Second Set

Three weeks after my first visit I return to Budapest for a check-up. Dr H is pleased with my progress and fits half of the other attachments. These really increase the pressure on the teeth. The aligners now go on with a real snap - like a cell door swinging shut, says Dr H. We move onto the secons set of aligners.

As an added bonus, I get to go to the Sziget festival. Radiohead are playing on Saturday and I buy a napijégy (dayticket) from the jégyiroda (ticket agency) near the dentist's for 6000 forints. I hop in a taxi mid-afternoon out to the festival site, wander around for a few hours and see Radiohead play an excellent set in a reasonably uncrowded setting. The festival program says the open-air midnight screening of "Fehér Tenyér" will have English subtitles. The first long scene doesn't have much dialogue so it's only about twenty minutes in that it becomes clear that it won't. Only slightly disappointed, I leave and join the short queue for taxis back into town. A day like this would be impossible in London.

Wearing My First Aligners

Wearing the aligners is quite hard work. I was surprised how sensitive the mouth is to foreign objects. I found the inside of cheeks were irritated by the attachments although this passed in a week or so. I can only wear the aligners for a few hours at a time and I often wake halfway through the night wanting to take them out. The aligners fit so well that getting them off is quite difficult. My first attempt took about ten minutes in front of a mirror, but I rapidly got better at it.