**Budapest from the top of the Funicular**

Prague to Budapest - Day 6

I boarded my train to Budapest at 8:15am. Following the Eurail app’s advice, I hadn’t made a reservation which made me a tad nervous so I was relieved to find a jolly Texan couple in the same predicament. I hovered over several single window seats until the officious conductor assured me I could relax in one of them for the entire journey. My less fortunate American friends were shuffled from seat to seat before finally settling at the back of the carriage.

Ahead of me, an elderly French family had just made themselves comfortable when a cantankerous Asian woman stormed in, brandishing her phone and barking:

“These are my seats. We three have reservations, see? I need this space now, please!”

The French family blinked at one another, stunned by her aggression. The peppery woman, outraged by their hesitation, took a deep breath and yelled:

“I need this space! You move now, please! We have reservation!”

The doddery French grandpa held his ears and with hunched shoulders the family gathered their things and slunk away, while the Asian family heaved three enormous suitcases into the overhead racks. I shook my head and muttered, “Well, I never…”

Poor Frenchies. Nobody else batted an eyelid.

I spent the journey giggling into the pages of My Uncle Oswald, Roald Dahl’s delightfully bawdy novel, while listening to Bartók and Liszt. Between chapters, I observed the shoe habits of my fellow passengers. Some slipped off just one shoe; others abandoned footwear entirely. A few swapped theirs for flip-flops, while the Asian family in front of me went completely barefoot. Eventually, I shook off my squeaky Reeboks and tucked my heels into their ankle wells, drifting in and out of sleep. The sun dipped behind the trees, flickering through the carriage windows, occasionally blinding me. Before long, we were rolling alongside the soft grey waters of the Danube, the outskirts of Budapest unfolding before me.

Once off the train, I bought a metro ticket from a vending machine and watched other passengers validate theirs before heading down the escalators. Validation is a big thing here! The Airbnb directions were spot on, and the metro easy to navigate.

The walk from Kalvin Ter station to my apartment took me through a lively pedestrian street lined with bars and restaurants—Nepalese, Vietnamese, Korean, Hungarian, Georgian, Turkish, and Indian. On any other day, I’d have dropped my bags and set off in search of a spectacular meal by the Danube, eager to fill my face with smoky meats and potatoes. But after days of pizza, pork knuckle, kebabs, steak, sausages, and mountains of starch, I’d had my fill of restaurant food.

One thing about being a seasoned New Yorker is understanding the importance of a big salad. I was at Big Apple Salad–Defcon 5! I needed kale, rocket, spinach, watercress, avocado—anything green, fresh, and crunchy. My Airbnb map showed a Spar Express supermarket two minutes away, so my plan, after dropping my bags, was to make the crucial salad, eat it while listening to something like Ode to Joy, and relax for the evening.

The apartment was perfect—clean, with a well equipped kitchen, cozy lounge, huge bed and a cute bijou bathroom. I made a list of items for dinner and headed to Spar Express.

Disappointment! Spar had no kale, spinach, watercress, rocket, or any other fresh salad greens. Browsing the aisles, I found a decent sachet of curry mix, so I pivoted to my default comfort food—chicken curry. I grabbed basmati rice, tomatoes, onion, lemons, garlic, chili, biscuits, milk, eggs, bacon, a Dreher (Hungarian beer), potatoes, and a bottle of water.

At the self-checkout, I scanned my items until I reached the vegetables. There was no option to scan them. I asked a hefty Spar employee for help, holding up a lemon with a helpless "how?" face. She rolled her eyes and pointed to a scale at another station—the fruit and veg station!

Spar Woman didn’t speak a word of English but somehow conveyed that I had to weigh each item separately and print barcode stickers. My vegetables weren’t bagged, so I had about ten items to scan!

I was already occupying one of four main checkouts, and now I was about to commandeer one of two precious fruit-and-veg stations. As the line of anxious shoppers grew, I felt the heat of dumb foreigner humiliation creeping up my collar.

I fumbled with a stupid lemon, unable to decipher the Hungarian system. Spar Woman pointed to a Union Jack button. My heart soared. Reprieved! I pressed it and, just as I began humming Rule Britannia—nothing happened. Where was Churchill when you needed him?

Spar Woman sighed, then efficiently weighed each item and handed me stickers, and soon we were a well-oiled machine. My only concern—two lemons, one sticker. Would that matter? I didn’t get the chance to find out because as I scrambled to keep up, one lemon tumbled across the floor, followed by a rogue onion. I dared not look at the line behind me, but when I did, I was met with a wall of frowns, eye-rolls, and red-faced glares.

Back at the checkout, I scanned everything and finally packed my bag. Proud of conquering the fruit-and-veg debacle, I tried to pay—only to find my bill had disappeared from the screen. I’d lifted my bag off the scale to fit more items, triggering checkout doom.

Slowly, I turned to Spar Woman. She glared at me like I’d damned Budapest to eternal darkness without Goulash. I pointed weakly at the blank screen, feeling a lot like Mr. Bean. She shook her head, then furiously tapped buttons before picking up a phone wired to the loudspeaker and summoning help. Arms crossed, she stood in front of me while I inspected my shoes. I tried to avoid the stares of twenty hungry, impatient Hungarians, but it was like playing statues—every time I turned back, more of them were glaring.

Spar Boy arrived. A manager who looked about twelve years old, but he reprogrammed the machine so I could pay and end my ordeal. I yanked my receipt so fast it tore in half.

Thinking nothing of it, I went to exit—only for a barrier to drop and an alarm to blare.

“Receipt! Receipt!” the man behind me barked.

I had to scan my receipt to get out. My heart sank. The barcode was torn in half. I smiled, about to cry, and idiotically pressed the two halves together on the scanner. Nothing. I was about to collapse, crack open my beer and settle in for the night when Spar Woman reappeared with a psychotic glint in her eye.

She waved me through, but every time I stepped forward, the barriers snapped shut. I laughed at the ridiculousness. All I needed now was for my pants to get whipped off by the gate.

Somehow, I made it through, with Spar Woman shooing me into the night like a social pariah. As I left, a pleasant English voice announced:

“Thank you for shopping at Spar. We hope you had a pleasant experience.”
“Fuck you Spar!”

Once home, I channeled my mum—scored the chicken thighs to the bone, set my masala sizzling, and instantly, the apartment smelled like home. I yanked open the window for some crisp Danube air and took a shower.

After moisturizing (Guyanese people, regardless of sex, must moisturize), I replayed Spargate and laughed so hard I collapsed onto my bed to recover. Alone in Budapest, cackling at what a complete nimrod I’d become, I felt utterly happy. This was exactly the kind of experience I’d set off from London in search of—even if it came at my own expense. I would file it under mild peril.

I imagined Spargate unfolding at Harlem’s Lidl on Frederick Douglass and 118th, watching some other hapless foreigner go through it. They’d be on the next flight home. Or banned, their mugshot slapped on the window with a—DANGER! DO NOT SERVE—sign.

Lying there in absolute merriment, the scent of curry lured me back to the stove. One taste of the gravy—wow, it popped perfectly. I started the basmati rice, adding lemon, Hungarian paprika, garlic, chicken powder, and butter to the base.

20 minutes later, my Spargate notes were written and my food nightmares from Prague and Berlin erased. The shelf-mix curry, elevated with some Guyanese zhuzh, was splendid. The basmati? Some of the most fragrant and delicious I’d ever made. I devoured three portions while watching the Champions League highlights, rubbing my belly, and giggling away my earlier torture.

“Sometimes you gotta larf!”