Blogs from Budapest, Central Hungary, Hungary, Europe - page 120

The last three days have been very long. On Wednesday morning, I got up and caught the 8:38am train to Budapest. No problems doing that. Made it to Budapest and was able to leave my bag at the train station for only 630 Forints. (By rough calucations I think that is about 1.80 pounds or $3.50.) I headed out to explore the city and the whole thing was completely covered in slush. Did not make for the best walking tour. I came into town at the Keleti Station and from there I wanted to go to the Heroes' Square (cause my sister said I shoud)--but there is no Metro line that goes there. Oh well. I just decided to walk it since it was not tooooo far away. On my way there, I wandered though the ... read more

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It was both unbelievable and completely normal to meet my girls from College Park in Budapest. Rachel and I arrived mid-morning, after a three-hour early train from Vienna. "Well, here we are!" we said, a little baffled, as we were the only people in all the train-station bustle lacking direction. I had to use the bathroom but that required Hungarian forints, which neither of us had; to add to our general bewilderment couldn't read signs and kept on forgetting that asking questions in German did little good. But it was a beautiful day. Sunlight floods the station through huge, art-nouveau style windows. We managed to find our hostel on a map, and decided to ignore the directions Lindsay had given us ("take bus 7, it goes directly there") and would walk to the hostel instead. We ... read more

Finally, for the first time in seven years I was able to make it back to my second passport country! Wow, much has changed since ’98. Not least of which was the airport. Ferihegy has made amazing changes. I have not so fond memories of landing to semi-organized chaos in a stinky dingy baggage claim area. Not so today! Nicer than many a North American airport I have been to, and more non-smoking areas than Frankfurt. Ok, so the airport has been covered. The timing of my trip coincided with the 49th anniversary of the Hungarian revolution. Nationalistic décor abounded in Pest, and it helped to make my trip all that much more eventful. I had heard nothing but good things about the Terror Museum, and was able to fit in a several hour visit into ... read more

Evenin' all. Since last we blogged we have been enjoying the delights and....well, the other bits of Budapest. Sam insisted we discuss the extremely fast escalators that you need a prepared run-up to get on 'cos they're so quick. And the lifts that have not been serviced since the fall of the Soviet Union and therefore cant really take Ben jumping around doing busted impressions! Anyways our first night saw us stumbling upon the rather spectacular light-art-show-thing, certainly brightens up the place! Since then we have seen the awesome Parliament building, Basilica, and hero's square, the slightly less awesome Royal palace and today the pretty uninspiring castle. We also strolled through a nearby park only to be called into action to rescue a cute lil' dog which had strayed from its owner...we'll be in Hero's square ... read more