Hungary, after some digestion

What happened in Hungary?



The bike saga has to start somewhere, and it begins in April in Miami, Florida. B shipped his bike through company X from Miami to Budapest, with the final destination of Serbia. The plan was to pick up the bike in Budapest, and drive it to Serbia.

The Hungarian that worked with company x - we'll call him Ors - was in constant contact with B, telling him where the bike was and when to expect it. And then the bike was delayed...

After almost two weeks of being pulled around like laffy taffy by Ors, B was told the bike had arrived in Budapest. Every time B talked with Ors, circumstances changed. There was problems with customs, forms hadn't been done properly, the bike couldn't be ridden in the EU by a Serb, the bike would have to be transported out of the EU, etc. - but no worries, because everything could be fixed with a few extra euros. The cost of the transfer documents went from 150 euros to zilch, to then a final 900 euros to solve all the problems in the world.

After what would become the final meeting of B and me with Ors at his shipyard office, B got his hands on his original title and a name of a woman in the Hungarian customs office that was handling his case. And more importantly, an address to that office. I think Ors only gave B this lady's name because he was trying so hard to come across as honest and sincere, when he was clearly a middleman and lying every other word.

So B and I ran out of the office (literally), took a tram and gave some guy in a peugeot 10 euros to drive us to the office. I felt like we were in amazing race. But the office was closed when we got there, so we decided to go back the next morning.

That night at around 10 p.m., B got a call from the woman at customs telling him to come meet with her first thing in the morning. Really? A government official calling someone that late at night? Things smelled fishier than an asian food market.

We enlisted the help of a Hungarian girl that worked at one of the hostels we stayed at in Budapest to come with us to the office as our translator. Not knowing the language was a total impediment to communication, especially the kind of communication that would free B's bike and get us out of Budapest.

Arriving at the customs building, the woman (we'll call her Anna) came out and met us and took us back to her office. The first hour of the meeting, there was nothing that could be done - B needed to pay her 90000 HUFs ($400) for bullshit paperwork. And the bike had to be transported out of the country, only by an official transport company, but we were lucky because her husband had such a company. And the container could only be opened by a customs official at the shipyard, and we were lucky, because her son was in customs and would be at the shipyard that afternoon. And if we wanted to ship again, she had other contacts in Miami and here is her business card. The container had to be opened that day, and if we didn't pay now, we'd have to pay storage fees for the bike of 60 euros a day. When she pulled out B's paperwork for the bike, two of his original documents had been altered and his signature had been added to a third that was written in Hungarian! Someone had changed the bill of sale that it even had B listed as the buyer and the seller and the amount for the bike had been quadrupled. B then said through translation, that he didn't want the bike anymore and he was walking away. Then, prices dropped.

After another hour, B ended up paying the woman $100 to grease the wheels, 150 euros for transport of his bike to the Serbian border, and $120 for the administrative fees to alter the computer system and provide a transfer document to release his bike from Hungarian customs fees. B gave the translator $50 for her time.

I was disgusted. $400 to this woman? She gave us a fake invoice that listed the documents she was preparing for us for about $40. And now we had to give her husband business and her son and it just felt so dirty and so wrong.

We went and packed up and headed to the shipyard to get the bike. At the shipyard, Ors' boss (we'll call her the fat lady) asked B and I to come meet with her. It turns out she was the one that called B the night before and wanted to meet with him before he went to the Hungarian customs! OOps. So she was mad, because she knew that Anna had already done our documents. She told B he owed her money. We ran out, again.

In the shipyard, when the bike was unloaded a guy from the crew told B he had to pay him $50 or else he couldn't have the bike.

I was so done, I wrote a poem.


But then later, I had time to digest.

Ors is and was an asshole middleman just looking out for himself. There was nothing more to learn from our interactions with him. He will be thrown to the shredder when someone above him gets in trouble someday, but he doesn't see how little and expendable he is.

The fat lady was just trying to get more money. And she is what's wrong with Hungary.

The guys at the shipyards just want their due. They need a union or something. Not my problem.

But, here is where I feel I was wrong with my poem. The customs lady Anna. I thought of her as a corrupt government official, using her post for personal gain, forging documents and accepting bribes, using nepotism with her son and husband's business, self-promoting her own business. After loading the bike on her husband's truck, her son drove B and I in his own car to his family's house because the dad was going to bring the truck there to clean it out so B and I could ride with PapaBear to the border. The son was kind and funny. Their house was on the outskirts of Budapest and was clean, nice but modest. This wasn't the house of someone getting ahead, but getting by and trying. Papabear was a fit man and was sweating from the hard work he was doing at the shipyards. He came home, showered, cleaned out his tiny truck and then drove us to the border. There was a moment when B, PapaBear and I were eating apples in the truck that it hit me; these aren't bad people, this is just how business is here and MamaBear is just trying to provide a little work for her family. And he was working, and the cost of transporting us and the bike was very reasonable.

Will things change to a more western way of doing business in Hungary? Why does everyone always want a bigger piece of the pie? Could we have gotten the bike out without bribery?

In the end, I don't feel that the money B paid to Anna was wrong, nor could it have been avoided. I'm glad it didn't end up in the fat lady's hands, and I feel that right and wrong is more cultural than I previously understood.