So Thailand wasn't the end of the story but instead it was the start of a much larger one including, this chapter. How did Budapest come to be? A simple question with a simple answer that I'm sure if I was a better writer would be a shorter letter. So I had just come back from Cambodia and Holly was still in India, meditating and doing a shit tonne of yoga with, I'm told, some thinking about me. She had just got a final paycheck from her job in China and proposed the idea of meeting up somewhere in the middle with the caveat that she was going to see some friends in Europe along the way anyway so it wasn't really a big deal. But it was, and I said how about Budapest. The reason for Budapest is that I'd been before very briefly and liked the city but most of all it was cheap. I had no money left after Thailand and Cambodia but I definitely needed to see her again. And by no money I dont mean not a lot. I mean minus quite a bit but I'd done the budget of living in my overdraft for a year and knew I could be out of it if I managed my Student Loan properly. So that was that, we booked flights to Budapest with a little bit of fear on my end if she was really going to be there. This is going to be a little side story but it's worth telling here because it doesn't fit anywhere else. My dad had recently got into running and had signed up to a 198 mile relay race around the boundary of Norfolk with his running club. Where I enter the story is my dad getting injured and asking if I could do his leg of the relay as there was no one else available. I had completed a marathon before and I use the word completed intentionally because what I did wouldn't be described by anyone as running. At least the second half. So I was convinced to do this what I was informed was a 16 mile run the day of my flight to Budapest to see Holly. The reason I had time to do this run on the day was because the leg that turned out to be 18 miles was in the middle of the night / early morning. It was awful and my legs were seized at the end, I think this is what killed any ambition to run long distance ever again. However we had a plan, James (my brother - his first appearance in this story), drove me home and I slept for about an hour. When I woke up I could barely move but we got in the car and headed to the airport. I could barely walk to the door and Luton Airports unending maintenance on the front entrance made it a long walk, I had to stop several times just to make it. Going through security people looked at me the way they look at people with a disability and asked if I needed any help, I replied honestly that I'd gone for a long run and was just a little tight. This was responded to with a blank look. It was also at this moment that I decided I would never look at someone this way and only give help if wanted. This is summed upon in an analogy that I tell or came up with I can't remember, that you have to run away from a friend in a wheelchair when you are going down stairs or at least pretend to because you'd do it to a friend who broke his leg and everyone just wants to exist in a tribe, not outside it. Anyway, I got on the plain and fell asleep again thinking I would wake up in Budapest. This was not the case however as when I woke up two hours later on a runway what I initially thought to be me sleeping through the whole take-off and landing turned out to be a flight delayed by 2 hours. The flight was spent worrying that Holly would have thought I stood her up, I didn't sleep during the actual flight.
So the end of the prelude and the start of probably a shorter story about Budapest. So I rushed out of the airport to find Holly waiting for me, it was supposed to be the other way round but it didn't matter we were together again. The first step was getting to the AirBnB and therefore an awkwardly giddy taxi trip. Looking back we really didn't know each other but sometimes you have to take a punt on a gut feeling. Also Holly's only card was Union Pay, not a very well support card type in Europe but this was more funny than a red flag. So I get how people fall for these love scams because when you are falling for someone you expect the best, luckily in this case that's what I found. So the AirBnB was a loft apartment on the 3rd floor in a stunning soviet-influenced tower block, a detail that is important because it ignited our collective love for lofts a detail that I hope is important later in this story. So what happened in Budapest, its quite hard to remember but we did everything together, something that seemed to come as a surprise to Holly, we got snacks, our first crushed penny, spent our features (Forints or Ft) on good food Gyros and a like, toured the normal sights, got into an argument while hangry (this is why the Gyros was so good) and spent a lot of time just being together whether walking or on the taxi boat around the city. All the walking was tough for me given my previous days adventures but I quickly forgot about it once we were together. This is apart from when Holly insisted we take the stairs to the apartment rather than the very sketchy looking lift. Holly has a phase that she often repeats at times like this "Happiness isn't glamorous." And this is why I believe that there is not as much to say once we were together because there wasn't enough time, it just passed so quickly like a whirlwind. There has never been enough time. I always want more, and hopefully I can spend the rest of my life chasing that goal. The end of the story ends with me going back to Unn and Holly starting her journey back to me through many bus trips across Europe, with an intermission in Austria and a very brief one in Germany, but thats Holly's story to tell. I'll pick up my part back in Coventry a city that I had little love for at the time but will now be seen as the city that brought me some of the best days I could ever of wished for.
