Hostel Business In Budapest

"Ideally we get him so drunk that he will miss his 8am flight.  Leaving him no choice but to work with us.  C'mon...do you know what that guy could do for our hostel website traffic?!?!"

The owner of Aboriginal Hostel was explaining why we were trying to finish off 6 bottles of various Eastern Europe liquors in the amount of time normally reserved for the 100 Meter Olympic dash.  The target of his scheme was Josh, the American owner and founder of Hostelmanagement.com, one of the best website for promotion and networking in the hostel industry.  Josh had excused himself to the bathroom for minute - most likely due to the copious amounts of alcohol we had been drinking all night.

Aboriginal common room

Being a Costa Rica hostel manager had perks.  By simply flashing my business card and website, the Aussie manager had given me 20% off my room and access to the staff's store of liquors.  He introduced me to the owner and Josh, who by coincidence was staying at the place on the last night of a month-long Eurotrip before he caught an 8am flight to California the next day.  He had picked the hostel due to its good ratings.

Josh was a programmer and website designer who had eventually focused his work on his personal project, Hostelmanagement.com.  He was a quiet and unassuming man who didn't talk much unless it was about web design.  He looked at my hostel's website and quickly pointed out several things I could change in order to increase our traffic and guest visits.  I could clearly see how valuable he could be to any hostel business.

I wasn't the only one.  Aboriginal's Hungarian owner had been trying to convince him to become part of the Aboriginal team.  He was a flashy, loud, jewelry-wearing man who was more concerned with the monetary aspects of hostel ownership than the hospitality part.  He not only promised Josh great pay, benefits and compensation for his missed airplane flight, but said that he had "special friends" who could get Josh the golden prize: a free one year European Union work visa.  No questions asked.  Delivered to his hands within a few weeks.  I know from having failed to get a EU work visa that this is no small task...

Palinkaaaa

The Hungarian owner's showy manners and bribes seemed to make the shy Josh uneasy.  He was polite, but kept insisting that he had to make his flight back to the USA the next morning.  This was difficult considering the strong spirits we were drinking.  What the owner offered us was formidable: Hungarian and Romanian Palinka, Croatian Rakija, Polish vodka and beer for those who lacked the balls to pound these shots.

I of course jumped into the liquor with no reservations.  It was all free.  I've never found liquors from this part of the world particularly enjoyable, but the palinkas and rakija were high-quality brands that went down smooth. Too smooth...

Besides I had to do "business" with these hostel employees.  We talked of partnerships and the possibly of me working as a manager at Aboriginal in the future if Costa Rica didn't work out.  Josh asked my recommendations for Central America while the flashy Hungarian hostel owner insisted we drink one more shot...Josh, the pay is good...one more shot...We'll get you an EU visa...another shot...palinka good...blahblahshotblah...pa-shot-linka...

pa...lin...kaaaa...

aaa...   aaa...   shot...?

Fuck...

Why did I pay for a bed?  Around 9am I woke up on the couch in the common room.  The Aussie manager looked amused and told me to get some breakfast...It's FREE!  I asked what had happened to Mr. Hostelmanagement.com.  "Oh, he made his flight, but in bad shape. I need to get home myself and recover." My shape wasn't as bad as I expected and a few cups of strong coffee helped.

I ate the free breakfast (it's delicious), checked Hitchwiki.org then caught the metro to the nearest hitchhiking spot to Bratislava, Slovakia.

Hairy Hungarian Hitchhiker: Belgrade to Budapest

That is an impressive beard!

In hitchhiker language "H" is for Hungary

That is the first thought that came to my mind when I got picked up by the truck-driving Hairy Hungarian Hitcher.  His massive beard, short stature and round figure gave him the appearance of a dwarf who had crawled out of a mountain from Middle-Earth.  I had no way of expressing my thoughts since I discovered with a simple "Hello" that my driver knew not one word of English.  Magically in my travels I had acquired 6 words of Hungarian, which were enough to make the Hairy Hungarian Hitcher (now referred to as the HHH) smile with delight and chat to me as if I were his long-lost friend.

"Szia. Eg, Kete, Haram"

"Ezhgie okjoklkomun keszelk?"

"Uh...Koszonom!"

"Kegeskszouem keszerss!!! Gskgetlkl zeguk eguszoj ...." 

  

Truck drivers.  The true saviors for many a desperate hitchhiker.  Lonely, creepy, smelly and uncouth...they receive a bad reputation even though most of them have a heart of gold.  All most truck drivers need is some entertainment since being on the road for a million hours can get mind-numbingly boring.  Hitchhikers have received the same bad reputation as truckers thanks to a few bad apples; and we get bored standing by the road.  Naturally, we bond quite quickly.

Lost in Serbia

Somehow my conversations with the HHH were more interesting than Dusan, my first hitcher who had taken me from the northern side of Belgrade to the desolate, hot highway where I got the next ride.  Dusan and I had rambled on in my broken Serbo-Slovak-Polish language and he was happy to leave me with two wonderful gifts.  The first was a wilted cellophane-wrapped sandwich that I greedily accepted (when traveling never turn down free food.)  The second was a fine map of Serbia.  It was not a standard highway map but it was detailed and included all the major roads and cities I needed to know for traveling.

Too bad I'm leaving Serbia today.

I was showing this map to the HHH, who laughed and then suddenly looked concerned.  He pointed at the northern-most point on the map and said something with a rather regretful tone in his voice.  He repeated it with the same sadness and I looked at his hairy, dwarf face.  I gathered that was the point where I had to leave.  Only when I when we reached the border did I understand that the border police was his principle concern.  No hitchhikers.  Were it not for that I would have had a ride on highway E75 all the way to Budapest.  I shouted, "Egészségédre!" and got out.

My next two rides were spent in silence save for the Hungarian greetings.  These people weren't as excited as the truck-driving HHH to venture a conversation with a foreigner when they couldn't speak English.  My final ride dropped me off in central District IX within the vicinity of a metro stop and a shopping mall.  The mall had a bookshop where I quickly checked my email.  My last-minute planning skills were in effect, and I was hoping for a last-minute Couchsurfer to give me a place to stay.

There was no last-minute Couchsurfer.  I received responses, but they were offers for other nights or locations too far outside of downtown for me to handle getting lost at 9 at night.  This left me to search for hostels.  I already knew of some from previous stays so I headed to my favorite of them all: Budapest Bubble.  It's perhaps one of the smallest hostels in Budapest, but by far the coziest and friendliest one.  And one of the co-owners, Olga, has received praise and admiration from far away for her smile and indie-girl good looks.  I took the nearest metro there.

Budapest Bubble was full.  No surprise for a place that only has 20 beds.  However they did send me to their sister hostel, Aboriginal Hostel, which was a mere 500 meters down the road.  I thought I would get some sleep.  Instead, as a card-carrying hostel manager from Costa Rica, I met some very important hostel people who revealed to me the rather sordid and often dirty business of hostel management.  This is gonna be a long night.