Advertisement
Published: March 4th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Great Market Hall
This place is massive and has loads of interesting fresh fruit, meat and pastry places on the ground floor and "Hungarian" fast food, stand up bars and souvenir shops up the top. After another quick and almost painful lesson in European geography we discovered our next stop, Budapest, Hungary, is a lot further away from Venice than we first realised (read: 18 hour train trip with 4 changes) so we decided to be brave and try the overnight train thing (13 hours, no changes). Unfortunately our plans turned a little sour when we both got the flu but being cheapo backpackers we high fived all the way to Budapest because we’d bought the cheapest tickets we could, opting for 2 beds in a 6 bed compartment to discover that we were the only ones in the compartment. Saved ourselves almost 80 euro! Woohoo. Little did we know that the train would take us to almost every country in Eastern Europe and at each one we had to wake up for a passport check (twice - one on the way in and one on the way out!). They thought Trish was safe enough but at each border check they thoroughly checked Daniel’s passport and the Croatian (we think) authorities even radioed his name through. LOL! So anyway after our long and frequently interrupted overnight train ride we were suitably exhausted and flu-ey so
decided to lay low for the day to rest up for the following few days in Budapest.
As you would all know, up until the late 1980’s Budapest, and indeed the whole of Hungary, sat behind the Iron Curtain and was under the Communist Regime. They were the first to break free and after reading up on Hungary’s history, the country has a fascinating past in fighting to keep its land and independence. They were ruled by the Ottoman empire for many many years before being “liberated” by the Hapsburg (Austrian) Empire. They fought to seek independence and in late 1800s they won and became the independent country of Hungary (well, equal independence to what Austria had within the Hapsburg Empire. During World War II, the Nazi’s took over and murdered millions of Hungarian Jews, and at the end of the war, like the other countries in Eastern Europe with the fall of the Nazi’s came the rise of Communism.
In 1956 the Hungarian’s decided to fight back against the Soviet rule and protested in Budapest. After refusing to back down, Soviet tanks opened fire at the protesters. 25 000 people were killed and 250 000 fled to
The Chain Bridge
This was the first bridge to connect Buda and Pest and was opened in 1849. It measures 202m across the Danube. the West. The Soviets then put Janos Kadar (a communist) in charge of Hungary to run a hard line government. He did cooperate with Moscow but he gradually allowed the Hungarians more freedom than their neighbours. Other Eastern European countries under the communist regime would go to Hungary for their “Western Fix”. The first McDonalds behind the Iron Curtain was opened in Budapest’s number one shopping street. Apparently people lined up around the block for their Capitalist Feast.
Anyway enough of the history lesson.....after spending almost a week in Budapest we came to the conclusion that it is the kind of place that you need to actually live in (or stay for a month or so) to get the most out of it. We started the week thinking it was a very ordinary city and everyday learnt or discovered something new about it. But still, by the end of the week we weren’t loving it. If we had the time we would have liked to stay longer as we’re certain it had loads more to offer us.
Staying true to our style and quest for more gastronomic tales (i.e. more food) we started almost every day at the
McDonalds...seemingly insignificant now
but this was the first McDonalds behind the Iron Curtain. We wanted to go inside and get our burger and fries but the places was absolutely packed so we decided to get celebrate Capitalism down the road at Burger King instead. Great Market Hall even though it was a good half hour walk from our hostel. We’d stock up on fresh fruit and some goodies from the bakery (all for less than a couple of euro!!!) for the day and then walk to our next “sight” for the day. The Great Market Hall made Freo markets look like a tiny corner store. And we had the yummiest biscuits and fresh mandarins there.
The Market Hall was actually the highlight of our stay in Budapest until we decided to “go local” and make a trip to the famed public baths. “Public baths????” you all say......”sounds kind of gross?” Well actually Budapest is built on hot springs so there are loads of these “baths” all over the place. We went to the big ones in the middle of the City Park. They are pretty much naturally heated swimming pools although if you go inside there are warmer medicinal baths apparently known for their well... medicinal properties. Still being a bit flu-ey we were encouraged to go by our hostel managers (and local Budapestians) and told that a trip to the baths will sort us out. After finally figuring out the crazy procedure
and navigating our way through the labyrinth of stairs nad corridors we were ready to take to the waters. It felt kind of weird swimming in an outdoor pool when it was 10 degrees outside! The water was heaven and it jsut great to be outside for once with the sun shining after all that rain in Britain. Under instruction from our hostel manager we also did a stint in the sauna and the medicinal baths. All up we spent almost 3 hours in there. Our visit to the Széchenyi Baths was the highlight of our trip to Budapest.
We also walked up Gellert Hill. Named for St Gerard, a bishop who was killed by the pagans in 1046. He was cruelly put in a barrel with nails stuck into it and rolled down the massive hill. Nasty stuff. We also walked up to Castle Hill which has a load of different buildings housing all sorts of museums. We mainly went up there for the magnificent views of Pest and the Danube.
Following a hint from our guide book and more encouragement from our hostel manager we decided to spend a night at the opera. And we got
tickets to a Mozart performance for less than 5 bucks!!!!! Cheapest Opera tickets anywhere we say! Mind you we were in the worst seats ever directly behind a pole but as these seats never fill up once the performance starts everyone moved around anyway. The performance was unfortunately in Hungarian so we had no idea what was going on really but the ambience was fantastic and the opera house interior was amazing. The pictures we have just didn’t do it justice. We also took the tip from our hostel and had an evening of all you can eat and drink at the local bar and grill - Hungarian style! It was kind of like a HUngarian Sizzler only a bit classier. We were surprised at how good the house wine was and Trish even tried deer. Not very nice...but the potato dumplings made up for it. There was a time limit on your stay there, for dinner we had three hours. And we took every last minute of it, only to be mortified as we walked out the front door and saw the self service ice cream freezer!!!! We kicked ourselves for not noticing that earlier!
Oh and does
Reflections at Castle Hill
Reflections of a mini fortress type thing (with great views) up at Castle Hill in the more modern building next to us. anyone know anything in Hungarian? No? That is because the Hungarian language is not actually related to any other language....we assumed it would have roots in the other Slovak languages or perhaps Asian languages given its ancestory. Wrong on both accounts. We stayed at a fantastic hostel with great people running it and they taught us on our first night how to greet the person when we entered a restaurant. We thought we were big smarties and continued using it throughout our visit only to realise on the last day that we’d been saying Good Evening to everybody the whole time. We did wonder why nobody was saying it back to us!
We’re still trying to get back into the swing of things travelling again and are very excited to be returning to much loved places in Eastern Europe and exploring them in winter. So we catch the train on Sunday to return to the most beautiful main square in Europe (in our opinion anyway) - Krakow, Poland.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.058s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0349s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb