Lizzy in Vienna!: April 2008

I just spent a fantastic weekend in Budapest! I have to admit it was quite a bit different from what I was expecting. I think I had this really eastern Islamic vision of the city, but it really wasn't like that at all. Budapest is really two cities in Hungary that are divided by the Danube River, with Buda being the older side with the castles and ruins, and Pest being the more metropolitan side. Regardless of whatever delusion I was under about the history of Budapest, what I found was beautiful and amazing.

So we left after class on a Friday afternoon and jumped the train to Budapest. It was about 3 hours long, but we managed to amuse ourselves :)

We arrived in a beautiful grand old train station, Keleti Pályaudvar, tried to exchange Euros for Hungarian Florents, but we pretty much were getting screwed by the exchange places. I decided to take out 10,000 from the ATM. Don't freak out Mom, it was only like $40 :D

We found our way out of the train station, somehow managed to find an subway station and tried in vain to figure out what the hell the Hungarian signs meant. We ended up figuring out we had to head towards something like this: Deli palyaudvar. We somehow found our hostel (Jump In Hostel) which was so adorable! It was in the middle of an old apartment complex with a big walled in courtyard, peeling paint, dilapidated wooden doors and cute little dogs. I loved it.

We also met some pretty interesting people. I made friends with a girl from Las Vegas who had just finished a year of school in France. We also met Brian from Sydney. Well, we think his name is Brian. So here's the story: We were all sitting around and this strange older man, probably in his late 50's, is just kinda sitting on his bed staring at us. We wore the same baggy sweater flip flops and warm up pants all weekend. Actually, I never saw him leave the hostel room. We were all kinda cuddling on one bed, so he asks "Oh is this some kind of new game?" We were like "Uhhhh sure." Then he looks at Myles and says "Oh I bet you're winning." We just kinda sat there and looked around, being really confused, and then he starts talking again. "Is your name perhaps Brian? No? Well everytime my mind starts pondering about you, I seem to think your name is Brian. Oh, well maybe its my name that's Brian." Then he asked: "Are any of you by chance physicists? No? Well I've been having this little dialogue with myself for quite some time over a physics problem and I think I've gotten it figured out. I've been waiting for quite some time to run across a physicist." Oh. Awesome Brian. I kinda liked him, except that his favorite pastime seemed to be staring at us during odd hours and making strange burping sounds all night. Regardless, he was a great source of entertainment to us, as I believe we were to him.

Anyways, after meeting Brian we had a wonderful Goulash finding adventure, followed some scenesters to a strip club called Akropolis (we didn't go in) and then just kinda wandered back to our hostel, entertained Brian with our Americanness, watched Anna figure out her Rick Steve's Sleep Sack, and went to bed.

The next morning we got up, went to coffee and got a scone or two, and headed off to Buda. Luckily our hostel was only a few blocks from the river and we walked right over Erzsébet híd or Elizabeth Bridge, and straight into Buda. We saw a cute little hike up the hill right after the bridge so we went along, taking pictures about every 50 feet. Literally.

We wandered around, not really knowing where we were, for a little while, ended up finding a castle, the Budapest Museum, and a really cute little part of old town. There was Szentháromság tér (Matthias Church) with a cute Budapest marching band outside! The view, as well as the church was astonishing. You could see all the way up the Donau and see all the beautiful buildings on the other side in Pest.

We stopped to picnic in the worst possible weather! But it was great and we all split french bread, brie cheese, and apples and watched amusedly on while Mark tried to eat sardines. The weather magically got better and we ventured out to see a rather large fountain. I think we did a pretty good recreation of it.

After crossing the Chain Bridge, we visited the Parliament, posed with more statues, saw a lot of drunk Irish men weaving back and forth on the sidewalk (Laura and I saw a little TOO much of one of them) and found Szent István tér (St. Stephen's Church). This church was unbelievable. It literally looked covered in gold. There was also a wedding there :)

Dinner was at a place called Menza, which Sofie had read amazing reviews about, and it was probably the best meal we've all had since coming here. Delicious! We ended the night with a stop at a wine bar to sit and chat, and I think I was laughing so hard I could hardly drink my wine! We somehow got onto the subject of Myles being a large, Under-Armour-Tight-wearing-Tim's Cascade style potato chip made with peanut oil trying to chase down poor she'll-die-if-a-peanut-touches-her Sarah. Sofie obligingly sketched the scene for us. I guess you just had to be there.

The next day we pretty much just walked around Pest, had breakfast at Burger King because we were poor, and made our way to the Hungarian Baths. Now for some reason we all thought that Hungarian Baths were generally nude and separated by gender. Which would have actually been good because only Winona and I had actually brought swim suits with us. Well TURNS OUT they're not nude at all. Which was great for me, but meant everyone else had to wear they're underwear. Yay for being prepared! We had so much fun though winding around crazy halls trying to find the Thermal Baths and the Saunas and the Swimmingpools. I really think it was designed so you could never get out. It was that crazy. And none of us could afford to get towels so we're just walking around basically in our underwear amongst not only women but men as well, which proves false our other assumption about the baths being segregated by gender. Oops! We ended up just kinda running around, found the boys, and enjoyed a good hour and a half of healing thermal pools :) Not to mention the building was amazing! Literally all of the pools were surrounded by pillars and fountains and open air arched roofs. It was like swimming in a Grecian palace or something. It was also really funny watching a creepy Italian pool boy hit on Laura and tell her how he liked "giggly American women." All the creepy euro-trash guys in speedos were also really funny !