SF in Budapest

Thursday begins a 4-day weekend to commemorate Ötvenhat (1956 Memorial Day), and everybody in Budapest is leaving town for the holiday. Me too, though I am leaving not because of the weekend. Just a coincidence - I already had plans to go. To Debrecen!

Debrecen is the second biggest city in Hungary, located near the Romanian border. On Friday morning it's zip on out to Nyugati Palyaudvar station on the Metro and connect to an Intercity eastbound train to Hungary's Great Plains.

I should note that NOBODY goes to Debrecen for fun. It is known for being an agribusiness crossroads, a good place to be an exchange student... and not much else. Leaving Budapest for Debrecen is like fleeing Manhattan to have a hot time in Omaha.

Andi and I have already kicked this around some months ago via Skype:

A: So what you want to do specially when you are here?
S: I want to go to Debrecen!
A: DEBRECEN? Why you want to go there?
S: Um, because it looks cool. (I always say this about a large population center on a map)
A: I don't know, what could be there for you?
S: Well, it's like a big town, y'know. And there's cowboys!
A: Cowboys? Nem I don't think so.
S: No for real, cowboys, the ones that whey wear those white smock-y things and have old style mustaches and they're full-on macho.
A: I hate to have to say this to you to break your dream, but there are no cowboys here. I think this is something you have made up in your mind.
S: No really I saw pictures! Cowboys who totally ride these small horses 100 kph and do rope tricks and wrestle farm animals and stuff.

At that point Andi said "I-I-I-I-I dunnooooooooo" in this cute dubious way she does when she thinks I'm putting her on. Said that there is no such thing as a "magyar cowboy" and that it must have been a joke I misinterpreted. Like maybe it's a provincial slang term for the winos who ride the benches the metropolitan train station.

But I could not be convinced, so now it's 4 months later and we're really going. Trying to find other things to do there but all the tourism information websites that are dredged up by Google are typical of what you find for Central Europe. There appears to be a wealth of information in the native language on these portals, but when you click on the little British flag for the "English site", you are taken to another whole site with a fraction of the info, and targeted to moneyed tourists with the usual crap they think we Americans and Brits are interested in - real estate, prostitutes, and Dracula. I call it the "chump button".

No helpful hints to be found with the chump button. So we will wing it, follow our noses and see what there is to see... cowboys or no.