, I’d stayed at a bed-and-breakfast accommodation in an apartment block. The place was clean and convenient, and the price was right. The family was pleasant enough but scarce during the little time I spent there. They spoke no English.
On the morning of my departure, I asked them to call a “taxi”—same word, all languages—to the rail station, and soon, the cab appeared. Wearing shorts, I loaded my pack into the trunk and suddenly remembered: I’d left a pair of L.L. Bean khaki trousers hanging on the back of the bedroom door. I explained this to the driver, who understood some English, and hustled back to the apartment to retrieve my pants. My repeated knocking went unanswered, though I could hear voices inside. I knocked harder and shouted, but still, no answer.
I ran outside to tell the driver, who accompanied me back to the apartment. He knocked hard enough to be heard halfway to Moscow. Still no response. He roared in Hungarian, but no go. The driver then explained that on the black market, the trousers I’d described were probably worth two weeks’ rent to the bed-and-breakfast family. Though impressed by the driver’s advocacy, I weighed the risk of missing my train to Prague against the likelihood that my pants were as good as stolen.
The theft was all but forgotten by the time I’d traveled the length of Czechoslovakia and reached Prague’s central rail station. There to greet me with an outpouring of warmth and charm were Pavel (see 3/19/22 post), his then wife Magda, and his sister, Lucy—smart, good-hearted, and quick to laugh. (I recently learned she’s taken in five Ukrainian refugees.) Magda’s English was so good, she could pass for a Briton. A talented screen actress who’d worked with Milos Forman, she later served as President Vaclav Havel’s English tutor.
After an intense “catch-up” session, my welcoming committee led the way to Pavel’s parents’ apartment for a lavish dinner. As we gathered in the dining room, I presented Pavel with a bottle of wine I’d hauled all the way from Samos. We used it to toast our friendship and Delphi—the ancient place of our initial meeting in 1979.
In a letter home, I described my hosts and the golden evening:
“Mr. and Mrs. Šebesta are kindness, hospitality, refinement, etiquette, scholarship, and intelligence personified. Pavel’s mother speaks English, and his father knows French and German fluently. Both his parents find it easy to laugh. Their six-room apartment is tastefully decorated and furnished, and books, music, and paintings line every wall. As in Belgrade, the food was superb. We dined, drank, and ‘discussed’ well into the night, and it was a time I shall never forget, even in senility. The principal topic was politics—life under the Soviet boot and the farce of Leninism.”
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© 2022 by Eric Nilsson
