Misunderstandings and learning

Sixth day in Budapest. Slow to find a routine. This morning I've had several cultural fiascoes already (or you could call them human failures as well, or just clumsy human behavior).
It began with a missed breakfast with Miklos, another Hungarian friend that our friend Tim has introduced us to virtually. I showed up a half hour late to the restaurant across the street from our apartment - indeed even if our meeting had been for 10:30 (which it wasn't - it was for 10am) the restaurant doesn't open until 11:00 on weekends. So before I knew we were late, I assumed Miklos was running late, and we decided to set up for coffees at a small cafe across the street from the restaurant to wait and watch for Miklos - from the cafe we had a good view of the restaurant entrance. Mind you, I've never met Miklos in person, so I don't know what he looks like. A few minutes later, a young man approached the restaurant and tried the door, found it locked, and then looked around as if waiting to meet someone. All the signs were right, so I got up and walked across the street, saying "Miklos?" as I approached the man. He responded by nodding his head vigorously as if to say, "of course I'm Miklos, great to see you!" So we proceeded to have a pretty long conversation (in retrospect we didn't actually say anything to each other, but I thought we were talking) in broken English, until I asked him about Tim, and he got a very puzzled look on his face. This is when it began to sink in for me that a comedy of errors had begun. I said, "Wait, what is your name?" And he replied, "Victor." And then, to me, "Are you Italian?" While I was flattered that he thought I might be an Italian man with flawless English, it was then that I knew I had a problem. How do I explain to this extremely nice man that I was looking for a man I had never met before whose name is Miklos, and that I thought he might be that man? I told him, "very nice to meet you," and walked away.

And the story might have ended there. But it didn't.

Twenty minutes later, I had gone back up to our apartment, and discovered my timing error with Miklos, and learned from an email that he had indeed been on time, waited for fifteen minutes, and with no way to reach me (he hadn't learned our cell phone number yet), had gone home after sending me an email telling me to call him when I could. At this point it was a little after 11am, and the restaurant was clearly opening. So we decided that Abi and I would try the place out - I had seen on an earlier trip past that their menu included french toast, omelettes, and fried eggs for breakfast. (And breakfast is clearly one of my primary love languages). Lo and behold, but who greets us at the door? Our new friend Victor, all dressed up in formal white shirt, black pants, the quintessential waiter at a nice place. He proceeded to show us all around the restaurant, the Szabadszg Kafehaz, a wonderful place opened in 1902 with an inside table dedicated to the Hungarian writer, Endre Ady, a poet from the Calvinist tradition who was very well-known in the early part of the twentieth century. He wrote this one, entitled, "The Lord's arrival," translated independently on the web:

When I was forsaken, When I hardly carried my soul, Silently and suddenly The Lord hugged me. He didn't come aloud, But he came with soundless, true hug, He didn't come at sunny, warm daytime, But he came at surging nighttime. And my foppish Eyes blinded. My youth died, But I see him, the bright, The mighty forever

Inside the restaurant they have a life-sized mannequin of Ady at a table supposedly having coffee and working on his writing.

Later at the market I got some good looks, most notably from my son, when I knocked over the fruit vendors big metal sign with the peach prices on it. And so it goes. Humility. Flexibility. Humor.