In 2010, while returning to Budapest from a Toronto trip, I was entering the EU through Frankfurt airport. At the immigration booth I handed the agent my Canadian passport and watched as he nonchalantly flipped through the many stamped pages. When he got to the page with my attached Hungarian residency permit, he did a classic double take and said, “Hungary? You live in Hungary? Why did you move to Hungary?”

Without hesitating I responded:

“I have absolutely no idea.”

Rule number one at a border crossing: Do not lie. Rule number two at border crossing: Do not attempt to use humour. I was neither lying nor was I trying to be funny.

Regardless, he laughed and sent me on my merry, sleep-deprived way.

I am one of those few people who likes Frankfurt airport. Every time I am there I am reminded that I live in Europe, which I love. It is a brief experience before I catch my connecting flight to Budapest and, arriving there, step out onto the planet Mars.

I am not the first person to make the Mars observation. I doubt I will be the last.

How Hungarians became Marsians

It allegedly began in 1945 or 1946 with Dr. Phillip Morrison. What started as humour evolved into folklore and it doesn’t take folklore long to evolve into history and history has a way of being believed as fact which is why the “good guys” win every war. Victors write the history which brings us back to Mars.

If the truth will set you free, let me seek my freedom by confessing to you that there have been times in my life when people have said to me, “You’re weird.” That many might think it weird to insist the colour of their socks, boxer shorts, shirt and sometimes shoes match, I disagree. I call it balanced. So while I may, from time to time, use the words ‘weird’ and “Hungarian’ as synonyms, I am fully aware that a man in a glass house should not throw stones and weirdness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

So here I am, perhaps among my kind of people, although to date I have not seen any men whose shoes, socks and shirts are matching colours. But then, nor do I ask to examine the colour of any man’s boxer shorts.

My first trip to Budapest was for a week in 2007. (A 2005 trip planned for Prague and Budapest had to be cancelled. I think it was determination that took me to Prague in 2006. Destiny took me to Budapest in 2007.)

At the time, I was bored with my job. Usually boredom with one’s job is not a big problem. You just find another job and quit. The problem was I owned the company.

So I wound it down and wondered, “What next?”

That is when I had the bright idea that my wife Susan and I come to Budapest for a few months to ponder that question. We planned a three month trip for the winter of 2008.

We arrived in Budapest on January 5th, 2008, spent three days at the Gellért hotel while we scurried about finding a short-term apartment, getting cell phone numbers and opening a bank account.

It all started that innocently. We would walk for hours every day through the city. One day we returned to our short-term rental apartment and asked ourselves, “Did we just buy an apartment?”

Just in time for the economic collapse

We had put an offer in on an apartment after several days of looking “out of curiosity.” We all know what curiosity did to the cat.

Our plan was fairly simple: we would buy un-renovated flats in classical buildings, renovate them and flip them. The city is an architectural gem with much of it in a state of disrepair but not destroyed. We had also explored exporting some Hungarian furniture, having found a manufacturer with a fabulous line and a small factory south of the city.

It was a marvelous idea. A couple of ways to diversify a little income and live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, literally in the centre of Europe.
In a hot real estate market, we easily sold our Toronto townhouse, even managing to add Jasper, the cat, to the purchase. To this day, Jasper remains king of the neighbourhood.

On September 4, 2008 we boarded one of the last Malev nonstop flights between Toronto and Budapest.

We arrived in Budapest to find that someone stole many of the belonging we had left in our apartment (someone with a key); we discovered that the renovator, with whom we were close to going into business with (and who had a key), had forged our signature; then the market in Budapest went over a cliff in October of 08 and here we were. Oddly (or insanely) we were still liking it, albeit not without having endured a few bumps and bruises, both emotionally and financially.

But here we were, right back to the same question we were asking ourselves on the fateful, three-month sabbatical earlier that year: “What next?”

It was during our three-month sabbatical that I had discovered the Budapest Times, at that time one of two English-language newspapers in Budapest and now the only one.  While there were many things about the paper that caught my attention none did more so than the prospect of winning a free weekend car rental by entering a humorous article contest.

Funny? They wanted funny? Bruises aside, all one had to do was look around and there was plenty of material. So write I did and I submitted my offering, as directed (and on time, I might add), to “contest@bzt.hu”.

Then I waited. And I waited. Then I fretted. Then I waited and fretted and then I just fretted some more. Days went by. I knew the press deadline had come and gone and nothing. Good news was that I did not see anyone else winning either. There was nothing in the paper except an ad for the contest. I wondered if maybe my email did not get through.

Just as I was beginning to think all was lost and that I would have to pay for a car should I want to go away for a weekend, I saw the email in my in box.

I won the contest.

From free car to to free writing

After my initial jubilation at the prospect of a free weekend car rental and the relative freedom to explore the countryside, it suddenly occurred to me that meant I would have to purchase a map. In some regards, Budapest has similar dynamics to that of Atlanta, Georgia. Drive ten miles out of cosmopolitan and urbane Atlanta and you are in the Deep South. Drive a comparable distance out of Budapest (also cosmopolitan and urbane in its own distinctive way), and you find yourself quite far outside your comfort zone and far beyond the boundaries where one can safely travel without an English/Hungarian dictionary. The restaurant menus can be a killer. Did I mention that Susan is a vegetarian here in this fine, meat-eating country?

I was quite pleased with myself at winning this contest. That is, until I learned I was the only entrant. However, armed with that news, I asked the editor if there was a time restriction on how often a person could enter. A free car is a free car and I knew my competition well. “Maybe every three months or so” he said.

As it turned out, the editor, Allan Boyko, is also a Canadian, although from Alberta. Those not familiar with Canadian geopolitical idiosyncrasies, think Texas with lots and lots and lots of snow and temperatures that can reach -40F/C. Winters are bad, too.

I had gotten into the habit of sending an email to Allan every so often, using the same email address I used when I entered the contest. He would always answer my emails but never in a timely manner. One day he informed me that he does not check that email regularly. That was a clue.

To this day I do not understand why the contest is not more popular. There is plenty of comedic material to work with here on Mars and a free car is a free car. But then, it’s possible that many of the English-speaking expats here have things we don’t have, like jobs and cars. Maybe the contest incentive is the wrong one.

It was while contemplating the Budapest Times that I had an idea.

I asked to meet with Allan to discuss a proposal. At 11 AM, on January 17, 2009 we met at the Anna Café. He seemed a little nervous, as he should have been: he had tough negotiations ahead of him. I was impressed he wore a suit for the occasion only to learn he had a subsequent meeting at the British Embassy. I did not let that dampen my spirits or my resolve. I just thought, “OK, so the British Ambassador and I are on equal footing. Fair game.”

This was my proposal: I would write a weekly column for him for free and I would not enter any more contests to win free cars.

Allan fidgeted. He glanced outside to Vaci utca. I could tell he was desperately trying to come up with a counter proposal. “What would you write about?” he asked.

That was it? That was the best he could come up with to counter my proposal to write for free and not enter any more contests to win free cars?

“How ‘bout heading to a restaurant washroom, turning on the light switch, only the lights don’t come on but the toilet flushes.”

That’s when I knew I had him. There is no coming back against a washroom light switch that flushes toilets but doesn’t turn on the light.

This blog is a compilation and continuation of what resulted from that fateful meeting. Allan and I have become friends and like me, he is weird, although I don’t know if he wears matching socks, boxer shorts, shirts and sometimes shoes and nor do I care to know. And if the truth be known, I think he was fidgeting during our tough negotiations because he wanted to go outside for a cigarette.

Welcome to Mars.