Blogs from Budapest, Central Hungary, Hungary, Europe - page 112

Hello all Well here I am, in Budapest! It's bloody hot here. About 38 degrees in the shade. Luckily I did the senisble thing and went on a hop on hop off bus tour around the city - so no traipsing around in the scorching, brain-dissolving heat like I was fool enough to do in Rome. Is beautiful city in two parts - Buda and Pest, straddling the Danube. Bits of it remind me of London. Theyve got heros square which has neo-classical art building at one end (like our national gallery) which is also an art gallery and then a massive collumn in the middle but instead of nelson - what looks like an angel. At the base of the column it was very different as they had statues of scary looking Eastern types (think ... read more

Budapest is an incredible city. Elegant, composed, and vibrant--qualities we found remarkable as the place has been out from under the stifling Soviet influence for less than 15 years. Budapest's refinement seemed all the more remarkable after a thorough education into the terror that reigned the nation during successive Nazi and Stalinist governments. We had no idea until visiting the city's world-class "Terror House" museum exactly how difficult Hungarians of our parents' and grandparents' generations had it. First the city. As we said briefly in our last installment, Budapest somehow avoided erecting the monstrous and dull Communist buildings that stand on every Bucharest street corner like gulag comendants. (see picture). Budapest feels more like "Old Europe" than just about anywhere we've been, including most of Old Europe. While we lack the architectural jargon to describ... read more

Since we last wrote from Istanbul we've travelled back in time through Romania and Hungary to an era when Billy Idol, White Snake and Boy George, rollerblading and mullets were all extremely fashionable. For anyone eager for a dose of 80's nostalgia should certainly pay a visit to a the former Communist bloc. We bid farewell to our lovely Turkish hotel (and its crazy owner who repeatedly, but unsucessfully, requested that Alissa help him put his contact lenses in his eyes) and spent a full 24 hours (scheduled for 16 hours) twiddling our thumbs in a sleeper car through Bulgaria to Bucharest, Romania. Our first impression, made upon our arrival at 10pm, was that the city seemed quiet. Not busy with traffic, not full of people, not lit up with restaurants and cafes. We thought that ... read more

yesterday morning we got a slow start since we both had to ˝beautify˝ourselves for an afternoon at the thermal baths. breakfast was my amazing honey yogurt with bits of oat and then bread with my ham cream cheese. LOL. we also caught a glimpse of our new apartment-mates, these two girls about our age from presumably the UK. the first thing on the day's agenda was the West End Shopping Center, eastern europe's largest shopping mall. btw this keyboard is all switched around so pardon any horrendous spelling errors. kasia needed a bathing suite and i decided that i hated mine so we both HAD to buy new ones. i ended up getting the first one i saw at quicksilver but for whatever reason if you're a girl and looking for a non-whorish bathing suite, you're ... read more

our last full day in Prague was spent basically wandering around the city...we had a rather late start and journaled and had some breakfast in the lounge before finally heading out. first we had to do some errands, the primary one being laundry. we walked over to traveller's hostel down the street and dropped off our laundry, quasi-pretending we were staying there. they didn't ask any questions, so that was easy. we stopped back to pick up our forgotten passports, kasia got pizza and myself a drink from albert's, and then we headed to the train station to purchase our tickets to hungary. probably our favorite part of the morning's journey was seeing an old man's scrotum hanging out of his shorts on the metro. dobry den, indeed! once our "business" was done with, we took ... read more