Budafull Budapest!

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(December 12th - 16th) I feel that I have been very blessed my entire life with the friends I’ve had and still have to this day. Some of you I’ve known since birth, some of you I picked up along the way, and some of you found me (as Brian reminds me all the time 😊. Not everyone can say that they have loyal, caring, trustworthy, intelligent friends who would go to great lengths to take care of each other. I bring this up now because I was able to visit one of my dear friends in Budapest who I haven’t seen in years. His name is Eitam and he is a medical student originally from Israel and currently in his fifth year of medicine in Budapest. After reading about all of Brian and my travels, he sent me an email inquiring if we were coming to Budapest at all and if so we had a place to stay. Although the only weekend we could make it there was smack in the middle of his finals, he still took us in, cooked for us, gave us his own bed to sleep in, and showed us Budapest better than we would’ve figured out on our own. And to top it off he’s now planning our next trip where we’re going to stay with his family in Israel and travel to Greece and the city of Petra (“Indian Jones and the Last Crusade” city in the mountain Petra! I’ll work on you coming too Matt 😊

Budapest is the largest city in Hungary and is comprised of the west bank, Buda, and the east bank, Pest. Budapest has a very dark and gritty feel to it. There is a smell in the air that reminded me of India, and much of the architecture has seen better days. Some of the buildings have ornate designs carved into them really representing the beauty of the city. Other buildings look like lego blocks put together to form the most efficient and tightly packed structures imaginable. It really is an odd contrast. Eitam and his girlfriend Sivann took us out to dinner the first night for one of the greatest meals I’ve had in my lifetime. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t traditional Hungarian food, but you really can’t go wrong with steak and potato jackets filled with melted cheese. Afterwards we went to the newest and most popular club in town which happened to be an apartment complex. Now the apartment party club we saw in Dublin was pretty cool, but this place was unreal, and not necessarily in a good way. For those of you Isla Vistans out there, it reminded me of the Dolphin House on D.P. It was a huge apartment complex with about twenty different rooms winding their way upwards. Each room had a different theme to it (for example there was the upside down room where all the furniture had been nailed to the ceiling.) In the middle of the complex was a courtyard where people were lined up on Oktoberfest style tables drinking and smoking the hours away. The rooms were all packed as clearly the bouncers and bartenders had never heard of the phrase “fire code,” and after a brief stay our claustrophobia kicked in and we all departed.

If you only had a day in Budapest, there are four things you should not miss out on. The first is the Fisherman’s Bastion, which is a beautiful castle-like fortress in Pest that overlooks the entire city. Brian and I played hide and seek like two little kids as we explored the forts twists and turns and enjoyed the amazing view. We wanted to hold one of the falcons the tourist-trappers were alluring the crowd with, but we had to choose between that or eating dinner . . . Dinner won out . . . for now. The second thing you should see, which you actually get a clear shot of from the Bastion, is the Hungarian Parliament building. Its over on the Buda side and has an intricately beautiful neo-Gothic structure and is massive! The third thing is the Heroes’ Square, which looks very similar to the beginning of the Disney film “Hercules” in which there are the statues of the Greek gods situated on pedestals with columns separating one from the other. Here there are Hungarian heroes of all sorts glaring down at you from their podiums on high. In the middle is the Millenary Monument, with the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in front. I kind of liked the idea of honoring an unknown, it seems to make heroism a bit more attainable.

The fourth and most important reason to go to Budapest is the thermal baths. We hadn’t originally even planned to come to Budapest, we were still hoping on Greece until the riots broke out. But once Brian saw pictures of the baths online, we were looking up trains on how to quickly get here. We went to the Széchenyi Medicinal Bath, which is the largest medicinal bath in Europe. The water comes from two different thermals springs which are 74 and 77 degrees Fahrenheit. The baths looked like giant outdoor swimming pools with Jacuzzi warm water. There were waterfalls, fountains, bubbles, and mazes of warm water to swim through. True to form and to confirm the picture I had in my head, there were even older gentlemen in speedos (aka banana hammocks for the younger generation), playing chess on one of the ledges in the bath. Brian and I went under one of the waterfalls for awhile and let the water pound out the kinks that have continuously accumulated in our necks and backs since this trip began. Watching the water bounce up off the surface reminded me of a trip to Mexico I took with my Mom and my sister in which it started to rain as we floated around in the warm ocean water. The whole experience was incredibly relaxing and although somehow Brian got the VIP changing room in which he had men dress and undress him in a cushy dressing room while I was in the locker room watching a parade of Hungarian women march by and having childhood flashbacks of swimming with my sister at the JCC while Dad was playing volleyball, it still was amazing.

After over a month of travel on trains lugging around our heavy suitcases up and down metro stairs and across cobblestone streets, Brian and I have begun to grow a wee bit sore and tense in various areas of the body. So we decided that Budapest, being a fairly inexpensive city, was a good place to get massages. Now, I’ve had various massages throughout my life thanks to my mother who introduced me to them early on. I’ve had sports massages, aroma massages, Swedish massages, chiropractic massages, and deep tissues massages. This time we decided to try out Thai massages. Two quite petite Thai women put Brian and I in the same room and gave us tight fitting cotton pajamas to wear, so after undressing and redressing we were quite relaxed and ready to go. We had no idea what we were in for. Massaging must be their day-job because I swear at night these women are ninjas! At times I felt as though I should be fighting back as we were hit, walked on, and stretched over their legs and backs like a human rack. Don’t get me wrong, after felt amazing, it was just during that was a bit questionable, especially when my masseuse grabbed and twisted my head so that my neck cracked all the way down my spine. I kept thinking, “At what point are they both going to kill us and take our money and passports to leave for the states?” The session ended with a delicious cup of fruit tea, and although I wasn’t sure if I was being physically abused or not, my body has never felt better. Thank you ninja massage ladies!

One of my favorite parts about the metros in Budapest were the noises they would make. As we would come to each stop there would be a series of ascending notes as if you’d passed a level in a video game (very similar to original Super Mario Brothers). And then again when the doors closed, a series of descending notes would play right before the metro started to go as if introducing you to the new level you were about to play. It made the rides a bit more exciting as we thought we were constantly winning! On one particular metro ride, I happened to notice a woman signing to a friend or relative of hers across the train. A few minutes later I noticed that the group of ten or so people they were with were also signing. Men, women, and even the small children were all signing to each other across the crowded noisy metro car. It was pretty cool to witness and I wish I knew more sign language so I could have joined in with them.

Another nice thing about staying with Eitam is that he had some time left on his international calling card so Brian and I were both able to call home. Now my parents are both remarried and I have one sister by blood and an extended family including four step-brothers, two-stepsisters, three nieces and one nephew. When my first two nieces and my nephew (all on my Mom’s side) were born and growing up I was in high school and college so I didn’t get to be around for too much of the early development. My brother (we got past step a long time ago) Joe and his wife Jordan had a baby named Rowan a year and a half ago and I’ve been able to watch her grow and see all the stages a child goes through early on. It has been a blessing. Well the other night when I called my Dad to say hi, he tried to get Rowan to say a few words to me since she’s just learning to talk. She was able to say “hi” a few times even though my Dad kept trying to have her say “Hi Tara.” My Dad was determined considering it was a long distance phone call and he swore she knew who I was. So then I heard my Dad in his adorable Grandpa voice take Rowan over to the fridge and point to one of the photos of Brian and I whilst saying, “Rowan, who’s that? Who’s that Rowan?” And sure enough loud as can be in her gleeful voice she exclaimed “Tara!” I cannot describe this feeling to you. I’m sure many of you have felt it. Hell, all of you parents out there have been able to experience it first-hand. But the fact that my eighteen-month-old niece recognized my face in a photo and connected it with my name brought tears to my eyes.

This trip has been an interesting one for sure. We’ve had our highs and our lows in each place as we’ve dealt with different languages, currencies, transportation systems, and different perceptions of how people view “Americans.” We made it through the battle getting to Interlaken, we braved and conquered getting jobs in Ireland, and somehow we’ve managed not to kill each other. I was lucky that the only real time I got sick I was in the loving caring hands of Ms. Sarah and her home in Galway, and when I twisted my ankle so massively that it swelled up to the size of a half eaten orange I was able to rest and relax while watching VH1’s top hits of the 90’s countdown at the home of Rik and Celine in Leiden. Apparently life knows when its ok to breakdown. Something or someone has been looking out for us on this journey, and once again the mishap we ran into this time at least happened while we were staying with friends. So we planned to leave on Monday morning in order to have four days in Croatia before venturing on to Venice. That way we could see Zagreb, Plitvice, Zadar, Split, and Dubrovnik in a whirlwind tour of Croatia. So we packed, and to Eitam and our dismay we left for the train station after a wonderfully relaxing stay. Now when we first arrived at the train station in Budapest we were supposed to meet Eitam under the main schedule board. Thank goodness he noticed us because there were hundreds of people in the one small space packed together searching for loved ones as they exited the trains. This time, not a soul. The train station was empty except for about twenty people, half of which were workers. And the schedule board only had two departing train times listed and no arrivals. Since our departing train wasn’t one of the two, I went to investigate. After talking to several workers who only spoke Hungarian but smiled politely and pointed me in another direction, I finally found a woman who used the word, “Strike.” “Strike?” I asked several times. “Yes strike,” she said. “No trains,” she said as she smiled at me as if she has just told me I was getting a puppy for Christmas. Seeing that the look on my face was in utter shock and I wasn’t moving out of line, another worker came over and used the words “Last Friday” and “We don’t know when” which added to my frustration but satisfied enough of an answer. I went back to Brian looking like someone had just run over that puppy the lady at the counter told me I was getting and told him in the same brief and overly eloquent tone she had used, “Strike . . . no trains.” Now in this situation, what can you do? We went to the international office and waited 45 minutes to ask more questions and get the same answer. No one knew how long it would go on for, and for now nothing was coming into or leaving Hungary. So we called Eitam who thought the whole situation was hilarious and was thrilled to have one more night with us, and we dragged our sad booties back across town to his place to reconvene and figure out a new plan of action.
We ended up spending the night eating at the Christmas Market and playing Scattegories with Eitam who has so aptly dubbed himself “JewPac Shakur.” We laughed like little kids at our predicament and how lucky we were to have such a good friend there to save us. Brian and Eitam bonded after Eitam kicked our booties with the “Things you find in the medicine cabinet” category, and they went on to satiate Brian’s curiosity by talking about how many ways Eitam knew how to kill someone after being in the Israeli army. All in all, it couldn’t have been a nicer end to another odd circumstance. Thank you Eitam 😊

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Comments

[Matt]

You are totally taking me with you to Petra. I have the missing pages to dad's Grail Diary!