The Pest of Budapest
Though my wife and I were enjoying back-packing through the rail stations and hostels of Europe, we had no idea what we would encounter at the “Station Guesthouse.” It proved to be a sty of a place. Calling it a ‘drunken frat house’ would be an affront to all drunken frat houses. In other words, it was a wreck. But a wreck located so far out of central Budapest that we, like all other unlucky arrivals in the early evening, had no choice but to simply suck it up for one night.
That one (and only) night was spent in a four-bunk dorm room furnished with creaky metal bunks diabolically designed to generate noise at the slightest shift of sleeping positions. If, indeed, you could get to the point of sleep.
But things would only get better . . .
At about 4 o’clock in the morning a small, but pronounced, beeping sound could suddenly be heard. Most all of us in the room stirred with the same horrible realization: somehow our little travel alarm clock has been set incorrectly and is now going off! In the Top 10 Nightmare Scenarios contemplated by everyone spending a night in a hostel dorm room, this is at least #4.
Each of us panicked with that same fear because the noise was muffled and we couldn’t pinpoint it. Quietly, we each put our ears to the belongings kept by our beds to see if the incessant ringing was our doing. Then, more movement as we each got up to see if it was incarcerated in the stacked set of lockers provided for each bunkmate in the room. One by one, we each eliminated ours as the offender and began to narrow it down.
Then, suddenly, an enormous hint as to the offender came from the comment of a girl in one of the top bunks — something to the effect of “Hey, I think it’s her friend over there. This happened at … oh … about the exact same time last night”
She referred of course, to the only two people in the room who to the amazement of all of us were sleeping through this untimely racket. The girl in question was sharing a tiny bottom bunk with some lanky, dread locked dufus right across the room from the set of lockers. Unbelievably, we were all standing right in front of their bed and they somehow were still buried in the arms of Morpheus.
Not for long, though. One of the more kindhearted of our rapidly bonding set of roommates asked “Um, should we wake them?”
To which my prompt response was, “Heck, yes, we should wake them!?!?”
Without further ado, I nudged Lanky Dread on his shoulder. It didn’t even stir the dude. The girl sharing this twin sized joke of a bunk had to give him a shove and say “Hey, your alarm! It’s going off…again…”
The fact it never occurred to either of them to make sure it didn’t happen after cropping up the night before didn’t generate huge shockwaves through we onlookers, all quickly clued in as to what rating on the Mensa scale we were dealing with.
Lanky Dread struggled to sit up in bed, but after a moment lay back down, thinking it finally had gone off on its own. Um, no, Dread, not so fast!
He gets back up and it takes him an eternity (granted, any extension of the insufferable beeping at this point in the wee morning hours can justifiably be termed an ‘eternity’) to find that little key to open his locker. Then, twice as long to dig through everything he’s collected in his pack over the past eight months of travel. Naturally the alarm lies at the absolute bottom of his pack.
The buzzer is still beeping forcefully, but much louder now that it’s been freed from the muffling locker. After what seems at least 15 minutes since Lanky Dread stirred from his deep slumber, he manages to shut the thing off.
Then he lies back down, throws the covers over him — and that’s it….no “Sorry.” No “Um, whoops.” No anything.
Figures.
And out of all this, the thing that truly amazed me? That Dread didn’t accidentally hit the snooze button. Really, didn’t you expect that to be coming next? I did.
