Nothing Happened in Budapest

Jess and I went to Budapest for a stamp in our passports.

That sounds decidedly unexciting, but it’s the truth.

Despite the fact that we had been living in Tirana since February, we recently discovered that, according to the Albanian government, we weren’t actually in Albania.

The problem began months earlier when Jess and I rented a car and took a road trip through North Macedonia and Kosovo. We were stamped out of Albania when we left. On our return, the border guard looked at the covers of our American passports, glanced at the Albanian license plate on our rental car, and simply waved us through the checkpoint.

No stamp.

No scan.

No questions.

Just a very Balkan shrug and a move-along wave.

Jess and I were a little baffled by the lackadaisical border control procedures. I even remember saying something along the lines of, “I sure hope that doesn’t come back to bite us later.”

A not-so-subtle bit of foreshadowing for something that would, in fact, come back to bite us later.

Months passed.

We lived in Tirana. We rented an apartment. We bought groceries. We made friends. We volunteered. We complained incessantly about the heat.

As far as Jess and I were concerned, we were very much in Albania.

Albania’s border records disagreed.

Eventually, the missing entry stamp surfaced as a problem. On paper, we had left the country months earlier and simply never returned.

The easiest solution was almost comically simple: leave Albania and come back.

A border run, as many expats and nomads call it.

Our first thought was to rent a car and take another little road trip. The problem with that plan was twofold. First, it was the height of tourist season in Albania, and rental car prices had quite literally quadrupled.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, renting a car and driving across a border was exactly how we got into this situation in the first place.

The thought of spending hundreds of euros only to have another border guard casually wave us back into Albania was a gamble we weren’t particularly interested in taking.

So, we booked a budget flight to Budapest.

Budget airlines are an experience.

Every time Jess and I fly with one, I feel as though half the passengers have just left their homes and ventured into the world for the very first time.

Boarding is chaos. Baggage is a nightmare. There seems to be almost no rhyme or reason to anything happening around you.

Once onboard, flight attendants walk the aisle selling perfume, souvenirs, and an assortment of other things I have never once considered purchasing at 35,000 feet.

Everything is also a fee.

Need overhead bin space?

Take out your wallet.

Want a bottle of water?

Wallet.

Is your carry-on slightly larger than a Fisher-Price My First Backpack?

Believe it or not, wallet.

By now, though, Jess and I have become pretty experienced travelers. We managed to fit everything we needed into tiny backpacks, dodged the added fees, and made it to Budapest without much of a hitch.

We had gone there for a stamp.

Instead, we arrived to cool weather.

After months of summer in Tirana, where stepping outside sometimes feels like opening the door to a preheated oven, Budapest was a gift.

Our hotel was a boat moored along the Danube River. It was basic, budget-friendly, and absolutely perfect for a trip we hadn’t planned on taking. We dropped our backpacks, rested for a while, and eventually wandered into the city in search of Hungarian food.

We found a small restaurant where I ordered fried turkey stuffed with herb-infused butter and dumplings. Jess had chicken with a citrus sauce.

The plates were enormous.

We ate anyway.

Then we wandered.

Jess and I have become terrible tourists.

We are used to arriving somewhere with a month to spare. We learn which grocery store we like. We find the café that makes our coffee correctly. We figure out which streets to avoid because someone has apparently been operating a jackhammer there every morning since the fall of the Roman Empire.

We integrate, at least a little.

Budapest gave us only a few days.

So, for once, we did the tourist things.

We took a nighttime boat down the Danube and watched the city’s architecture glow in warm light.

We searched the streets for tiny bronze statues.

We visited a zoo more than 150 years old.

We snuggled piglets at the Mini-Pig Cafe.

We listened to thunderstorms from our boat-hotel because everywhere Jess and I go eventually seems to get pounded by rain, thunder, and lightning.

Nothing we did was particularly extraordinary.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Budapest was how quiet it was.

Living in Italy, Tunisia, and now Albania, Jess and I have become accustomed to the soundtrack of cities.

Traffic.

Construction.

Honking horns.

People talking.

People yelling.

Scooters squeezing through spaces that I’m relatively certain were not designed to accommodate scooters.

There is always something happening.

Budapest was different.

Budapest was silent.

One evening, Jess and I sat outside with coffee.

At some point, we stopped talking.

I don’t remember which of us noticed the quiet first. Maybe neither of us did. Maybe we just sat there long enough for the absence of noise to become noticeable.

There were people around us. Restaurants were open. Dinners were being served.

But the only sounds I could hear were the distant clinking of silverware against ceramic plates.

A chair occasionally moving across the pavement.

Fragments of conversations too far away to understand.

No horns.

No yelling.

No construction.

For once, there didn’t seem to be anything demanding our attention.

Somewhere between hunting for tiny bronze statues and watching a red panda sleep with its face pressed against a tree branch, I realized that this time, I wasn’t looking for a story.

Nothing was on fire.

No one needed an ambulance.

There were no protests.

No border guards questioning a missing stamp.

There were just pigs.

Jess was petting them as they lay asleep in her lap.

Nothing happened in Budapest.

And it will be one of our greatest travel memories to date.