Day 46: Budapest Hungary.

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Day 46: Monday, January 11, 2010.
Budapest, Hungary.

I headed out of the hotel and made my way over to Pest to find the tourism office and get a Budapest Pass. The bus stop was around the corner from the hotel and I only had to wait a couple of minutes before the bus I needed showed up. I hop on (had bought the ticket at the hotel) and take a seat at the front so that I can stare at each bus stop and wonder if it's my stop. We head down the hill (a windy path around the stone walls- gorgeous) and go thru a tunnel that leads us to the Chain Bridge. This tunnel made me laugh because of the end you saw up ahead. It's a typical long tunnel, but there is decoration on the openings that makes it look like jagged teeth. I felt like I was in a very slow moving Millennium Falcon and we were flying out of the throat of that cave snake creature. Come on, you know you're nerdy enough to keep up with me.

We cross over the Chain Bridge and after a couple of stops, the bus backfires and stalls. The cabin of the bus is quickly filled with exhaust smoke, the doors open and everyone silently gets out and starts walking in various directions while the bus driver picks up his cell phone. I stand on the corner, looking like the lost tourist I am as I stare down at the map, up at the street sign, down at the map, up at the street sign. Inside my head I am chanting my new mantra while trying to calm myself down "It's an adventure, it's an adventure, it's an adventure..." I see one of the stops for the double decker tourist buses that you see in major cities and ask one of the workers where Deák Square is. She says "right there" and points across the street. The bus broke down at my stop- nice!

I head over to the tourism office and try to go in, but can't get the door to open. I then notice a sign saying it's closed for renovation and that a temporary shop is set up in the courtyard. I look around, and see what I think can be considered 3 courthouses. So, I start walking, but after a couple of minutes my brain is telling me I'm wrong so I pass back by the closed tourism office and notice RIGHT next door to it is an entry way... into the courtyard. 10 points for the brainless tourist. I head on in and find the temporary office and get the Budapest Card. I then, very politely because I was in the wrong, mention to the lady at the desk that I saw another tourist at the other door trying to figure out where the courtyard was and that I walked by it as well. She says "But there's a sign." I said yes, but I didn't know where the courtyard was. She then said "but there's an arrow on the sign pointing here." Yeah, I'm beyond dumb and convey that to her. Just then, another lady steps around the corner and asks if I want to join the walking tour she's about to do. Perfect timing and I say yes.

I walk with her around the corner to the meeting point where there are four other people who have already signed up. Our tour guide, whose name I can't remember, tells us that we're going to hop on the Metro and head up to Heroes Square. As we head over to the metro stop, the other people on the tour introduce themselves. They are Karen & Mike and Kelly & Pete and they are a group of friends from Australia. They started their own tour of Europe a day before I did (11/27) and they're going until mid-March. So, it was nice to have some fellow long term travelers to talk with.

At Heroes Square we see the Millennium Monument and it definitely catches your eye. As we were there some military guys were setting up a wreath in front of the memorial so that was cool to see the drill. As we were walking towards the back of the square, I noticed a military bus full of other soldiers that were waiting on these guys so that they could get going. It was funny to see them all crashed out, just like anyone else who is stuck on a bus and want to get going. Some where leaning over the seats talking to each other and others had their faces smashed against the windows and were sleeping. It amused me. We take a few more pictures (you should know by now I'm not going to remember most of the history lesson I was getting so follow the links for that info) and head around the corner to our next stop, Vajdahunyad Castle.

I don't remember why this "castle" was built but it has four very different architectural aspects. It's gorgeous. Across the street from that is the Szechenyi Bath House and we head inside to take a peek. As we walked over, I apologized to the tour guide for what I was about to ask, but were the houses safe? In both the "are my possessions safe in the locker?" and the "will I get a rash" aspect. She said that they were perfectly fine. I had looked up the bath houses before getting to Budapest and found a lot of reviews where people said they had their stuff taken while they were there, they were overcharged and were refused their towel deposit back, and that they got a rash from the baths. This is pretty much the equivalent to when you feel sick and you look up your symptoms online and read some horror story about a woman who also had a sore throat and it ends up a cockroach had laid eggs inside her tonsils. Or, something weird and gross similar to that that proves you sometimes you shouldn't read ahead. So, I heard horror stories and they were in my mind and I wasn't ready to sign up for the bath house. But, I could chance peeking inside and it was beautiful.

We get back on the Metro and head to another tourism office where we hang for about 15 minutes for bathroom breaks and what not. While waiting, I have a chance to talk to the Aussies some more and get some interesting travel stories from them. They're pretty well traveled. We head back out and hit up the Hungarian Opera House. I stand there and listen to the cool history it has but, sadly, only respond when the tour guide mentions that the balcony can be seen in "Evita". It's the one Madonna is standing at when she sings "Don't Cry For Me Argentina". Coolio. I ask TG (tired of typing "tour guide" so I vote her name is TG) if she gets tired of us tourists nodding thru the history stuff but then perking up when she mentions it was in a movie. She said she was used to it. We head into the lobby and take a look at the amazing ceilings there. She says that they have cheap tickets in the nosebleed sections if we want to catch an opera some night.

Next up is St. Stephen's Basilica. St. Stephen is big here, their favorite king who was later made a saint as well. I do remember her saying that inside the church you won't find a picture/statue of Mary or Jesus at the alter, you'll only see King Saint Stephen. They had to get special permission from the Pope to do this. We don't head inside, just look at the outside and then we wander down what I'm going to call "tourist corridor" where they have a bunch of stores you see in every town for the tourists. Down one of those streets is a McDonald's that TG points out. She said it was the very first McDonald's that Budapest had. Then she goes on to tell us that when it opened, she was still a young girl (I'm guessing she's late 30's now) living at home and she and a friend decided to go in and try it. They walked in and it was empty. When she got home, she told her parents that she had gone there and they got very mad at her. Apparently it was a big "no no" to go into the Western restaurant and that the police were taking away people that walked into it. Do the math, that wasn't that long ago but the people were still being bullied over the smallest things. Nearby is also Gerbeaud-Haz which is one of the very few original coffee houses that was left standing after WWII. Coffee houses were banned because people would get together and talk, and the government wasn't fond of that. Rick Steve's has a good article about this as well as more about Budapest, check it out.

As we started to walk out of that area, we passed by another poster that said "Mein Kampf" and I ask her what is it for- a play? She gets quiet and says that it is a play and from what she's read, it's supposed to show Hitler in a different light- as a human (I found this link for a review of the play). She is very much against the play and says that she hopes it fails. She then quietly says that she lost half of her family because of Hitler and that she can't believe someone would even think about telling his story, much less a Hungarian (the writer of the play is Hungarian but he lives outside of the country now.) Needless to say, I didn't know what to say to her after that so I just stayed quiet as well. Once again, Budapest shows me that history isn't just in books.

We head over to the Danube River where we can look over at Buda. There's a statue there called "The Little Princess" and I feel bad because I thought it was a little boy who was dressed up as a court jester. Sorry Princess. She is one of three "princess" statues in Europe and you're supposed to rub her for luck. TG also points out the Liberty Statue but says that most people call it "the bottle opener." Yup, that's what it looks like. We leave Pest by walking over the Chain Bridge and into Buda. TG points out the Zero Kilometer Statue and explains that it is the marker for all distance in Budapest. If someone says it's 27 kilometers away, they're talking about it being from this point. Kind of cool. I eye the funicular that's by the Zero statue and hope that we're going to be taking that to the top of the hill but no such luck, we head to the stairs. Luckily, it's not an overly steep incline and it weaves around so that makes it easier, but still, it's stairs. We get to the top and as they are all waiting for me, I gasp and say "Are you crazy? You know Americans don't work out!" I wipe the sweat from my face and look at the gorgeous view.

At the top is a giant statue of a Turul bird which is by part of the palace whose name I can't remember and I can't find online. However, while there, some big wig from America is arriving so there is pomp and circumstance going on. The group turns to me and asks who is it and I once again shame my country by saying "I dunno." I had my camera set to video and was recording those coming in before said big wig and the batteries died. So, didn't even get her on video to show to my fellow Americans so that they could yell at me and go "On my God, you didn't know what that was? It's (blah blah blah)!!"

We walk towards the Matthias Church and along the way stop at another building whose name I can't remember/find. I do remember TG saying that it had been the headquarters for either the Nazi's or Russians (can't remember that either) and that the city had left it as is after the war to show the history (it was pretty shot up.) We stop outside Matthias Church and she tells us a bit about it, and that's the end of the tour. We all thank her, give a tip, and head over the Fisherman's Bastion. It feels weird that we end where my hotel is (and the rest of the group was staying in an apartment right by the Opera.) Kind of a small world. We take some pictures from there and I join them for lunch. We chat about this and that and decide that we don't annoy each other so I make plans to join up with them later that night and we'll go to one of the bars that TG suggested. I head back to the hotel and take a nap and chill for a few hours.

That evening I took the bus and then metro over to the Opera House and Mike comes over to meet me. Their apartment is just down the road and after going up three flights of stairs that felt more like 6, we get to the apartment they rented for a couple of days (they got in last night and leave tomorrow afternoon.) We sit and chat for a while and eat some bread and cheese. That's when I get hit with my first regret of this trip. There are a lot of things that I didn't do/go see but there just wasn't time, so I'm not beating myself up over. However, Pete showed me the pictures he took at Kutna Hora and they were awesome!!! I wish I hadn't cancelled that excursion! I don't know what the Prague Tour Guide's problem was (nor the other 2 tourists) but it looked amazing and the guys said it was. Damn it. Looks like I'll be going back to Prague someday.

We decide to hit the town and we know the general location of this roof top bar that TG had recommended so we wander around there for a bit. I see two girls walking towards us and stop them and ask "Do you speak English?" They say yes. I smile and say "Yea! Good! Do you know where a rooftop bar is around here?" Their reply, "Just because we speak English doesn't mean we're from here" in their very Irish accents. We laugh and they move on. I then go up to some cops and ask them the same thing. One cop says it's "right over there" and starts to walk away to point at it. I follow him and turn around to thank the other cop and run, full body, into the first cop. I thought he was walking further, nope, he had stopped. I laughed and said sorry and he just gave me a steely look and pointed at the roof of a nearby building (after telling Kinga this story later she said that that's a typical Budapest cop- very serious, no joking.) An American cop would have loved it if a woman had body slammed him. That or clubbed her, it's a toss up.

We walk around the block trying to find the entrance and finally find it. Mike asks some guys if we're at the right place and one replies "It's a club." Mike hears him wrong and goes, "Oh, is it crap?" The guys buddy laughs and repeats "It's a club." Mike asks if it's any good and they say, they don't know, they're down here and the club is up there. We're already here, why don't we go find out? Very charming. So, we head in and start going up the stairway of death (as I'd like to call it). Just very intimidating, graffiti everywhere, low lighting, and 5 flights (maybe 6) of stairs. Fun.

We get to the top and it is a bar, so good enough. They grab some beers (me a Pepsi) and we sit down. It's on the top floor, but don't think it can be called a roof top bar- it's just on the top floor of a building, no windows, no skylights. We are all enjoying chatting when suddenly the music gets LOUD. VERY LOUD. I feel like an old person but I wanted to tell them to turn it down. It seems there is a Depeche Mode concert in town and this bar is holding an after concert party. So, everyone starts flocking in and the Depeche Mode continues to crank at a loud volume. Sorry, I don't get Depeche Mode. A few catchy songs, but they don't do it for me. It seems, however, they very much do it for the folks of Budapest and that it makes them very amorous. I don't want to be a tourist geek so I don't pull out my big camera, but the others got some interesting pictures. Hopefully they'll email them to me and I can pass them on to you guys 😊

A couple hours later and we're all done with the loud music and cigarette smoke. We head back down the stairs of death and negotiate a cab ride for me back to the hotel (metro stops running at 11pm). I broke down and agreed to go with them tomorrow to Szechenyi Bath House so I agree to meet them there at Noon. The cabbie gets me back on the Buda side and stops at the Matthias Church and asks if it is close enough. I say yes, and in my mind tell him to say goodbye to his tip and I get out. Long day- but fun! Look at me talking to people, I'm almost social.

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Photos

The Opera House
Taken at a later date, hence the gray skies vs. blue. This balcony is where the one scene from "Evita" was shot.

The Zero Kilometer Stone and Budvari Siklo (Buda Hill Funicular)
"0 Stone": All distance measurements in Budapest start here.

Government building on Castle Hill whose name I can't find.
But this is the one the big whigs keep walking into.

My view while waiting for the bus near my hotel.
In the background, Matthias Church (with lovely construction) and the statue in front is the Trinity Statue.

Millenium Monument and the tour group
Kelly, Karen, Mike & Pete. And our tour guide, whose name started with an "A", that'll have to be close enough.

Comments

[Chris]

You were dragged away in the night by The Police for not liking Depeche Mode?
Why does it look like people are rubbing the Little Princess's pants for good luck? That's kind of creepy.

[Luna]

May be a faux pas, but...
Okay, so from your photos, Budapest really reminds me of Prague. Are you sure you weren't close to Kunta Hora than you thought? ;-)

[AmandaL]

Budapest is very Prague-esq, and I think it was only a 4 hour river cruise away. Oh well! :)