A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Belgrade.

September 1993. I was standing in line at the ticket window at Budapest's Keleti train station. I was leaving the next day for Belgrade the following day I'd tooled around Budapest for the better part of a week. It was a stunning ands mysterious city. In the rain you expected to see KGB agents skulking in the gray blue shadows. At moments it was really something out of a John LeCarre novel, the picture of intrigue, but also a city in turmoil, as it shrugged away Communism in favor of some vague notion of Western Capitalism.

The city bore signs of that most intimate and revolutionary struggle. Pensioners queued for potatoes and cooking oil, while nightclubs filled with young people and Western Pop music. Soviet era uniforms were sold at flea markets and a Burger King opened on the Octagon in the Center near the river. I found the city's pace frenetic and chaotic, a beautiful ballet in urban schizophrenia.

The lady at the ticket window portrayed typical post-communist stoicism. Dispassionate and droll she seemed to have no sympathy for the long line in front of her window. To this point I hadn't heard an American accent since arriving in Europe. I was thinking about that when a black guy in a Chicago Bulls tee shirt walked in.

Now to say Budapest is racially homogeneous is an understatement. The Roma who sell black market goods at the train station or in the underground are about as dark as anyone gets. I'm use to the mixed faces of my Chicago neighborhood, so, combined with that Bulls shirt, this guy was a little taste of home.

I must have had the dumbest expression on my face when he looked up at me. He sort of returned the smile, and must have felt as far away from home as I felt that moment.

"Go Bulls," I said. They were in the playoffs at the time. He looked at me blankly.

"What brings you here?" I asked. "Just visiting, or working here. I kind of like the place. Where are you staying? I got this place in the center but it's costing me a fortune. Problem is all the cheap hotels are out in the suburbs, or these god awful apartment blocks. I mean, have you seen these things? Mile after mile of the same damn building, like a socialist's nightmare. The food's good, though. I found this place called "Chicago," owned by a retired Chicago cop. Brew beer right there in the restaurant. Got plowed there the other night, arguing politics with this Russian guy. Makes one of the best Philly Cheese stakes I ever had. Been down to the river yet? I went across to Buda under the castle. There are these little caves or secret little passages and tons of cats it really,,,"

The guy was looking at me like I was really quite mad. And that's when it hit me. I shook my head and blushed with embarrassment. "You, uh, you don't understand a word I'm saying, do you?"

That's when he shrugged and held up a Kenyan passport. Oops.