"Welcome to Budapest"

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We woke up at 4:45 am for coffee and "proper goodbye," then caught a bus at 6:20 to Frankfurt Hahn Airport - Ryanair is very sneaky and uses this airport, which is one and a half hours from Frankfurt. Then, when we got there, Jan had to pay 20 euros to check his bag. We were relieved to get through with no further trouble. We had a huge cheese-pretzel, about 1 foot wide and a half-foot tall, for breakfast, and got on our flight. It was our first time on Ryanair, and I was struck by how much it felt like a chinatown bus. We both slept.

At the Budapest airport we went to an internet cafe and found out where our hostel was. I also saw a sign for coke and cappucino (mixed, that is), a bad food omen. We eventually got on the bus to the subway to Deak station. The subways look to be from the time of the Soviets (we later found out it is the oldest subway system in Europe), and it is fairly confusing. We switched to another line to get to our station, and emerged congratulating ourselves. It felt like we were the only tourists ever to attempt this, especially because everyone on the subway stared at us. We were greeted at the top by subway officials, who demanded 6,000 fts from each of us for not having the right stamp on our ticket. We paid, not sure how much this was. We then calculated that this was almost $40 each, and got really sad and bitter. Welcome to Budapest! We were in a terrible mood as we tried to find our hostel, across a huge construction site and through pushing crowds. Then we arrived and asked to pay 18 euros for our room, which we are no longer used to, and that put us in a worse mood. It was a very upsetting return to travel reality.

We made up our beds (a 10-bed room, but we are the only guests right now) in the nice, spare room. It is in a building with a courtyard and old tiles, traditionally European. We spoke to Jake, the young Chinese man with long black hair who runs the hostel (called Our Place, recommended by Andrea - thank you Andrea!). We asked about a place for lunch and he gave us a whole list of places we should visit, told us which beer to drink and how to use the metro and said all the right things to make us feel better, including "Oh, they've caught me too, it happens to everyone," and "use the internet for free here." He cheered us up and sent us off to get a traditional lunch.

It was a traditional country-style place, below street-level and dark, with wood paneling and tables, kitschy pictures and fake flowers and lots of mysterious heavy meat dishes and one very tempting surprise dish on the menu. We returned to the land of Madonna unexpectedly - "Vogue" and "It's Raining Men" were playing. I stuck with goulash and a disappointing beer, Jan had Gypsy-style pork with pork knuckles and parsley potatoes (he is embracing the cuisine with open arms). Then we set off to explore Budapest.


Jan's Paragraph:

For someone new to any place east of London, Budapest is probably the most other-wordly of places I have yet been to. Though technically a city of the "West," insofar as European history and culture have given it its Neo-Roman architecture and script (shop signs are mostly -- aside from McBurgerDonaldsKing and T-Com and Sharp and Ford, which has posted a giantblue neon sign over one of the main squares -- in Magyar, a confusing creature in itself, with words with accents over the vowels which alternate with consonants in quaint-seeming, and seemingly never-ending, exchanges of syllables), the Uralic speech brings you closer to Russia in color and mindset, and while looking over the yellow tumult of Pest's crowded streets Middle Eastern cities come to mind. The place reminds you that the stronghold of European culture indeed was built over a large amound of space and time, and not so regularly or predictably; in a local bookstore by the Danube I read that Magyars invading a German church back in the 900s found the sole occupant to be a simple-minded monk, so they invited him to feast with them. But it took another hundred years to truly cross over, with St. Stephen's conversion to Christianity, a, if not the, founding moment in Hungarian history and culture, which essentially turned them from a loosely confederated union of barbarians to a distinct people. But one feels closer to the East here, indeed, closer to Ukraine and Kazakhstan, but, perhaps, as we at first misheard Jake -- a native of the city now for two years -- this is truly "Istan Paris," or at least, yes, something like "Eastern Paris."

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Comments

[Sandy Sellon]

Greetings...
Dear Jan and Sarah, I am a friend of Cathy and Bob for many years and love your blog so far! A young friend in your age group went to India earlier this year with her boyfriend and they too had the same blog source as yourselves...theirs also was fascinating and I will look forward to hearing from you as time goes on!! You're both wonderful writers, need I say? cheers aplenty from Sandy

[Cathy]

A true travel commentary
Hi Sarah and Jan, I enjoy all the details you include in your blog. Since we can't be there to see, we love hearing about it and sort of match it or not to our preconceived notions of Budapest. Is there a city called Pest? Or is that short for Budapest? What is the art like there? I picture "abstract" with very strong, bright colors. How do people dress, is the soviet drabness still there? Cathy