The Budapest Shawarma Debacle

“What the fuck is Gallipoli?,” I asked Cozoff.

He shrugged his shoulders.

Cozoff had no clue.

We just stood there dumbfounded.

Two ignorant American’s, stranded in Budapest. Terminally confused all hell had broken loose at the mere mention of one word:

Gallipoli….

Hmph..

It happened while standing in line at one of those Turkish Shawarma dive’s on the Pest side of Budapest.

A lovely Australian Sheila was being refused service by an aggravated Turk.

With increasing severity, The Turk rebuked The Sheila’s attempts to order shawarma.

She was too drunk, he claimed.

Argument ensued.

The Turk started waving rotisserie knives around like Rafael the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and menaced,

“Remember Gallipoli?”

Salting the old wound, The Turk provoked our Sheila to violent action.

The Sheila tried vaulting the linoleum countertop to assault The Turk, but Cozoff, a skilled lineman, restrained her.

Her effort impressed me because it took all of Cozoff’s training to subdue her. This is remarkable because Cozoff is a Russian bear of a man who, during his era, was pound for pound the strongest man on the Cal Football team.

The minute long scuffle felt like an eternity.

If hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, then a woman scorned hath no fury like an Australian reminded of Gallipoli.

Cowed by The Sheila’s rage, The Turk backed into the corner of his restaurant and prepared to skewer the hundred pound Sheila, if she dare cross the Rubicon of linoleum counter top.

Fortunately, Cozoff’s quick, decisive intervention prevented The Sheila from being carved into shawarma.

He hoisted her in the air, legs and arms flailing, and 86’d her from the premises.

This was disappointing because Cozoff had had grand designs on The Sheila’s virtue, but after this fiasco, any hope for romance, or shawarma for that matter, was lost.

Demoralized, Cozoff and I metabolized the night slurping goulash in some Eastern Blocky hole in the wall, where we contemplated the meaning of Gallipoli and it’s devasting effects on the Australian psyche.

Without smartphones to consult or an Australian to enlighten us, we went to bed baffled. Hindsight twenty-twenty-two, that was the scariest part of the whole interaction. Cozoff and I both held degrees from major California University’s.

Clearly, our history professors failed us.

*****

Despite striking out with the ladies, it was good to see Cozoff’s face. Seeing someone from home alleviated all the homesickness I felt after months of solo adventure.

When Cozoff and I joined forces for the Budapest Shawarma Debacle, I’d been orbiting Europe with a group of Australian’s known as The Fanatics.

I ran with the bulls with them in Pamplona. I attended the world’s most treacherous horse race with them in Siena. The night of the Budapest Shawarma Debacle, I was on an Ocktoberfest Bus Tour with them.

The tour started in Prague and made it’s way down the Danube, with stops in Vienna, Budapest and finally Munich for Ocktoberfest, which happens in September for reasons I still don’t fully understand, but could easily google.

The Budapest Shawarma Debacle remains a clear memory because Cozoff and I were relatively sober for it.

Cozoff didn’t drink because he was training for the NFL combine.

I, on the other hand, still reeled from the following dog and pony show I performed the first night of the tour:

The Fanatics take me out for a night of drink and general revelry in Prague.

We go to a 5-story night club called Karlovy Lazne. Each floor played a different kind of music: Techno, House, Rock, Country and Hip-Hop.

Renown for racial sensitivity and political correctness, The Czech’s called the Hip-Hop floor, ‘Black Music’.  

After a couple drinks, I start making wild, unsubstantiated claims to anyone who would listen.

I was starting Tailback for the Alabama Crimson Tide.

I demonstrated fighting poses, a crane kick and claimed to be the lineal grandson to Mr. Myagi.

The fabrications kept escalating, until I made the fatal mistake of telling a giant Maori,

“I can drink you under the fucking table.”

The only way to test this claim, The Maori decided, was to go shot for shot against each other.

A 150-proof hallucinogenic liquor called Absinthe was chosen to separate the men from the boys, as it were.

I surrendered around shot five. My vision blurred and the Maori’s face started melting like a Salvador Dali Painting.

Then, I blacked out.

My only memory thereafter was a Guisti’s themed hallucination. Mark Morias could speak Czech for some unexplained reason. Weird.

Years later, I learned it was no hallucination.
.
The common area of the youth hostel played the Guisti’s episode of ‘Dives, Diners and Drive-Ins,’ but translated in Czech.

According to key witnesses, I kept the whole youth hostel awake, yelling,

“I KNOW THAT GUY! I KNOW THAT GUY!’

“Stupid Americans can’t handle their liquor,” they must’ve thought.

They were right.

The next morning, I woke up naked in a shower, rudely decorated with undigested street hotdogs and other travesty related materials.

The Absinthe bell had tolled.

It gave me one of those multi-day hangovers that even posole couldn’t cure.

But if The Absinthe taught me anything, it’s that my favorite memories are the ones I don’t remember…