ONE FLU OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST Just another Corona jab.

    Hungary. Where the locals have the charm of a cigarette butt lodged in a skunk’s turd. I think they’re pissed off with having to learn Hungarian. The fourth hardest language to master according to Garbor, who drove me from the airport to the hotel. He was the first and last nice Hungarian I encountered. And then on day three I saw him threateningly threatening some cyclist near the theatre in a threatening manner (“I will stare at you into your eyes from one centimetre away until you die!”) Lovely Garbor turned out to be Mr Really Really Scary Man and any hope of wanting to spend more time with the people of Budapest was vaporised in less time than it takes to say goulash. Which isn’t long at all. And no-one will ever convince me that ‘J’ is a vowel. No wonder they’re cranky.
    But let’s have a quick flashback scene: Vienna. Phone call the morning after the ball. If I’m Cinderella, my coach just turned into a Brussel sprout and my visa turned into an out-of-date piece of paper with all the power of a virgin post-it note. I rush home (all the way to Australia) and apply for a new one. I also discover the power of Positive Believing whilst on a train to Milan airport.
    Flashforward…
    I believe I’m now in Slovakia. I believe I posted my new UK visa application to Canberra a few weeks ago. I believe my shiny new visa slid into Mum’s letterbox about four weeks after that. I believe I am continuing this blog somewhere in eastern Europe. I still believe I will be making a habit of reading more of life’s fine print.
    Yes, folks, this Positive Believing malarkey would seem to be a fair dinkum little bottler. There was a major backlog on the visa  processing front apparently, but I refused to accept that I would not be singing Waterloo for the previously oppressed Abba-lovers of former Eastern Bloc enclaves. Consequently, I am writing this in Bratislava, which is far prettier and friendlier than this ignorant westerner expected. There’s winding cobbled streets and old churches and a castle and hardly any Hungarians. The locals here smile and even laugh at our inability to understand a single syllable they’re saying, and even the ones who are trying to maintain that hard, Balkan demeanour just can’t keep that “…alright, Communism was a bit silly” twinkle out of their eye.
    The theatre, however, seems to have been designed for Marxist slide nights. Well, you can’t have everything. Or can you?

    Question: How hard does it have to be to pull a straight Slovakian auto-electrician with lots of tattoos and no English whatsoever? Answer: Not that hard. Meeting Vladimir in a club called The Four Pinks did offer up a clue. (The décor was Austin Powers minus the irony.) I knew he was covertly interested but there’s only so much translating a raised eyebrow can do. Eventually I asked him this question: I point at Vlad, I point at floor, I raise my hands with palms up and I shrug? I.e. What the hell are you doing here then? This was the code- and ice-breaker all in one. His expression conveyed the message: Well I can’t argue with that kind of pointy logic. Soon he had taken off his shirt to show me more tattoos, despite a distinct lack of inquisitive pointing on my part. At this juncture I felt quietly confident that we wouldn’t be needing any Anglo-Slovak dictionaries and my next question was: Point at Vlad, point at me, point at door? This got the thumbs-up, a UNESCO-sanctioned sign for ‘You’re in!’. I then said ‘Happy days’ without pointing at anything because this comment was for my benefit only.
    Back in Vienna I did promise myself not to limbo under the less-than-30 bar, but Vladimir’s identity card (which is how I learned his wonderful/you’re-shitting-me name) told me he was 29 and I think that’s a move in the right direction. Isn’t it? I guess I’m taking a slow train to Discipline Town.
    I had a date with Kashti (props department on the show) at 11.30am. She was taking me to a rather terrific café she knew that specialised in umpteen varieties of hot chocolate. Vladimir had no English but a good instinct and politely left by 11.15. Bless you and your inexplicable tattoos, Vlad.
    I lie when I say he spoke no English. He knew ‘auto-electrrrischian’. And when I asked him how he was getting home (point at Vlad, finger-draw a house in the air, make two fingers walk à la Yellow Pages adverts, raise eyebrows questioningly), he shook his head, and then said ‘Electrrrisch Carrr’ - meaning tram. Please say ‘Electrrrisch Carrr’ out loud right now. Go on. And roll those ‘r’s.
    Exactly. You just turned yourself on a little, didn’t you? I nearly cancelled chocolate.

    Flashback Number 2: Australia. I actually threw a shrimp on the barbie and camped by a billabong. That is to say, I barbequed some prawns (nice one Kim and Julie) and swam in/lounged by a watering hole in the bush (top idea Raj and Shayne). Not exactly a Bourke and Wills expedition in either scenario but very Australian and I thoroughly enjoyed both events.
    Special mentions must go to Wendy and Mark who not only put me up but absorbed my fostered cat into their menagerie (they have another cat called Charlie who rubbed against my shin whilst hissing - Charlie is well f**cked up and scares me more than an enraged silverback with a set of Selangor steak knives who’s just discovered the dominant female is seeing someone else behind his silver back) and also to Martin who was gallant enough to go DUI just before my arrival and therefore be in a position to offer me his car for a few weeks. Nice work everyone.
    And Wesley: never offer people tequila at 5pm unless you are half hoping they will say yes and derail your entire evening. Ten points each to Lianne and Lynne. And me. And Wesley for holding up the bottle in the first place.
    At this juncture, I must apologise to those Australian mates that I did not get around to seeing. I was a visa-junkie without a fix, my attention often kidnapped by thoughts of my dealers at the British High Commission in Canberra. And the car’s rego ran out.

    And now I’m back.
    I’ve since done the show quite a few times. Surprisingly, I remembered the choreography, which is up there with Jesus’ loaves-and-fishes routine on a tales-of-the-unexpected graph. The words I was able to look at in the script, so nothing to be proud of there. Let’s face it, my last line is ‘Me too!’. Not exactly a Strindbergian monologue.
    Next on the itinerary is Trieste, Italy. I am listening to my Italian language downloads. We were talking about these in the dressing room. It’s always ‘You are a tourist asking directions of a local person in Turin. Repeat your lines from the phrasebook when you hear the beep. Hello. My name is Maria. Can I help you?' Beeeeep. Yawn. We think it should be more memorable. E.g. ‘You are lost and have found yourself in a disused  public toilet in Turin. You bump into a retired priest. Repeat your lines from the phrasebook when you hear the beep. Hello, my name is Father Ignatius. I am blind. Can you help me with my cassock?’ Beeeeep.
    For middle-aged men with a sense of propriety, we giggled far too much.

    Hasta Manana ‘til we meet again. Beeeeep. Snigger. Avoid Hungary.