‘A Weekend in Hungary, Chosen at Random’

Seth Kugel, writing for the New York Times:

It was just before dawn on a wintry Saturday, and I had hopped off the Bucharest-to-Budapest overnight train in a place called Mezobereny. The town of almost 11,000 in the eastern Hungarian plains was my destination for the weekend, but I had chosen it quite at random, with a simple goal: to find out what was there. I knew what was not there: any notable tourist attraction, a hotel or restaurant with even a single TripAdvisor review, a concentration of English speakers. But first I had to use the bathroom, and that was presenting a problem, since the stick-figure-free signs read “FERFI WC” and “NOI WC.”

I gave a befuddled look to the only other soul in the waiting room, a bundled-up elderly woman. She pointed. Ferfi it was.

Love it.