Sleepless in Budapest!

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Hey everyone (or the few people who still bother reading this!)!! So anyway, on my flight over to Budapest I couldn't stay awake and really only remember the take off and landing. I arrived in Budapest at about 19:30 and jumped on a bus and train to get to my hostel which was on the Pest side of the river. I arrived at my hostel to the familiar sound of Aussie accents, and discovered that the entire hostel was full of Aussie travellers. I stayed and talked with some of them for a while and then the hostel guy put the film 'Dune' and I watched that. In the end I got an early night and slept quite well ... if only I'd known I might have appreciated it more...
The next day I spent walking around Budapest and getting a feel for the town. I walked up near the palace, and along to chain bridge (which was the first bridge to connect the Buda and Pest sides of the river), then onto the island in the centre of the river. The weather was dry but really, really cold which is unexpected in September! Eventually I headed back to the hostel and chatted to everyone else. Then I went out with a couple of Aussie guys (Phat and Adam) to go to the shops, but in the end me and Phat went to a nearby restaurant/cafe and got some Hungarian food. I got battered mushrooms (different to the English style) cause I had a craving for them. Then we joined everyone back at the hostel who were all watching "The Bourne Identity". We spent a very looooong time playing drinking games in a huge group of about 25 that included everyone staying in the hostel. The best was a game called signs, which is a more complicated version of the cookie jar game that we used to play in primary school (which would've been much more fun if we were drinking beer!). In the end everybody got really into it and made really good friends with each other. So then we all headed out to find a club which involved walking all the way across Budapest, discovering that the club was closed on Thursdays, and then walking all the way back across to another club. We eventually got in, but first impressions weren't favourable and we considered leaving, but then "I will survive' came on and it all went from there. I spent nearly the whole time with two sisters from Adelaide, Renee and Bianca, dancing to the increasingly dorky music, and then they started turning all the lights on because it was 4:30am and they were going to be closing at 5am. We made it back to the hostel not long after 5 and I woke up at about 9am the next morning because everyone was moving around.
That day I headed out with three English girls (Charlotte, Lara and Hannah), a American girl (Cait), a Canadian guy (Bryan), Adam, and two English guys, who I had all met the night before, to go to the baths. One of the most famous aspects of Budapest is that is was built over hot springs which are then pumped up into pools. The baths that we headed to had three outdoor pools, one was a lap swimming pool, one was a 38 degree pool and the other was a whirlpool where jets had been placed in a way to make you whizz around in circles. Inside there were more pools of varying degrees and a sauna. Everybody headed into the sauna at the same time, but it was in under a minute before one of the English guys had decided he hated it too much and made his escape. We learnt afterwards that you are supposed to breathe through your nose and not your mouth when in the sauna, so we were all gasping away and finding it very hard to breathe. The seats were also boiling hot and because we had all come straight from the pool none of us had towels to sit on, so we all perched on the edge of the seats and it became a test of endurance. It felt like we lasted a long time but I imagine that it was probably only about 5 minutes before one of the English girls decided that enough was enough and headed for the exit, with the rest of us following suit shortly after. We spent 3 hours in the baths all up and then we all headed back to the hostel. Once back at the hostel we all watched "The Bourne Supremacy" during which I caught up on about 20 minutes sleep, and then later that night all the girls from the bath trip and Bryan and I headed to the Wine Festival which was being held in the Palace on Castle Hill. For the climb up the hill I suggested that we take the stairs but Bryan insisted that we should walk the "scenic way" up the hill. It took forever and most of the scenery was actually blocked by trees and walls, and at one point we reached a dead end and had to backtrack half the way down the hill. So by the time we actually made it up the hill we discovered the festival was only open for another hour. We decided to go in anyway, until one of the English girls realised she didn't have enough money so it seems going to the Wine Festival was never meant to be. We sat on one of the walls overlooking the city, which is very beautiful and lit up, for a short time and then walked back down the hill to the river. We walked along the river for a while and then after a short time in a cafe we headed back to the hostel for a relatively early night at about 1am.
Unfortunately I had hoped to catch up on missed sleep from the previous night which was not to be as I didn't have a great nights sleep and everyone started moving around quite early. The morning was still quite slow though, and then I headed out with the Aussies Renee and Bianca as it was their last day in Budapest. We decided to walk up Castle Hill again (we took the stairs!!) as it was one of the nicer days and the girls wanted to get some photos. We sat up the top chatting for a while, and I think becoming really good friends (I think there is a high chance we'll keep in touch). After a bit we headed down to the town and looked for food, unfortunately to no avail as everything was closed on a Saturday afternoon. Then the sisters headed off to catch their train to Poland (everybody in my hostel was either heading to Krakow, sometimes via Bratislava, or into Croatia - but nobody I met was heading the same direction as I was which was kind of annoying!). I spent the next couple of hours watching some of "The Bourne Identity" - by this time I was so sick of the Bourne movies but because new people kept arriving and wanting to watch them they just kept cycling around! Lots of new people arrived, and I'm proud to say that I was very welcoming and made extra effort to include them in the conversations straight away. Ed and Henry had returned from a short trip that morning - they had been at the hostel for the night that everybody went clubbing but then had gone away for a night and then returned. Anyway, they were off to meet a couple of friends from back home in England and invited me and a new American girl (whose name I'm not gonna put up for reasons you will soon discover! Ooooh mysterious!) to go along too. For most of the way I was talking to Ed, and Henry with the American girl until we met up with their friends. We then headed to a Croatian restaurant to get some food. I (stupidly) gave into peer pressure and got a goulash starter and a massive roast duck main course. I couldn't finish it, so one of the girls polished it off for me. Anyway during the meal I discovered that the American girl was very intelligent and opinionated and also very odd. She was so convinced that she was right that she wouldn't take anyone elses opinions into consideration. She also kept bringing up political issues and then telling us that we shouldn't discuss politics because it was rude to the Hungarian people as for a long time they wouldn't have been able to have political discussions in public. She seemed so adamant so we did actually stop when she said that, but it seemed really patronising to the Hungarians as I'm sure they are quite proud of their political freedoms nowadays. So every time that she said that there would be a really awkward silence and we would all try to think of something knew to talk about. Anyway I think she resented me because I was the only one on the table who really knew enough about politics to disagree with her. So just near the end of the meal she became very verbally aggressive. She started really aggressively ranting at me about politics and actually bringing up anything that she had disagreed with me over the course of the evening - including a conversation she had clearly been eavesdropping on when i had been walking with Ed. I don't think I've ever been talked to so angrily or so rudely. She actually went on for quite a while and when she finished everyone went silent whilst she looked defiantly at me I think daring me to retort. However I was actually quite proud of how I dealt with the situation, as I think a year ago I would've gotten quite emotional and not talked for the rest of the evening, but instead i just looked her in the eye and said, "I think that was really rude". She actually looked quite shocked after I said that and apologised straight away and was overly nice to me all evening, although I'm pretty sure that she noticed how much I and the other people at the meal were trying to avoid her. The hostel was alive with activity when we got back but I was actually still a little shell-shocked and took a few minutes to be by myself. Then I went and sat with three really funny English girls that I had met that afternoon and who I felt completely comfortable being myself around. At some point all the Aussies had left, and been replaced with nearly all English people which is the first time that has happened since I started travelling. The three English girls (Lauren, Michaela and Sian) were all travelling together. They were lots of fun and I spent most of the rest of the evening with them and Ed. It was a really large group at the hostel and we all stayed in drinking beer and jaegerbombs (and the Sangria that Michaela kept thrusting into my hand). We were quite loud so the guy at reception asked us to go out at about midnight so we headed out in look for the club called Buda Beach which apparently was full of sand and made to look like a beach. We all headed off for what turned out to be a really long walk, especially as by the end we were all busting for the toilet. Michaela took the Sangria out with her and kept handing it around. Eventually we made it, to perhaps the most chauvinistic club ever (well actually clubs are like this but I still get angry!), and it had no sand!. Girls got free entry whilst guys had to pay 1500 fronts (quite a bit of money). In fact Ed got a bit confused and practically got shoved in by the bouncer. They also had female dancers in their underwear on a table (which seems to be a really Eastern European style). Guys had to wait ages to buy drinks (and tips were then added automatically on and then rounded up to the nearest note - dodgy, especially as the service was soooo bad!). Guys were supposed to pay to use the toilet (I didn't) but the girls didn't have to. Well enough of my rant ... I had some fun in there but it wasn't as good as the other night. At one point aforementioned American girl dragged me out to dance with her which I did but not particularly enthusiastically. Anyway at the end of the night we all walked back and crawled into bed at about 5am.
Everyone woke up really early the next morning. I spent most of the day exploring Budapest by myself and organising the next part of my trip (as I had only organised the point of arrival and the point of departure) and then chilling out with Cait, Lauren, Michaela and Sian for the afternoon and evening. Nearly everyone that had been previously mentioned left that morning. We decided to have a quiet night and watch a film together, so we watched "Trainspotting" which I actually had never seen before. But then a huge group of Irish people arrived and whilst I'm sure they were nice they made a really bad impression as they were really loud and kept whining about security cause there were other people in their room (which was just us). Eventually they drove me and the three English girls out whilst Cait went to bed. I couldn't believe how stupid I was to be going out at midnight when I was so tired. On the way out we ran into another guy who came along with us. We headed to a little pub which looked like a warehouse, and then you walked through a bike shop and then found yourself in the pub. The pub was quite funky and some of the seats were baths that had been sawn in half. We spent a while there having a really good time and then headed back to the hostel for about 2am. I got an okay sleep then packed all my stuff up and said my goodbyes. I then walked to the train station, queued for ages to buy my ticket, crossed my fingers and hoped that I got on the right train. The train was quite comfy although the border security seemed a bit threatening but before I knew it I was on my way into Serbia.

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