One from the Hungarian Archives - Chess

Update on the situation over here. I finally had a weekend and some time to explore the city which is very beautiful and romantic and stuff.

On Friday night, the crew went to this wicked student bar, open air with tiny dancefloor which i felt compelled to take over. Found myself quite separated from the crew by virtue of some primal urge to dance and by the end of the night was quite surrounded by Hungarian Beauties, all of them wanting to take me home. Maybe.

When the club closed, Steve and Dave wanted to go home (It was about 5,30) and Dave was meant to crash on our floor. I was surrounded by a whole bevy of beautiful women and they kidnapped me and took me, quite against my will *cough* to another club which didn't close til 8am!!!

We saw the sun rise at the first club, stumbled around the streets for a while at the crack of dawn then disappeared into another club til bloody 8am!!! Naturally, when we rolled out of that next club, I decided I was tired and went home, leaving the 2 lovely girls. I am still kicking myself now.

Saturday was wicked too. Me and Steve had breakfast at around 4pm, a greasy fryup courtesy of me and then went for a long walk around Budapest, crossing the river to Buda and climbing the hill to look across at Pest as the sun went down over this beautiful city. What a day and what a view! The chain bridge was closed to cars and they had a load of stalls and this stage where
we saw the most amazing band, really talented 4 guys playing a sort of oboe - saxophone thing and the bagpipes as well as some amazing little sort of gourd-like guitar thing. They played what me and Steve assumed to be Hungarian folk which sounded like the most exotic jazz fusion. It was brilliant. The sun set over Budapest in the mountains was all like purples and oranges and stuff and the backdrop of Buda Palace was so ideal. We also bought tickets to the Ballet for the next Saturday then went out to TGI Fridays and out to play pool with the crew all night. I slipped off at 1.30 my body had had quite enough.

That did however mean that I could get up nice and early this morning. I rolled out of bed at about 8.30 and decided to go to the Train station subway place where I saw these guys playing chess before and I decided to join them . The price was 200HUF, about 75p that u had to put down to bet against this guy. The first game saw me get slaughtered as I was a bit nervous and he was good. The second I was a little careless and he cleared out the back line like a reaper. 400HUF down. Not good.

In the third I played my best chess ever against this guy who plays for a living. I saw the tiniest of gaps in the corner after he castled early on in the game. I had to force out the pawn in front of the horse space on his right side just to carve him open so I moved my queen into the space next door and up and he took the bait, moving his pawn into the offensive. I retracted the queen, pulled out the knight and moved in, causing him all sort of damage at the back. His whole back line was obliterated in minutes and he was reeling. I then moved in for the kill, everything went black as I sacrificed my queen to make sure that he was utterly defenceless. On the
back foot with only a bishop on the white squares to defend himself against a nearly full army I crushed him up against the side wall with my two castles. It was a great feeling.

Then he slaughtered me in the 4th but enough about that...

Anyway that's my weekend in a nutshell. It's a big nut, maybe like a coconut or something like that but it’s been superb.