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Published: July 24th 2008
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After my brief visit to Preston it was time to start my travels properly so I flew from Liverpool Airport to Budapest. The first thing that came into my had was that this felt so wierd...going off on my own for 5 weeks to travel around places I'd never really even thought of before.
The journey was pretty uneventful despite the people I'd sat next to (an old couple from Southport) who decided to talk incessantly all the way through the flight...I think the man's wife was happy for him to drone on to someone else for a few hours.
Once I'd landed in Budapest I quickly realised that though the banks like to tell you it is easy using ATMs overseas unfortunately no one had bothered to tell the Hungarian banks. One by one all the British tourists bounced from cashpoint to cashpoint being told our cards weren't going to be accepted. Luckily a taxi driver agreed to drive me to the hostel despite the fact I had absolutely no money on me and no idea of whether I'd be able to get some in the foreseeable future. Of course the taxi driver had a plan though and
once I'd got my money out magically had no change and tried to convince me that 5 Euros was a suitable exchange rate for 100HUF.
At the hostel I met a US sargeant on leave from Kuwait so spent my first evening with him looking around and generally getting my bearings of the place. Luckily my hostel was just by the Opera House, slap bang in the middle of the Pest side of the city so it was easy to find and difficult to get lost.
My first day proper consisted of a walking tour of the city which showed Budapest in all its crumbling glory. It seems that what we see today has only really been there for just over 100 years with things like the underground, Hero Square nd the fenicular railway to the castle being built for Hungary's millenium celebrations back in 1886. Since then most of the buildings have required rebuilding due to Hungary's talent for picking sides with the losers in both the world wars. Due to this Budapest seems a bit of a pastice of its Austro-Hungarian history with the stone cladding slowly slipping away from the brick structures. For 3 1/2
hours I traipsed around the city as it continually threatened to rain so then made a break for it and me and my new found friend (as well as another US military man - they must stop wars and stuff just like the schools so they can fill up the hostels around Europe) went to the St Jupter restaurant to sample some goulash.
In the afternoon I headed over to one of the train stations in Budapest to reserve my compartment for the next evenings travel to Romania. From the outside it seemed one of the grandest buildings in the city, a lasting moniment to Eastern European orderliness. In side it was like a third world cattle market. I reserved my bed on a train but in all honesty I'm still not sure when t was going or to where and with aching feet I slowly made my way back to the hostel to ready for a night at, what we had been told, one of the best bars in Budapest.
The next day I pretty much mooched around Budapest, doing my usual trick of thinking I knew where I was going and ending up somewhere completely different.
This gave me the chance to have a close up look at the Parliament building (the second largest in Europe), the Opera House (the fifth best acoustics in the world) and St Stephen's Basilica. The parliament building and St Stephen's Basilica dominate the downtown Pest skyline with a law actually being passed to state that no building can be built higher than them to show just how important democracy and religion are to the Hungarians. As it started to absolutely chuck it down (a possible trend in my travels?) I made my way to the House of Terror which told the story of Hungary from the Nazi occupation in the 1940s to the end of the Soviet occupation in the late 1980s.
Rounding of the day I sampled another Hungarian delicacy, beef stew with egg barley and then made my way back to the train station to await my train to Romania.
Witty comments will be added shortly. I thank you in advance for your patience.
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Lyndsy
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Romania
Hope you are having fun Jon, all I can say is watch out for the bears - honestly they do kill people!! Lynds