Budapest World Championships Notebook - Day Four

Buda and Pest, the two faces of Budapest

*********
Hungary’s capital city Budapest covers an area of 525 square kilometres, and has a population of 1.7 million people, almost one third of Nairobi’s population.

The city is divided into two parts by the Danube River: ‘Buda’ which is the hilly part of the city, and ‘Pest’ which is the flat part of the city. Team Kenya is staying at Ibis Hotel located on the Buda side of the city.

Because the hotel where I am staying is on the Pest side of the city, I must use a 19th century chain bridge to reach Team Kenya hotel on the Buda side whenever I need to interview athletes and coaches.

Learning Hungarian worth the trouble

*******

Hungarian is the official language in Hungary, and it uses a modified version of the Latin alphabet.

Unlike English language which has 26 letters, the Hungarian language uses 44 letters and to easily move around and save on time particularly when one can’t find his way around, it pays to learn a few Hungarian words.

“Újságíró” means “journalist”, and “Hogy vagy” means “how are you?”. You say “Köszönöm” to mean “thank you, and “Jó reggelt” to mean “good morning.” The most commonly spoken foreign languages are English and German. Hungary has been a member of the European Union since 2004.

Journalist’s date with security officers

*****
A journalist from Zimbabwe who is here to cover the world championships had a nasty experience with one of the security officers manning the stadium gates on Saturday.

After braving the morning rain to walk from the main gate to the nearest of the stadium’s gates so as to avoid being drenched, the journalist who could only speak English had a Tower of Babel moment with the officers, who only spoke Hungarian.

Neither could understand the other, and the journalist, now wearing a mournful look, pointed to his camera which was being rained on. We intervened by shouting “Újságíró! Újságíró! (Journalist! Journalist!) and he was swiftly ushered in.