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Published: January 11th 2012
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Family
I'd mentioned I'd gone home, this time I managed to gather four of my guest family together for a photo, shockingly You'd think a wanderer in Vienna could think of something better to do in Vienna on a Wednesday night than write a blog, but you'd be wrong. Anyways, hello there! I'm sitting in my hostel, waiting for laundry to finish, and just generally taking it easy for tonight. It turns out that travelling can actually wear a guy down after two weeks. If it's not the constant walking on crappy shoes, then the nightly benders are guaranteed to slow one down eventually. So that's meant my return to Vienna has been a quiet one, filled with all the things I should've done a week ago.
I've a lot of ground to cover, so let's get started! I'd decided a while back, mainly because I'm a stubborn cuss, that I wanted to stick to my original travel plans closely. This meant that in spite of the detour to Berlin for the infernal Belgian visa (the holy grail of foreign travel), I turned right around again and shot south. I think I touched for a moment on Dresden, it was nice, but that's about all I could say on it. From there we can get into the fun parts of the trip.
St. Stephan's Cathedral
Behold the home to St. Stephen, founder of Hungary and the leader of the Magyar tribes, They built him a nice house... The first stop was Budapest. Not the first on the train mind you, oh no, the ride from Dresden was a cheerful nine hours, most of it spent cursing my insistence on avoiding more expensive options like airplanes and teleporters. Regardless, after a little bit of confusion I did find my hostel, which leads me to a segment we'll call:
Did I just take out 20,000 of something? Meaning no disrespect to Budapest or Hungary at large but the local currency, which strongly reminds me of monopoly money, is awesome. My first time at an ATM was spent getting all the funds I knew I'd need for a few days, plus the hostel fare. So naturally, for someone who tries very hard to cut out all expenses outside of two things, namely beer and transit funding, it was a pleasant surprise to feel like an oil baron for five seconds. Of course that vanished when I discovered a cup of mulled wine was six hundred Forint...something that was paid in coins. Where I'm going with this is that Budapest was astoundingly cheap, even though just about everything was nice. Leading me to segment two:
Stephen's hand
Turns out, Stephen is the patron saint of human jigsaw puzzles. His right hand is here, parts of it are in other cities, his head, and probably his spleen, elsewhere still. "Well, we're going to a bar in about five minutes, want to come?" This was one of the first things one of the hostel owners said to me. I was exhausted, and had been travelling for hours, so naturally I said why not. Where I ended up going was a place called Szimpla, and it brought a new definition to fun. Turns out that when Communism imploded in Hungary, many of the buildings were, well, more crappily built than the rest and had been abandoned. These in turn were occupied by a rather entrepreneurial group of squatters, and thus the ruin pub was born. Essentially a whole house or apartment turned into an ad hoc bar, these places are incredible, and to me Szimpla is king. Noisy, raucous, and just generally more fun that most things in this world, I loved the Ruin Pubs, and anyone who visits this city owes it to themselves to check them out. Which leads me to my next point.
I could live here No fooling around here. Of course my future's far from set in stone over here, and features an unfortunate clock (money), but Budapest really
is pretty awesome. Aside from hilarious sights from the world's first attempt at real life photo shop (a swapped out soviet star for an olive branch) and other points like Europe's biggest synagogue, it's just generally a place that feels so alive, and more critically has an exchange rate that brings a broad smile to my face. It's also a place I could live for a month for essentially nothing. Remember how I mentioned my hostel owners took me to a bar? Well it turns out they need a helper over the summer. So basically paying for my housing with sheets cleaning is a real possibility. Weirdly enough my hostel was also a place I'd happily live in again. Small, hard to find, and populated strictly by the most eccentric collection of fellow travelers the world's produced, everyone from Brazilian backpackers to Russians and an English who now lived there, the place was always filled with music, laughter, and at least one open bottle of spirits. I generally made my own meals, and outside of Palinka, a Hungarian fruit brandy guaranteed to help you on your way to permanent brain damage, I didn't get much of a taste from the
Szimpla
Crap photo I know, but meet one of the best places I've found in Europe. local food. Ok, one bowl of Goulash doesn't count. To top things off, for less than the cost of a Döner in Berlin I saw the Budapest Philharmonic in their concert hall. Yeah, this was a good trip. There's just one snag:
Hello I'm trying to get to Hermkbmapofiuadlfj I don't think that's quite the spelling, but when I was lost and trying to find my way home one night, I discovered just how difficult Magyar can be. Ah well, it's irrelevant, what other language toasts one another with a word that can double as both "good health" and "on your ass"? (Agashaegedre, onomatopoeia style). In short, this makes the short list of places I may come back to for the summer. Looks like my regaling of Bratislava will have to wait a bit, ah well, til then, enjoy my dear readers!
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