That's a bushel, busha, buska or something along those lines. It's not one of the four words you'll need for your trip to Hungary, so you can forget that one if it helps. You don't want to go filling your head with too many non-essential words - stick to the important ones and tell it like it is.

1. Egészségedre pronounced egg-e-seg-e-dre, only takes two days to learn and means 'cheers!' You can't use it in all the places you'd normally use 'cheers', which is handy to know, for example it doesn't work when you want to say 'thanks' - Egészségedre is the drinks' cheers. So you'll need some drinks. Unicom is slightly better than Gammel Dansk, but that won't surprise you.

2. Köscönöm pronounced kussy means 'Thank you'. However the one problem with this word is that whenever you use it, everyone automatically thinks you speak Hungarian - which is impossible of course - and not only four words.... What's next?

3. Bazdmeg pronounced buzzzzzd-meg, means 'fuck you'. I wasn't sure that I'd be needing this one, but it turned out to be very useful and surprisingly effective on the last evening.

4. Csók pronounced choke means kiss. Bit of a surprise entry there I know, and it's not the way you'd kiss your family either [hopefully] - which is pussy, which is how I remember it too - but Csók is tongues down throats sort of kissing; the sort of kissing you'll be wanting to do.

So here's what happened, Ádám wrote to me and asked “who would you recommend give a course in Hungary, Paul?” I said: “Me!. I've never been to Hungary, I've often thought about it, I'll come - besides all the other guys are busy that weekend” - thinking “Yes! Hungary! Famous for many things, especially women. I definitely want to go there. I like women - when I'm not fishing” And I said to Ádám, “Ádám, hook me up with some great Hungarian fishing. You know the best of the best. I don't want to be tempted by your women.”

Day 1. Two "fish" caught by moi. Two fish caught by Pityu. None caught by Ádám. I wasn't too bothered of course, despite the fact that ze beeg ones we had been anticipating had not revealed themselves, we had at least survived the drive to the river. And that was the main thing as far as I was concerned. I wasn't too thrilled by the prospect of the drive home, but I'd got halfway, which was something I felt nothing short of a full blown miracle. It's not that Pityu is fast - he is fast, there's no question about that - it's more the non-existent overtaking gaps, which left me wondering what would happen if the guy on the other side of the road didn't think to brake or pull over because Pityu was hurtling straight towards him. The drive back in the night was better if only because I couldn't see anything.

Day 2. Was the first day of a superbly organised course with a range of flycasters from competent to extraordinary. There are only 400 flyfishers in Hungary, out of 350,000 coarse anglers, out of a population of 10 Million. We had a course size of 21 for two days. I met some exceptionally friendly people, I don't think I've been made to feel quite this welcome before. The food was outstanding, the company tremendous, everyone was there because they wanted to be there and in the evening I cleverly arranged for a very beautiful woman to give me a guided tour of Budapest on the Sunday night. That the beautiful woman happened to be the Ádám's younger sister, with magnetic eyes, I didn't let bother me at all. After all I would be tired from catching all the big pike Ádám had arranged for the Sunday fishing, and probably wouldn't be able to make it anyway.

Day 3. They gave me the mask. I've been given some weird stuff on my travels before: a reindeer skin in Lapland, the axe and chequered jacket in Canada, the Bota wine canteen in Spain, but I've never been given a fucking mask before. What a great gift! One day when I have a house I'll nail it to the front door. It's a wonderful gift and it means a lot to me.

For some reason, despite the fact that we were to go pike fishing on the best lake in Hungary the next day, a bunch of us guys, including Ádám, decided it would be a good idea to go to bed at 4.30am so we could wake up two hours later. This turned out to be the correct tactic since there are in fact no pike in Hungary.

Monday morning, 4.30 am, I'm sitting on the tram next to one very attractive Hungarian woman, standing next to me is Zoltan “the Magnificent” (her other brother) and behind him, more over me than next to me to be exact, is an ex-boyfriend who's not very happy about something and it could be me. I'm not sure if this is a normal Budapest night or not yet - but ex-boyfriend decides that it would be fun to walk down the middle of the traffic to see if he could get them to swerve out the way… in Hungary for fuck's sake, where Pityu drives, and apparently he's not the worst, although I'm not too sure about this - and he's very obviously worked up about something but doesn't seem to want to leave because every time he does so he comes back, as if he's forgotten something.

From the depths of my throat I heard it coming, surfacing from the Budapest gutters, “Bazdmeg, bazdmeg…”

It's great; I love multi-cultural nights. A fantastic trip; I'll most definitely be back. I have 23 excellent reasons.

Köscönöm,
Paul

As it happened: on the Board.