Blogs from Hungary, Europe - page 158

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

Budapest has been AMAZING. It is everything I expected plus more. I´ll start at the beginning... We arrived in Budapest (with everyones luggage excet Mike´s) early Friday morning and took two taxies to our hostel, or so we thought. The taxi drivers kinda just dropped us off in front of this building and took our 4000 hufflepuffs or whatever currency those Hungarians use (okay, they use Fornets, but we liked calling them huffs). So, we walk into this building that looks nothing like a hostel and try to find someone that speaks English. Yeah, that doesn´t happen. About an hour later this lady says that she will take us to a meeting place and then another guy will come and take us to where we need to go. Karin is in some market so she says ... read more

Well, since last I wrote I've finally managed to get to a hotel "business centre" where the coimputers were working and not been told "We have virus, the IT manage is coming to fix to later!" ... read more

Good thing we speak German, we met absolutely no one in rural Hungary that spoke english. Would have been a shame since we discovered that even though Hungarians ARE almost as serious and dry as Germans they are actually quite nice and veeeery friendly (at least as far as our host in Keszthely goes, she'd greet us calling us "my dearest guests"). The other (veeeery) good thing is that, here too, essentials are pretty cheap and luxuries even more so. Totally clueless (as far as price standards go at least) we ordered 2 glasses of wine on our first day in Hungary and were rather speechless when we had to pay about 80 cents (EUR!!) for it - all up including tax of course! I still wonder how we managed to NOT get hammered that night:-). ... read more