Stockholm and Budapest

A few days after I arrived in London, I met up with Faraaz and his cousin Shaz and we went on a very quick 5 day trip to Stockholm and Budapest.

Stockholm (Sweden)
We caught a cheap flight to Stockholm and met up with Justin there. It didn't snow while we were there but there was a lot of fresh snow everywhere and we had a lot of fun sliding around and having snow ball fights! It was quite strange for me because I had already visited Stockholm, when Michael was studying in Uppsala, so I was recognising buildings and streets and even one assistant in a tourist shop! We spent the first day relaxing and exploring the area around our Youth Hostel. We found a kids toboggan/sled and had a lot of fun going down a series of quite steep hills.

That night we went into central Stockholm to try and find some clubs in the hope that we could see for ourselves whether the Swedish women really are the most beautiful women in the world. We went in about 7 and soon found out that people in Sweden don't go out clubbing until about 1am so we went to a nice cafe for a few hours. That was as far as we needed to go to find out, to our great delight, that the myth was in fact true. After sitting there, for a longer than appropriate time, we found a public icerink and spent an hour or so sliding around and playing ice hockey/soccer. Finally at 11 after being turned away from several clubs, as the age limit is usually 22 or 23, we found a slightly busy place and paid our $20 to get in... It was a pretty nice place and, apart from all the beautiful women, you might have thought you were in Australia. :P

On our second day we went to Gamla Stan (the old town) and tried some Belgian chocolate in a small cafe (best chocolate I've ever tasted). Then we walked to the island of Djurgärden and went to the Vasa Museum. This museum contains the very well preserved remains of a ship from the 17th Century. The Vasa was the flag ship of the Swedish Navy at that time and it was launched from Stockholm with the King and all the people watching. After travelling a few hundred meters it keeled over and sank, getting embedded in thick mud (which preserved it for 333 years). Apparently it was just too top heavy and did not have a sufficient counter weight in the ballast. I know this because we sat through a 15 minute video on the ship's history at the end of which the narrator said 'And now the Vasa is the most amazing sight in the world!'. Now the ship was amazing to see but in my opinion he was a little ambitious to make such a statement. :P
After Justin had made a few friends we moved on to Skansen, the largest open air museum in the world. Skansen is situated on a small hill that looks out over Stockholm. It is made up of several areas that show how the Swedish lifestyle has changed over the years. It also contains a zoo like area with lots of Nordic animals. The highlight was definitely seeing wolverines in the animal area. They look like small bears but have very large feet for running through the snow. We watched for about 30 minutes as one of the wolverines ran around aimlessly but very purposefully in its enclosure following pretty much the same path each time. Justin and I couldn't stop laughing the whole time. It probably doesn't sound that funny but when you see it sprinting around for no apparent reason you can't help but laugh.

But then our time in Sweden was up and we left Justin, to catch a ferry (and pay a fine, as we accidentally took one of the room keys and the freezer key with us to Hungary :P ), as we caught a flight via Warsaw (Poland) to Budapest.

Budapest (Hungary)
We had a similarly hurried visit in Budapest with only two and a half days to explore this amazing city. The city was originally made up of two cities, Buda and Pest, which were split by the Danube but it has now joined to form one city. On our first day we explored the Pest side going to the Chinese Markets (where I bought some really warm jackets very cheaply), the Parliament Building and Heroes Square. We also visited Vajdahunyad Castle that had been built a few hundred years ago to showcase Hungarian architecture. Each part of the castle represented a different period ranging from Romanesque and Gothic all the way through to Baroque and Renaissance styles. (Dunno if I have them in the right order) The castle had originally only been a temporary structure but the people of Budapest liked it so much it was built again, this time permanently. After exploring the castle (which is now filled with displays on Hungarian agriculture...) we thought we'd head back to our hostel for the night. A little while later I thought I'd go out and get some photos of the city at night so I caught the metro up the river to the Parliament buildings. After taking a few shots, which are on this blog, I returned to the metro to find it shut... So I had a nice run back down the river to our hostel. I shouldn't really complain though, because you couldn't pick a nicer place to have a run than down the Danube River in central Budapest!

The next day we checked out the Buda side of the city going to the Buda Royal Palace, Mathias Church and the Gellert Baths. The Gellert Baths are the oldest and most luxurious baths in the city and we spent 2 hours relaxing in the warm water and trying out the saunas. They had a steam sauna up around 90 degrees Celsius (I don't fully understand why we didn't cook but it did feel very hot) and a small pool at 8 degrees Celsius. So we spent a good proportion of our time running from the sauna to the pool and diving under the freezing cold water. It was actually hard to breathe in the cold water but after a few runs we felt extremely refreshed!

Then sadly we had to make our way to the airport as we had a flight that night back to Luton, London. I know I say this quite a bit but I'm sure that I will be coming back to Budapest to better explore it and see some of the rest of the country!

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