Lux

This is a story about light and dark. It starts, as all good stories do, with a very poor decision. Namely, to take the cheapest possible transport option: a bus from Krakow to Budapest, in the dead of winter, in the middle of the night. For six hellish hours, my friends and I faded in and out of sleep in musty recycled air and tried to ignore the proximity of the tires to the edge of the road.

After stumbling off the bus at 2am into the rust-colored light of the station, we promptly realized we were lost. We hopped on a rickety communist-era train and tried to decipher a map as metallic screeching snapped us out of our bus ride reverie.

We moved through Friday night crowds of beautiful women in towering heels, through musky cologne mixed with the smell of kebabs, through the disco lights that spilled onto the streets from nightclubs, through the blur of color and noise.

The Carpe Noctem Hostel, however, was marked only by a buzzer in a very dark doorway, down a very dark street. When it wheezed open we hesitated in the cold gloom of the stairwell. The wallpaper was peeling like dead skin, every single window was smashed, and the breeze made the frames creak and moan.

This is how it ends, I thought. I’m going to die here. Last time I let my flatmate book the accommodation.

With a fearful knock, the next door flew open and an Australian voice shouted “Hello! Pop a squat. Want some tea?” He lead us into a cheery common room with hand-painted walls, the soft sound of guitar, and filled with people who, as we would learn, were quick to laugh and even quicker to down a beer. We spent the next few days with them under the red light of ruin bars, desperately hungover in Turkish baths, and giggling our way down unfamiliar cobbled streets. I’ll never forget those friends I made or the antics we got up to. We even made the hostel’s blog after a bizarre incident involving a duvet cover. A story for another time.

Being in transit is like one of those pleasant, formless dreams you have in the early hours of the morning: snapshots of places and faces, a feeling of uncertainty followed by a buzz of exhilaration, and moments of light and dark. What I learned from that trip to Budapest is that travel, and I guess life in general, is about finding the light: main street in a strange city on a Saturday night, a kindhearted falafel vendor, or a hole in the wall hostel filled with people who make you laugh. Accepting the dark, yes, but always following the light.