Two cities one name - Budapest

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According to an excellent website, seat61.com, which has information about all sorts of train travel around the world we should have been able to purchase a cheap ticket from Istanbul to Budapest with a quick train change in Bucharest. Unfortunately the agent at the train station was not helpful and prices must have jumped because instead of the 30-50€ listed on line we were quoted €310 for a six person berth. So we decided to take a flight from Turkey to Budapest to save time.
Once again Sam found us an Ibis hotel and as we were making change for the bus I overheard an American GI on leave asking the clerk for an inexpensive hotel around 50-80€. We introduced ourselves and took Carl under our wing. He was amazed how we casually guessed at maps and jumped on and off subway trains on our way to the hotel. Carl was waiting for his wife to fly in the next evening and vowed to tackle the subway and buses himself when he went back to the airport to pick her up gloating how proud she would be of his accomplishments. The following morning we set out to see both Buda and Pest. The city is divided in two by the Danube. Our first stop was the old city of Buda. An area called Castle Hill overlooks Pest and the parliament buildings. We climbed to the area called Castle Hill which is a beautiful walled city with a large church in the middle. When we arrived there were two men dressed in period costume with a large hawk and a massive brown eagle sitting on a statue for Stefanus Rex (King Stefan). Also within the walled city sits the Royal Palace that now is a museum. From there we walked across the Chain Bridge. It really it is just an ordinary suspension bridge, with nice visual appeal but we were not sure of what all the hype over the bridge was. We continued walking through Pest on our way back to the hotel. The walled city area of Buda is nice and quaint and the area of Pest close to the parliament buildings and university is also clean, unlike the downtown Pest. Close to the university we stopped next to Saint Stefen’s Basilica for lunch. After dodging construction for four blocks we continued our walk. We gathered our packs from the hotel and headed out to the train station for our 6:00 p.m. trip to Vienna. Along the way piles and piles of trash lined the sidewalks. The rubble looked like people were gutting old apartments and everything from computers, appliances and TVs to kitchen cabinets, couches and clothing was thrown on the street. People that looked like contractors were breaking open electronics scavenging cables while street bums went through garbage bags sorting items into piles. It appeared that the people dropping off the junk granted the bum closest to the pile ownership and the bum then started charging others for the items they scavenged. Avoiding the trash we arrived at the train station ready for country number 34.

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Photos

King Stephan Statue
He forced Catholicism on his people resulting in Hungary being aligned with European ideals.

Street sale of junk
Wierd thing- It seems the poor collect trash/junk then have a spot on the sidewalk they store it and people search through it as if at a garage sale. Some of it real TRASH...I could just think of the term pack rat.