Jumping the train in Belgrade was an easy decision. A friend who was supposed to meet me there conveniently forgot and had left town; it was midnight and the station was filled with more shadows and lurkers then friendly faces; and I had no dollars, a handful of Turkish lira and some Bulgarian toilet paper, which at the time may have doubled for currency. I was stranded and panicked. So I snuck on the only train still idling in the station, one that was on its way to the Hungarian capital, Budapest.

I made it halfway to the Hungarian border by the good graces of two very young ticket takers who really couldn’t believe that the stowaway trying to sleep on her backpack was both American and Russian-speaking. They quickly forgot about the ticket or my lack of money and we babbled in broken Slavic languages for an hour. Unfortunately their shift was over at the next station, but they made sure to place me in another staff compartment and told me to stay put until Budapest. No one would bother me, they said.

Their replacement had other ideas. An older man, square-shouldered with cheeks covered in stubble, barged into the compartment. Shocked to see someone curled up in his seat, he started to tear in to me in Serbian. What the hell was I doing there? Where was my ticket? I mumbled excuses and pleaded that the previous guards said it was OK, but he either didn’t understand or didn’t really care.

At the next stop a whole circus of gypsies jammed on the train, sending him flying out of the compartment and after the group. I held my ground (it was a very comfortable leather armchair, curiously enough) and tried to sleep. When the ticket taker returned he was less combative. Tipping his cap back he leaned against the compartment wall and started asking me questions in broken Russian.

“Where you from?”

“America.”

“Why no ticket?”

“The Bulgarian border guards took all my money.” (This was true.)

He nodded quietly. My previous confession to the earlier ticket takers elicited the same response. (I believe Bulgaria around this time was run by mafia wrestlers.)

We seemed to come to an understanding. Perhaps he realized that I wasn’t really trying to pull a fast one, but was simply a traveler wronged, one in a long line of poor wanderers taken for a ride by unscrupulous Bulgarian train officials whose practices stained the nobility of ticket takers all over the world. Or perhaps it was just 4 a.m. and he couldn’t be bothered fighting anymore with a feisty vagabond who wouldn’t give up his comfy chair.

The ticket taker flipped the lid of his leather pouch and pulled out a small, plastic Coke bottle filled with a clear liquid. Unscrewing the lid, he paused, took a swig then said seriously:

“The Hungarians will liquidate you.”

I swallowed what saliva I had left in my dry mouth. Liquidate?

He handed me the bottle. Being naïve, I thought it was water. I took a healthy gulp, swallowed and almost threw up on the spot. (I hadn’t had a meal in about a day.) I stumbled out of the compartment and just made it to the toilet before I retched up every bit that was left in my stomach. I splashed some water on my face, rinsed my mouth out and took a deep breath. I tried to play it cool when I returned to the compartment, but the ticket taker didn’t seem to notice. He held out the bottle for me again, this time with a bit of a smile: he had pulled off half the bottle in my short absence.

I sipped again. The liquid stung my raw throat but going down was warming rather than fiery, and for the first time that day (that felt like a week) I felt the knots in my neck and back relax. As I tried to give him the bottle back, he waved his hand, and with an odd sort of benediction, encouraged me to take another sip.

“Three times. Father, son and ghost.”

Plenty of people have found Jesus at the bottom of a whiskey bottle. I didn’t expect to come across the pope of plum brandy at 4 a.m. on a train creeping toward the Serbian-Hungarian border. After my third sip (considerably more generous than the second), I closed my eyes and fell asleep. When I opened them, the ticket taker was gone, the sun had risen, and I was on my way to Budapest.

You see this retained in language, in the expression: Pálinkás jó reggelt!, which translates variously as “A pálinka good morning,” or “Good morning with pálinka!”

Naturally, there are explanations for this early, to American palates nearly inconceivable practice. Balázs quotes a handful of folk sayings:

In the morning, wine sleeps and shouldn’t be woken, so pálinka must be drunk.

or alternately:

Before wine, pálinka, then a bit of sausage, just so the coffee won’t hurt later.

A confession: When visiting a friend for a Transylvanian wedding, we were on hand for the arrival of a close Hungarian friend of the groom and groom’s brother. Maybe 10 in the morning. We gathered underneath the shade of the walnut tree to welcome him, and the bottle of brandy came out, glasses were filled, and the friend’s arrival was toasted. We smiled, and I surreptitiously poured the spirits into the grass.

But I was young. Today I would have wished them a Pálinkás jó reggelt! and let the wine sleep in a little longer.