Bail us out in Budapest

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Aww... Budapest. I had a really great time in Budapest and I think it was due mostly to the interesting things we did and the events that we can look back on now and laugh at (although at the time they weren't quite as funny). Unfortunately our entire time in Budapest was met with cloudy skies and the occasional rainfall... although the city itself was very interesting because of the unique architecture and city layout, niether of these attributes can be as memorable as our personal interractions there.

The train to Budapest was the closest train ride I've had to a nightmare since we've been on the road. I'm pretty sure these people time their passport and ticket checks to coincide perfectly with the exact moment you find a perfect sleeping position and begin your first dream. I honestly think we must have been checked close to ten times that evening and the worst part was that on one of the checks we found out that we were actually breaking the law. Based on the particular Eurrail ticket that Emily and I bought we are restricted from going through the Czech (which is why we took Prague off of our list of places to go). Knowing this, we gave each of the ticket reservation agents our Eurrail passes so they would know our restrictions and book us on a line that didn't violate our passes. Apparently in Venice their system doesn't work that way so at 2am in some random town in the Czech we came close to being stranded. Luckily I had some emergency cash with me and could cover the price of our tickets for that leg of the journey but the big burly ticket man who didn't speak English didn't help in our sleeping attempts for the rest of the trip.

When we got to Budapest we were pretty tired from the overnight train so we decided to just get some errands done and maybe figure out something relaxing to do that evening. After talking to some of the people at the hostel we found out that there was a Jazz club not too far from where we were staying that was not only a jazz lounge but a restaurant as well. Being quite the jazz buff myself and not having many opportunities to listen to a live band we decided to have dinner at this restaurant called "Jazz Garden". Although the food was really good at this place the music definitely made the evening. It started with a set band who played a few songs... a pianist, bassist, and drummer. After a little while this band took a break in their set and offered the stage up to anyone else who wanted to give it a go. This was really impressive and even better than the set band because there were people who came up who got together for a jam session even though they had never played together. The best part about that was that in some of the cases the amateur musicians were better than the pros.

The next day was our "See Budapest" day. We went all around the city and visited the main square, saw Museum row, went to the castle, and stopped into the Opera house. Inside the opera house you can tell right away that this place is really old and very ornate. As visitors, however, we were only allowed in the main entranceway because to actually see the opera house you had to pay for a tour, which cost something ridiculous like 12 Euro. While we were standing there taking pictures a bunch of people were standing in line ordering tickets from the box office and kind of sarcastically I said that we should just see an opera while we were there. After checking with the box office we found that we could get some pretty crappy seats for the show that night for only 4 Euro. Judging that we spent more than that on a bus ticket or a bar of soap we decided to just go with it and take our chances with the seats.

Now, when the woman said that they were "bad" seats... what she really should have told us that a blind person has a better chance of enjoying the show than we would from the position we were sitting in. They tell you you're going to sit in the side box and your first inclination is "Wow! Really? Those seats are so cool and have really good views!" That would be a correct assumption considering you were sitting in the FIRST row of these boxes but no one bothers to tell you, "Oh by the way, you're sitting BEHIND the people with the view so you will get a nice view of the back of their heads and the wall. Thankfully the show was a three act performance so we didn't mind missing the first act too much. Instead of pulling a muscle trying to see the show, Em and I spent the first act looking for other seats in the audience that we could nab during intermission. For the second act (although it took us a good half an hour to figure out how to even GET upstairs) we got some good seats in the upper balcony and enjoyed the second and third acts of the show.

The show itself was pretty intersting... to say the least. There were three acts. The first two were ballets and the third was an opera. The strange thing was that I felt like I went to the movies for a triple feature. After the first act there was a curtain call and although we couldn't figure it out at first we realized this was because those dancers weren't coming back. Instead, the second ballet was with a completely new cast and a storyline from a different world, in a different time, with absolutely nothing to do with the first act (or at least nothing as far as we were concerned). After the second act there was yet another curtain call followed by an opera that, again, had seemingly nothing to do with the first two acts. This was until at the end of the opera the main female dancers from the first two ballets showed up on stage again in their old costumes and became a part of the opera as well. All of it was quite confusing and we felt that the opera was a little dry but it was definitely a once in a lifetime experience that we couldn't ask for a better price to go see.

The cheap price of the ballet, however, was definitely paid off in time wasted in the metro station on the way there. While we were on the way to the ballet we were approached by the metro police to show him our ticket for the ride. Earlier that day we had bought a "five stop" ticket and to that point we had only used three stops so as far as we knew we were completely valid. When he checked our tickets, however, we found out that they had a time expiration limit on them and actually expired an hour after we bought them. First of all, who stops and gets BACK on the metro FIVE times in a single hour? After we found out we were in the wrong we made every effort to explain to him that we would pay for whatever new tickets we needed and that we were sorry but the ticket agent didn't inform us of any time limit on the tickets. This guy was definitely a guy on a power trip looking to make some easy cash off of dumb American tourists. He threatened to call the cops on us a few times and expected us to give him 5000 forints in cash. Not only should no one be expected to carry that much cash on them at all times but he actually expected us to believe that there was NOTHING else he could do besides take cash from us right that second or arrest us. This already made me skeptical about the whole situation but what made things even worse was that he forced us to let him look into our wallets to prove we didn't have cash, walked us OUTSIDE and DOWN THE STREET to a bank to tell us to get money, and then when we refused, started asking us for American Dollars or Euros to pay off the fine... I don't know ANY real official who would just be like "Okay well if you don't have the amount of the fine just give me whatever money you have in whatever currency you have available." All he kept doing was asking us for money and telling us that this was "a big problem"... which we understood but at the same time he wasn't doing anything about it. Although he could have potentially made us late to the opera I was very adament about NOT getting ripped off that night and after standing around with him in the metro station while he tried to think of more ways to get money out of us he finally just let us go.

These are the people we continuously met in Budapest... not to mention a few workers at a Gelato/Pastry shop who were upset because we ordered two rounds of Gelato and not only gave us dirty looks for our American apetites but tried to tell me that because my money had a tiny rip in it, it was worthless and they couldn't take it.

We had a really amazing time seeing some of the more cultural sides of Budapest, however, if you're looking for a great tourist city who cater to the comfort and well-being of their visitors... I don't know if this is the first place I would recommend.

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