We chose Budapest as our next destination because we wanted to try somewhere very different and somewhere we knew very little about. However, we only spent one night there, didn’t have much luck weather-wise (it stormed our first day there), decided to exchange only 20 dollars for the two of us (we lived off 20 dollars for two days), and I wasn’t feeling so well (probably as a result of our overnight train the night before) – consequently, our options in Budapest were a bit limited….It was good to try somewhere different though, and we made the most of the time we had despite the circumstances.
We got to the Budapest train station at 9am Sunday morning after a long overnight train ride from Munich. We arrived with no place to stay, hoping to walk around and find a cheap hostel somewhere nearby. We didn’t anticipate feeling as sleep-deprived and dirty as we did though, so we kind of lucked out when a middle-aged woman came up to us as we stepped off the train offering us a room in a flat. We were a bit hesitant at first (maybe this lady was crazy, maybe we were about to get ripped off, maybe she was going to lead us into a dark alley somewhere and her flat didn’t really exist…anything was possible). Nonetheless, we accepted her offer and were relieved that we didn’t have to go hostel-hunting after a long night of traveling.
This lady (we don’t know her name) had us follow her onto a local bus and led us to the flat. Fortunately, the flat did indeed exist and it was actually pretty nice. We were given a large room with tall ceilings and a fairly comfortable bed. There were also huge windows, so the room was bright and airy and there was a bathroom right across the hall. It worked out very nicely. I don’t think we would have found anything this good (and this quickly) for 12 dollars each if we had ended up searching for something ourselves. The lady didn’t ask for our names or passports, she simply handed us our set of keys and took off to go look for a present for her son. Apparently, the day we arrived in Budapest was on Children’s Day, so she needed to find a gift for her son. We only have Father’s Day and Mother’s Day, but according to the lady, Children’s Day is a very important day there. She said if we roamed the streets, we’d be sure to find many Children’s Day festivities, such as free concerts with free food. The idea of free food obviously excited us. Unfortunately, we found no evidence of Children’s Day anywhere in Budapest.
After the lady left to search for Children’s Day presents, Tim and I took our heavy loads off our backs, settled into our flat, and both took much-needed showers. Once freshened up, we made our way into the city…
We weren’t sure what to expect, as neither one of us knew a thing about Budapest prior to our arrival, but the city was pretty nice. We spent the first day just walking around and taking it all in. We walked to St. Stephen’s Basilica (Budapest’s largest church). We walked in the back entrance and got a peak, but the mass that was taking place prevented us from further exploring. We also got a nice view of the Great Synagogue (the largest synagogue in Europe and the second largest in the world) in one of Budapest’s districts known as Pest. This Great Synagogue was designed to hold 3000 worshippers and it also holds a Holocaust memorial (the metal Tree of Life). After St. Stephen’s Basilica, we reached the city’s castle district. We walked along the castle district’s windy cobble-stoned streets atop a big hill, which gave us a great view of the city. The castles were pretty cool, as you can see in the pictures. Many other tourists thought so as well, for even the storm that started soon after we arrived at the castles didn’t stop the tour groups from walking around the castles and taking their photographs.
Tim and I, however, weren’t as bold as some of the other tourists and made our goal to stay somewhat dry (maybe because we weren’t going to be doing laundry for another four weeks or so and didn’t want our clothes to be even more mildewy). In order to avoid the storm, we kept ourselves dry underneath one of the castles overhang, eating some spoonfulls of Nutella and people-watching to pass the time. The storm slowed down a bit and then we headed back to our flat to get dry and take a nap (we were still a bit sleep deprived from our lack of sleep on the overnight train the night before). Once we caught up on sleep, we decided to go find a cheap restaurant where we could sample a typical Hungarian dish.
We ended up at a café not too far from our flat. It seemed as though Goulash was a popular dish, so we each got our own bowl. In case you have never heard of it, Goulash (at least the one we tried) is kind of like a tomato soup with vegetables. Okay, so it wasn’t very interesting and wasn’t anything to go out of one’s way for…but we were very hungry and wanted to try something Hungarian, so we went ahead and ordered some. After our Goulash, we called it a night and got a good night of sleep.
The following morning, Tim went to the train station to make our train reservations for Rome while I slept in a bit (he’s such a gentleman). By the time we were done getting ready and packing up our things, the weather was still looking pretty crumby. Rainy, gray, gross…the kind of weather that makes you want to curl up in bed and do nothing. But because we were in Budapest and probably wouldn’t be back there for at least a very long time, we decided we should get out of the flat and do some more exploring. We thought a tour of the synagogue would be very interesting, so we walked over to it to check it out. Unfortunately, it was far too expensive and the 20 dollars were budgeted for ourselves didn’t quite cover it. It seemed as though most historical sites in Budapest cost money to see, so we looked in the guide book and brainstormed things to do that wouldn’t cost money.
We managed to make the most of the dreary, short day we had and headed over to Hero’s square (a big square with some monuments…we aren’t really sure what they were…) and City Park. City Park was pretty nice, but didn’t really compare to any of the parks we had gone to in any of the other cities we had gone to…but, we still had a lovely Nutella sandwich picnic there (however, we left soon after our sandwiches were eaten, as a bird almost pooped on Tim twice). It was time for us to rush back anyhow, as we had to get our belongings together and get to the train station so we could catch our train to Rome.
We got back to the flat, successfully missing out on rain, and packed up our stuff. We grabbed some tasty kebabs for an early dinner and then made our way to the train station.
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