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Published: April 30th 2006
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Ah yes...fabulous Budapest. I gotta say, being a traveller is rough. Yesterday we slept in, wandered around town, then spent over three hours trying out different thermal baths at Szechenyi Furdo baths in the central park in Budapest. Yah...life if rough.
We arrived in Budapest after a 7 hour train ride through the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and the Hungarian countryside, at around 7pm. Train rides are getting very boring, and we are starting to realize at certain moments just how stupid we are. It's really very humbling. Before we got on our train we actually spent a full hour panicking because our train was late and we thought that maybe we were in the wrong place. When the train actually arrived, we realized that it was in fact on time, and we are all just ridiculous idiots who can't tell time. It seems silly that not a single one of us would realize our error, but unfortunately it is our reality. We have since decided that since conventional time clearly does not work for us, we are going to invent a new unit called 'the grape', based on how many grapes you can eat in a certain amount of time.
Syechenyi Thermal Baths
This aint no Richmond Aquatic Centre...picture swimming in the backyard of a castle. One humbling thing I noticed while people watching in between naps: people come in so many different shapes and sizes. Most not so nice to look at haha. This was invented as we spent many hours eating grapes and navigating through seeds and, well, generally being quite bored on the train and having nothing else to occupy our time. Ya we're weird...I know you must all be feeling quite jealous right now that we are not YOUR travelling companions. Har.
The people at our hostel have been amazing, and recommended lots of great sites to see. As mentioned we spent pretty much all of our first day hopping from bath to bath in Syechenyi, a massive bath/spa/beer garden (it's europe after all...of course there's a beer garden component) located in the middle of the big city park. Budapest is beautiful and full of green space...and significantly devoid of tourists when compared to Prague which we just left behind.
We spent our evening lounging around and taking advantage of the free internet, then upon recommendation from the girl at the hostel, headed out to Zöld Pardon, an open air beer garden that opens only in the summer, and was enjoying it's first weekend run. This was by far our funnest night of the trip so far. This place was AMAZING. It was basically a huge open air
Dutchy Good Times
Team Brown meets Team Orange...congo line ensues. bar/night club. There were gazebo's selling food and alcohol everywhere, two separate dance areas, and just general awesomeness everywhere. Seriously words cannot express how fabulous this place was. We spent the night dancing to such random dance hits as: Grease Lightning, I Got My Mind Set On You (an old George Harrison song that I have never even heard on the radio before, let alone a bar, but that was seriously my favorite song from when I was about 3-12 years old), Ra-Ra-Rasputin, and a varied assortment of weird old Euro-favorites. Most surprising is the way europeans dance. Back home you really never see hard-core looking guys getting down to Grease Lightning and seriously loving it. Europe?...of course! We befriended a group of Dutch boys who were all dressed in orange, in celebration of the Queen's birthday...which inevitably led to us doing a congo line around the beer garden. Best night ever. Steph was quite popular as she showed off her dutch heritage, by singing Happy Birthday in Dutch at their insistance haha...bravo Steph.
Today we managed to roll out of bed at a decent hour, and headed off to the weekend flea market in the city park, then
Happy Queen's Day?
The madness that is outdoor dance parties and european boys who like to dance...seriously picture something ridiculous like 'I Will Survive' playing in the background. on to the House of Terror, one of the most interesting museums in the city. It's housed in a building that was the headquarters for both the nazi and communist parties from about 1930 to 1990, when the final Soviet elements in Hungary were removed. It also was the site of the communist jail and torture facilities, which were developed first underneath the building, then when that became overcrowded, they expanded to underground facilities that ran underneath the entire block of Andrassy Ut. A very sobering, but interesting experience. Coming from somewhere like Canada, we only learn the basics about places like Hungary, and seem to have the impression that problems generally ended after World War 2. In the case of somewhere like Hungary, one could arguably say that things actually got worse. It's also interesting when you consider that the final Soviet representative to Hungary was not dismissed until 1990, and the final Hungarian prisoner did not return home from his Soviet internment camp until 1989. Freedom is a relatively new thing here in Hungary...hard to believe that while I spent the first 7 years of my life in complete and total freedom, people on the other side of
Happy Birthday
Steph doing her Dutch heritage proud. the world were experiencing persecution to such an extreme, and living lives of total restriction. We may be loving the european party scene, but we are honestly learning SO much.
So that's two days in Budapest in a nutshell. Tomorrow morning we catch a taxi from our hostel at 4am (sick) and head off to the airport for...PARIS!! And a new addition to team brown (who has unfortunately informed me that she doesn't have a brown shirt...a problem that will have to be remedied quickly)...EMMA! Yes, travel companion #4 will be joining us, and phase 2 of our european adventure will begin. The theme of Phase 2?...sun, sand and big big cities. The excitement continues!
So until then,
Au Revoir!
xo,
Julia
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