We arrived to Budapest in the early afternoon, and luckily, there were no greeters with purple lips like we met in Vienna. After a short metro & tram ride, we arrived to the most interesting hostel we’ve yet accoutered, Riverside Hostel. Unlike our previous hostels that have been setup like hotels, this was a large apartment that had a large common kitchen and TV room, with each bedroom being separated from the rest of the apartment with a door and a lock (which was opened by a key that looked like it was made in 1910). Our room was huge and had a couch and what I guess were supposed to be 3 beds. Brittany and I (David) slept on twin mattresses that were more like thin futon mattresses rather than bed mattresses. In summation, they weren’t the most comfortable. Lucky for Alex, his bed was more like a couch without a back to it. The TV room had several DVDs, many of which were in English. One movie they happened to have was Borat, which we later watched.
Once we made ourselves familiar with our surroundings, we headed out to eat what our hostel worker described as “Hungarian Fastfood” and spoke good things about it. We decided to head in that direction, and sure enough there was a restaurant named, “Hungarian Fastfood.” Once inside, we found out its more like a cafeteria style restaurant, Lubyish. The food was all premade and you simply picked out what you wanted and they put it on a plate for you. The food turned out to be pretty good, and the three of us ate for the equivalent of about $13. After our late lunch we explored Budapest around our hostel for a bit. Before we knew it, it was dinner time, and time to try some traditional Hungarian cuisine, goulash.
Luckily (or perhaps unluckily) Brittany met a girl at our hostel who happened to date the hostel’s owner and liked to use the free internet. The girl told us of a great place to get this real Hungarian eating experience for a traditional Hungarian price. We decided to give this place a try, and made the walk to the restaurant. We all three had some good meaty goulash and some beers for a cheap price. We were all very satisfied and headed back to the hostel for our day of adventuring that would follow. Little did we know, our delicious goulash decided to wreak some havoc on us the next day…
Day 2 began with us going to the corner grocery store and getting caramel flavored cornflakes and milk for breakfast. Once our hearty breakfast was finished, we decided to head to Budapest’s famous castle district. The castles and palace were across the river from our hostel in Buda (we were staying in Pest or Pesch as the locals called it). We made our way up the winding hill to the castle area and it was quite impressive. Probably the best part of all of the palaces and castles was the location. It was up on a hill with a very scenic view of the entire city and river below. As we had finished our little self guided tour, we were resting and enjoying the scenary.
At that point, we were approached by an older man who asked where we were from. We reluctantly answered that we were from the US. At that, he went to a a grand schpeel of a 45minute-hour long tour he could take us on. It was if he was performing a monologue for us while reading a script off a teleprompter behind us. The best part of the entire situation, was that his entire speech was delivered in his extremely thick Hungarian accent and all of his words had to pass through his insanely bushy mustache. In fact, his mustache hair was so long that it covered his entire mouth. He also liked to change the pitch of his voice from very high, to very low, and then would stare at us all for a few seconds for emphasis. We all had to try our hardest to contain our laughter because the guy was just funny. Alex failed at doing so. Once he was done telling us about his lavish tour, he promised us that the price would be a bit cheaper once he found some other tourists to join us. He also said that he would save us a lot of money that the “guuuiiiidddeee boookkkksss” would lose us if we followed their advice instead of his. We all were very impressed with his presentation, and didn’t have the guts to tell him we weren’t interested. So…once he left to find more people, we ran in the other direction. In all fairness, we never told him we wanted to go, and we were tired and had seen our fair share.
Also, the goulash had decided it was time to rein terror our stomachs. Goulash, or poolash was an unholy alliance of goo and lash that lashed our stomachs with its mighty Hungarian whip. At one point Brittany and I(alex) were laying in beds writhing in pain. Disappointment is all I had for my stomach. We’ve been at this a month and now my former billy-goat stomach turned into what I assume a water drinking binge in Mexico would culminate in. The rest of the day was basically shot and we dimwittedly ate some Asian take out for dinner that I’m sure took another toll on or belly-baskets.
Day 3: At around 6:30 am all hell had broken loose and I (Alex) was in more pain than anyone should be in for eating delicious food. At around the time the other kids woke up I was right as rain and we made our way to a park in the Pest part of the city. A central park of sorts, it was very large, right in the middle of downtown. It had many parts to it, museums, grassy fields, and a castle. The castle had a moat and bridge and everything you could ask for. Day three was cut short again as emergency precautions had to be exercised when round two of sickness showed his face. We ran back to the hostel, pretty far away, and again I was out of commission for the rest of the day.
This is when the Imodium AD binge began. Luckily for us, we only had 6 tablets, so we later had the joy of trying to describe to an older lady working at the pharmacy, who just happened not to speak any English, that we needed medicine for our bellies. While I was recuperating David and Brittany took the tram from the early 20th century down to the large market of Budapest. The market was indoors with stalls for food as well as every other souvenir one could ever want. It was set up like a flea market and had all things that are good. Day 3 for me was watching Dexter, in bed, off the interweb. Dinner that night was at Okay Italia, right across the street. Not exquisite, exceptional, great or good, just “Okay Italia”. They lived up to their name; it was some o.k. Italian food.
Day 4: We really had no other choice but to get a full day in or we were going to miss the majority of Budapest. So we did. We went back to the market, ate some delicious strudel for 125 florints (50 cents), and I decided it was time to buy the bees knees of hats for 5000 florints. It was a steal since the hats were priced at 5900 and after she saw us admiring the hats, she immediately told us she could part with one for 900 less than the listed price. Some might describe the hat as an old man’s walking hat, with furry ear flaps that fold up for your convenience.
After the market we took a tram back uptown and ate at a hummus bar for lunch that served some delicious falafels and to top it off Arizona green tea. It was so random; it was the perfect touch for any Hungarian meal. We then took the metro past the metro Nazis back to the park we were at the day before. The metro Nazis were guards who demanded that you show them your ticket before entering and exiting the station. This only occurred at the busy stations, so we’re sure locals probably know how to get around buying tickets by avoiding the bigger stations. This time we came for some culture. We wanted to see what the deal was with these famous hot baths, and mineral baths that the city was famous for.
As we approached the baths we noticed that they looked kind of like a museum from the outside. Once we got inside however, our minds exploded with glory. Not only did we not know where to go and what to do all we could see was banana hammocks for miles around. We got a “cabin” to change in and after that headed to the hot bath which was more commonly known as a heated public pool. It was like a giant public pool/hot tub. Oh the humanity and the oldness of people, and their joy to show the world that they had nothing to hide. They certainly didn’t try to hide anything. Strange people would just sit in front of these fountains getting blasted in the back of the head for 10-15 minutes at a time. The whole thing was only about 3 ½ feet deep and it was just kind of crammed in with tons of hideous people. We also happened to be in the 10% minority of people under the age of 65. Not to be terrible, it was just a “you had to be there thing”, which I took some pictures of so everyone could be there! We definitely soaked up some culture. Some of the potbellied men made their Speedos disappear underneath their pregnant bellies (like our friend on the top of the article who isn't actually naked). Some half-breeds had so much hair on their backs and shoulders that their wives were braiding it. And the women you ask? It was like the golden girls performing a burlesque show. Some of the older crowd decided to play a little water chess near the stairs, which always made it awkward when entering and exiting the bath. If culture was what we wanted, culture was what we got. I highly recommend it.
After the bath we had a quaint meal of Subway since our stomachs weren’t ready for any more traditional Hungarian food unfortunately, and had a few beers and prepared for our 7am train ride to Prague.
new pictures up at the following:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/euroexplosion/
&
http://www.flickr.com/photos/euroexplosion2/
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