REFORMED HITMEN

After Salzburg, we had three hectic days in Budapest to figure out class schedules, apply for residency permits, do a bit of laundry and then pack up again for our first group trip—Transylvania.

We stumbled bleary-eyed out the door of Bethel Gabor Kollegium on Thursday at 7am (though not quite on the dot) with lumpy stuffed backpacks, a supply of snacks for the road, and our passports…..we all hurriedly threw on extra hoodies and pulled on warm gloves as we were shocked by the sudden arrival of a chilly mist and fall temperatures that morning.

I raised one eyebrow when I saw the vehicles: three ramshackle passenger vans from the hippie era. Inner upholstery and plastic peeled away from the worn seats and dashboards, baring the aluminum inner skeleton on the floor, ceiling, and seatbacks. Each van had a characteristic decades-old must we knew would swiftly, stealthily slip into our clothing.

We nodded groggily at Janos, our Hungarian driver and itinerary planner; he stood there in his cabled sweater, hands in his pockets, instructing us to throw our bags in the back and get in the vans. In his skull cap and bearded scruff, he looked like a Hungarian member of the Mafia…or a cast member of Oceans 11.

(Later we found out that Janos is actually a pastor in the Hungarian Reformed Church; he dropped out of formal seminary training in the late 80s and early 90s to be part of the Resistance. Janos delivered bibles to villages in Hungary and Romania, risking imprisonment and persecution, whispering in parishes through long black nights, cultivating the Reformed community under the noses of iron-fisted communists.)

We immediately revered him.

His friend Robby (also a pastor in the Reformed church) drove another van. That morning he was nursing a cig and looking at us sideways from under his shaggy hair; with his dark pencil mustache, he resembled a Romanian Johnny Depp...or any other slick, swarthy vagabond. He wears a tan leather pouch on his belt that (I thought) could easily hold some sort of throwing dagger.

Our fellow student Jordan Weaver volunteered to drive the bright yellow van.

After double checking to make sure we had our passports, we sealed ourselves inside the motorized aluminum boxes with a great slam of the heavy sliding door and began our trip.

I turned around to see Van #3—Robby’s van—cough-up blackish smoke from its battered tailpipe; then our van jerked violently backward, then quickly forward as Jordan tried to shift into first gear…...

Most of us exchanged wary looks as we lurched out of the gate; we wondered when and where we’d have our first breakdown…...or bank heist?