March Visit

I take the Thursday afternoon flight to Budapest. P meets me at the airport and drives me to the apartment overlooking the Opera. I try to get my ipod fixed at the Apple store just down Andrássy, but the store seems to be more for show than fixing things. I take a mate out to dinner at the Pava restaurant in the Gresham Palace - over-priced and pretty ghastly customers. As we cross the top of Váci Utca, a couple of nice friendly local girls stop us and ask the way to Bécsi Ut. I know where Bécsi Utca is - it is the road to Vienna going northwest out of town going past Dr H's surgery. One of the girls blows it a bit by giving me a small lecture on the difference between an Ut and an Utca. We offer them our map and they ask us if we would like to go for a drink in a bar they know nearby. We say maybe later and head for dinner. I explain to my out-of-town friend that this sounds like a standard Budapest scam. The drinks will be 200 euros per round and heavies will appear to take us to the nearest cashpoint to pay up. And the police will take no interest if you complain. My friend thinks the girls were too nice to be involved in something like that, but when we cross Vorosmarty Tér after dinner they are still there looking for Bécsi Ut. It is actually just a block away, so I think I was right.

In my experience, Budapest feels like a fairly safe city full of friendly, capable, interesting people and their reputation is the real victim of this sort of crime. The police and authorities could end this scam pretty much overnight if they chose to.

It has been nearly three and a half months since my last visit and I suppose I have become a little complacent in the number of hours that I have been wearing the alingers. Dr H is disappointed with my teeth on Monday morning. The lower premolars have not moved as much as they should and there is now a gap between the teeth and the aligner. I promise to wear the aligners more hours a day and he asks me to come back in ten weeks.

I spend the rest of the morning looking around the Roman amphitheatre opposite his office and getting lost finding the tomb of Gul Baba, a Turkish mystic credited by the locals for introducing the rose to Buda. On the flight home, I sit next to a couple of Romanians who turn their mobile phones on mid-flight just to prove there is no signal.

New Year's Eve

I go away with friends, who don't know I am wearing aligners, for New Year's Eve. Since we are going to be sharing a small flat and continuously eating and drinking, I decide not to wear the aligners for the 48 hours. This turns out to be a big mistake. I can't believe how much ground the teeth lose in such a short period and feel the course of treatment is put back by over a week.

Dr H's New Practice

One of the elastic attachments falls off. I have it replaced by my dentist in London. Dr H says he will replace the elastic attachments with tougher ones on my next visit. It takes quite a while to get to Dr H's new surgery as it is in the north-west of the city and one of my favourite apartments to stay at is in the south-east. He is really pleased with my progress.

We have a moment when it becomes clear noone knows where aligners sets 11 through 30. Dr H thinks I have them because he thinks he has taken everything from the old surgery. He calls the old surgery and they say they don't have them. But I know that's where they must be because I don't have them and neither does Dr H. If they have been lost, it will be very expensive to
replace them. Fortunately, Dr H emails me a few days later to say he has found them at the old surgery and has couriered over three sets.

Third Visit

I am now on my fourth set of aligners with no real problem other than one of the ledge-like attachments has fallen off. I do not recall this happening so I have probably swallowed it. Dr H's assistant refixes the attachment. Then Dr H drops a small bombshell - he is leaving the practice and starting up his own. He asks if I want to transfer my case to his new practice. I am happy to do so, even if I have not been given a lot of choice.

Another small piece of drama - to accommodate the attachment, small apertures have to be made to the aligners. Previously, Dr H has down this with a dental implement. On returning home, I realise he has forgotten to do this to the new sets. I let him know by email and he agrees to let me have a go myself. I am very nervous doing this, but it turns out nail scissors can be just as effective as othodontic appliances and I am pretty proud of the result.

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.

Fitting My First Aligners

I have come back to Budapest in the middle of a heatwave. The flat I have rented for the weekend just off Ráday Utca is roasting hot and does not have air conditioning or even an electric fan. I insist they provide a fan which arrives on the first evening. By closing the shutters during the day and opening them at night, I can make the flat habitable. I go for a swim at the Alfred Hajos swimming pool on Margit Island in the middle of the Danube, but the beautiful outdoor pool is being used the shoot the movie "Children of Glory" so I have to swim indoors.

At Dr H's surgery, he fits the first set of aligners. They snap very tightly around my teeth and, since each tooth is having forces applied to it, they create a fairly strange sensation. Slightly painful - a bit like being punched softly in the mouth - but the feeling does fades. He takes the aligners off to fix the elastic attachments. When we fix the elastic bands which apply the force for the first time, one of the attachments pings off and has to be reattached. While my teeth are getting used to this rough treatment, I am allowed to wear the aligners only ten hours a day and we leave the other attachments for the next session.

By Monday, the weather has turned ultra hot and humid, to the point that it is making me feel really quite ill so I decide to phone for a taxi and leave for the airport early after lunch. This turns out to be a good idea because as I drive out of town a biblical storm breaks flooding the roads and the metro, and making taxis very hard to come by.

On the plane home, I learn a useful lesson about aligners. I take them out to eat dinner. When the plane lands, I realise one is missing. I frantically search my hand luggage and the area around my seat until I get told I have to leave the plane. I am thinking how I am going to explain this to Dr H and get as far as the train platform when I realise I am also missing my laptop, which I have left on the plane while unpacking my hand luggage. I go back to the terminal and ask, rather without hope, if the laptop was handed in. It was, and half an hour later it is given to me along with a sick-bag containing the aligner. A small miracle, but a lesson to be a lot more careful with aligners, especially if they are the only set you have.