Climbing gyms and detox hospitals

I've been wondering whether I should be writing in the blog almost everyday, but then, it seems that many things happen every day to be writing about. In the last twenty four hours, we've explored the outskirts of Budapest, seen the inside of a psychiatric ward, met with a family physician who does research on doctors' perceptions of addiction (some alcohol, mostly tobacco), and eaten some of the hungarian fried delight called Langos.

Yesterday, after a day of interviews and a bit of a nap in our hotel room, SB and I set out on an expedition to find a climbing gym in Budapest. I had come prepared with a list of them, printed off of an international rock climbing website. All had addresses (which are hard to find on a tourist map, and we'be yet to get a new one), and we first started to try to go to the one closest to us. We took the 1 metro downtown, walked about 15 minutes, and found instead the West End mall, an enormous four level complex of stores and restaurants (including TGI Fridays!). The mall possibly also had a climbing gym, but after walking through it briefly in a bit of an overwhelmed daze, we decided that even if that was the case, we really couldn't climb there.

We decided instead to go to another gym on the list, because the paper also happened to (somewhat) have directions for this specific one. The directions said that we should take teh 56 bus or tram to the end of the line and then hop on the 64 bus and take it 4 stops. We found the 56 bus on the map, accross the river in Buda, hopped on the bus and proceeded to follow the directions. We found ourselves definitely away from the toursits, among locals going home, on a bus speeding up a hill of fancy houses on the Buda side. About 30 minutes into our journey, we got off at the appropriate stop, just as dusk was setting in, on a tiny little street surround by a line of small, old country like houses. We wondered briefly around, no longer so confident in our directions, and decided instead to stop at the one restaurant we saw for dinner. There SB had wine, I had beer, we had some good soup and shared a pizza, and found out from the waiter (in his broken English and in SB's broken German) that maybe the gym was 500 or so meters down some little dark street and then 100 meters further to teh right. Full and no longer motivated, we abandoned our trek at this point, and headed home. Later on, hwhen we had a real map in hand, we found we had reached the little town of Ofalu, which means "old town" in Hungarian. It was a nice adventure.

Today, we started our visit at the Psychiatric hospital and detox center (two separate buildings). The detox center is where the addicted patients are dropped off to, well "detox", and then may stay for a program of treatment (usually they don't). The psychiatric ward houses patients that have mental illness and also takes in any alcoholics who may have some psychotic signs or even DTs. All patients come voluntarily and can leave at any point.

The detox hospital was run by an enthusiastic older psychiatrist, who greeted us happily in his appropriately messy office and began by offering us some coffee and tea. His office walls were full of books and papers, and the empty spaces were filled with paintings (so that looked like they had been done by psychiatric patients) as well as many clocks (often set to different times). He even had a backward clock that would have looked normal if reflected in a mirror (it was sponsored by remeron!) The detox hospital was an old building in the midst of construction, with teal hospital tiles on the walls and the strong smell of bleech. Patients wandered around in sweats, some of them jaundiced or with other stigmata of liver disease. The furniture (including most office chairs) was covered with bed sheets and it looked like they were changed daily, as one of the nurses entered teh middle of our meeting and dropped off a pile of sheets on the couch.

Our next hour was spent in the psychiatric hospital accross the yard (all departments of the hospitals here are usually in different buildigns, so a surgical patient has to be moved to the medical ward in a neighboring buidling if their medical problems become bigger than their surgical ones.) Here again was a rather bare hospital (though they had many donated posters of paintings on the wall, and our host pointed out his surpirse that none were ever stolen). Teh patients walked around quietly or sat in their room. Unlike the psychiatric facility we were used to in Sacramento, no one here yelled, looked violent or on the edge of some explosive emotion. Unlike our facilities however, the psychiatric facilities here held addicts and demented patients (alzheimer's for instance) in addition to those with mental illness.

Our day ended with a discussion with a family physician about alcohol treatment (or lack there of) in Hungarian primary care. The physician could not have been many years older than we were, and he had a new white macbook, which dominated much of our conversation.

That ends another day in Budapest (though now, I will try to see if I can find a climing gym -no, really- by google map!)