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Published: August 23rd 2007
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We arrived in at Budapest at one of their 3 main train stations (Keleti). We were greeted with a larged arched roof similar to the German stations however the whole station appeared to have a rather dirty and run down appearance.
We were staying at a hostel which was near one of the other main stations (Nygati) a bit like the situation in Vienna and we had to work out how to get there. We couldnt seem to find a map of the public transport network other than the metro system however the metro line which connected to Keleti terminal was conveniently closed. All we had was the advice of the guy at the information window who said we needed to catch red trolley bus number 73 from around the corner. The printout we had from the hostel reservation said the to catch this same bus from opposite the "MC". But we had no idea what the MC was. After walkg around and around in circles several times we found the red trolley bus. It turned out that the "MC" was a McDonalds store.
When we got to our hostel which did not appear to be located in the
nicest area, our host told us that we would not be staying in this building and that we would instead be staying somewhere else where they stick "foreigners". He then loaded our bags into his car and took us several blocks away telling us that we would be staying in a brand new apartment building.
When he showed us to our room it turned out we had a bed and not much else - this included curtains and proper pillows. Our room faced into a sort of courtyard in the middle of the apartment block and it meant that everyone else on the other side could see in. It also meant that it got quite light early in the morning. Nonetheless, we somehow managed to scrape through and met some other backpackers from France who were also staying there. The place itself was quite nice, it was really just the lack of curtains and the inconvenience of having to go back to the other place to check out!
The next day we caught a tram down towards the Danube River which splits the areas of Pest (the flat side where we were staying) and Buda (the hilly side
which contains the palace). Ross was impressed to find that our tram was another Combino similar to the D class tram in Melbourne which we also saw in Amsterdam. Whereas the Melbourne trams come in 3 and 5 section versions, the Budapest ones are 6 sections long, which is really long! Despite this the trams were packed.
Once we got to the river we caught another older tram which ran along next to the river so that we could have a look at the view on the other side. However as we travelled along in the tram we could see lots of food stalls around as if there was some sort of festival on. We had heard someone else mention that the Red Bull Air Race was in town. We walked along through the festival area and asked someone about the Air Race. It turned out that the qualifying event was going to be on that day. We thought we might have a look to see what it was all about.
Before qualifying however, there were some other things we thought we would check out in town. Firstly we tried to go into one of their famous bath houses however we found this to be really expensive and didnt know what you were meant to do when you went inside so we gave that a miss. We then walked up a big hill to check out the citadel on top. It was a very hot day and we were quite stuffed when we got up there. We only went breifly to the palace area within the fortifications before it was time for qualifying to begin so we headed down to the river and sat on the bank with heaps of other people.
It turned out the event involved tiny planes going really fast under a bridge and through various gates consisting of tall pairs of markers floating in the river. It was quite exciting stuff and we amused ourselves trying to take pictures of planes going through the markers.
Our overall impression of Budapest was that the main city area was quite a dirty place and that the local people were not particularly friendly, not making much effort to try to understand English unlike everywhere else we had been. They also have a strange currency which isnt worth very much compared to the Euro and makes it very difficult to work out how much to withdraw from an ATM. Despite this, Budapest does have some very beautiful buildings that were worth the visit.
One good thing did happen on the day we were leaving Budapest and that was that the metro line which ran direct from our apartment building to the train station we arrived at and were due to leave from reopened after a period of some 6 months.
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