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learning how to vomit
Monday, March 26 2018
location: room 342, Danubius Gellért Hotel, Budapest, Hungary
The Gellért is a big no-nonsense place where people go primarily to soak in the baths, which contain water naturally heated by volcanic processes. This morning, Gretchen and I went to dining room to partake in the complimentary breakfast. It was likely that the people we were seeing there were primarily from Hungary, though there were likely people from all over Europe as well. Still, the lack of evident diversity (an absence of people of clearly Asian or African origins) was striking to someone from the United States. And it wasn't just that they were all white people; they were all white in a similar Central-European sort of way. "They're not exactly a cheekbone-having people," I mused. (At the time, I might've had the most prominent cheekbones in the venue; mine come directly from my grandfather Clarence DeMar, who, as a French Canadian, got them either from French or American Indian ancestors.) For those who don't like to see or smell eggy things in the morning, breakfast at the Gellért wasn't an especially pleasant experience. But there were things I definitely wanted to eat, particularly the enormous vat of cooked mushrooms. The robot-made coffee was also perfectly acceptable.
At some point, Gretchen and I decided to try out the Gellért baths, for which we'd each been given one ticket. After first showering, we entered the place with the two main pools, an elaborately-tiled room with the temperatures of each pool tiled permanently above it. We went directly for the warmer of the two, which (if our calculations were right) was 104 degrees Fahrenheit. It was good for awhile, though after a time we needed to cool down, and so we found our way to the other pool, which was 37 degrees Celsius (healthy human temperature). We sat and watched people for a bit, Gretchen sometimes asking if her body was like various random women's bodies. I didn't think any of them resembled Gretchen at all. Gretchen stayed behind to swim in the lap pool (it proved uncomfortably cold) while I went back to the room and took a nap.
We spent much of the day riding around on electric-powered trams to various neighborhoods and sometimes wondering how to traverse from one part of Buda to the other. To use the trams (and much of the bus network), one buys a ticket from a machine and then holds onto it on the chance that eventually someone will ask you to produce it (which, judging from the fact that it never happened today) is rare. (In San Diego, I used to ride public transportation operating under this regime without buying a ticket, until one day I was caught and had to pay a fine.)
We started across the Danube (on the flatter Pest side) somewhat north of the Liberty Bridge, where our phones quickly directed us to a street northeast of the Elizabeth Bridge that was full of vegan eateries. It was a little early for lunch, but Gretchen, in her excitement, got more than we c ould possibly eat. It was a little chilly for sitting outside and eating, but we did so anyway. As we did so, I was continuing my germophobic ways, keeping a detailed mental record of what questionable surface had touched what part of each food item.
Budapest is a gorgeous city, though it had occasional ugly buildings built during the Soviet modern period. The only good thing about these were the occasional Socialist Realist reliefs.
On one of the trams, I happened to look around at the strangers around us, and I was mildly skeeved-out to notice they all had the same light-blue eye color (which is not very different from my own).
We eventually ended up at "the Buda Castle," something of an architectural palimpsest. The main thing to do there was to climb up a series of ramps and stairways to the tops of terraces and walls for progressively loftier views of the Pest part of Budapest across the Danube, mostly dominated by the glorious Mandelbrotian gothic revival gingerbread of the Parliament Building.
This evening, Gretchen and I tried the Palak Wine Bar, directly across the street from the Gellért. We both ordered flights (or whatever small wine samples are called), which turned out to be of various white wines. Gretchen was liking hers more than I was liking mine, and found the best wine could be had by combining two of the samples (surely causing the founders of the affected wineries to roll in their graves). I wanted to transition to red wine and would've gladly ordered glass. But the service was so terrible that we ended up getting the check and paying up without leaving a tip. This might've perpetuated a feedback loop wherein Americans are poorly served, leave terrible tips, causing the staff to serve future Americans poorly.
We took the trolley over to the Parliament and
dined upstairs at a vegan restaurant with the somewhat unfortunate name of Veganeria. I ordered the gyros pizza, which came out as a creamy, delectable piece of perfection, perhaps the best pizza I've ever had at a restaurant. It paired nicely with a glass of red wine I'd ordered. Gretchen's experience didn't go as well. I don't remember exactly what she ordered, but she also got a glass of wine, and the two didn't sit well in her stomach. This made her miserable for the walk back to the tram (which we again caught near the Parliament) and then back in our room at the Gellért. Gretchen said something about wishing she could make herself throwup, something she said she'd never been able to do. I told her that there was a time when I too didn't know how to make myself vomit, but that I discovered the key was to stick my thumb down my throat and hold it there for as long as it took. With this information, Gretchen went into the bathroom and eventually succeeded in inducing a purge. She later reported that the key was sticking her thumb even further down her throat than she'd been trying. With her stomach relatively empty, she felt much better. But she also felt empowered, finally having learned how to make herself throw up at the age of 47. "It's like a lot of things," I said, adding, "It took me awhile to figure out how to masturbate, but once I did it, I knew how."
Looking south from the Buda Castle towards the Elizabeth Bridge (which we called "the Ugly Bridge") and the Liberty Bridge beyond. Note the heroic statue atop the mountain (which is just north of the Gellért). Click to enlarge.
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Looking north from the Buda Castle towards the Chain Bridge and the Parliament beyond. Click to enlarge.
A social realist relief on a drab Soviet-era building.
Detail.
A cute three-wheeled pizza delivery vehicle. Made by Amica.
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