Dave and Josh are…
In Budapest.
I woke up too late and ruined our shot at one last breakfast of crossianted heaven but with some bread and cheese to sustain us we set out for the last of our journey’s bizarre adventures. The target was just in the outer hills of Buda: The Children’s Railway.
Its billed as the world’s only full fledged railway run entirely by children. And sure enough the conductors and signalmen (and women) on the 12 km route are all kids ages 10-14. (Though since the engineers are adults the claim seems somewhat disingenuous.)
Josh and I were in large part lured here because we cant fathom why this exists and because we have been arguing about what happens to the kids when they turn fourteen for the last week. The prevailing theory is they either get a pension in candy (if this job is a prestige thing like a magnet school) or funneled right into jobs with the real railroad (if it’s the equivalent of a technical school).
We didn’t get an answer. Our twelve year old looking ticket agent told us (in pretty good English for a little dude) that he had been working here for two years but his answer to my question about school was less intelligible. Perhaps its for the best we don’t understand anything more about this operation.
It was a nice ride though. We bought return tickets and clicked along a scenic wooded route that at times overlooked Budapest and at other times wound around what appeared to be, in all seriousness, an Ewok village.
Compared to that the rest of the day sort of fades away until we went out to watch the first leg of the Man U / Milan Champions League Semi-final. I looked up a sports bar in the area and we walked in to find that despite being near empty, every seat in it was reserved (which makes this place the lamest sports bar of all time) but sitting there watching the Cricket World Cup was none other than the displaced Kiwi I met in Sarajevo, Govind. It’s a small world isn’t it?
So we fell in with him and went to an overly pricey but incredibly empty pizza place that was showing the game and watched a very exciting match while eating some good but very expensive pizza. That marks the conclusion of the Dave/Josh joint adventure. The lesser half of the duo returns tomorrow to the States and real life (i.e. employment). It’s a shame its been a damn good run.