Budapest

Budapest was quite the trip. Some pictures from the two days can be seen here.

It began at 4:40 on Friday morning, when we woke up to catch the 5:15 metro to Termini. We took the Leonardo Express out to Fiumicino Airport for an 8 AM flight, which was on time. After touching down, we rode into town on public transpo, and found our hostel. The hostel justified the high ratings on the internets. We paid 12 euro, and the six of us (Andy, Erin, Michelle, Teresa, a girl from Oxford, and myself) took over a huge room with its own bathroom. They even provided cereal for breakfast and free tea and hot cocao. And it was only 20 minutes from the Christmas market. What a deal.

Speaking of that Christmas market, we then walked along the Danube (we were on the Pest side. Budapest is split into Buda on the west side and Pest on the east) and stumbled on the Christmas market, where people were selling little trinkets and lots of delicious looking food. And hot wine. Yummy, yummy, warm wine (it was about 35 degrees outside. It snowed at some point on Friday a little bit). Also, there were a bunch of live performances. From there, we walked up to see the beautiful Parliament building, and we also found some old Communist park area. Very cool.

At that point, the group split up a little bit, and three of us (Andy, Michelle, myself) headed back to the Christmas market to see a traditional Hungarian dance performance. It was cool for a little while, and just as it was about to get a little dull, the people walked into the crowd and pulled us out to dance. The three of us tore up the proverbial rug, Hungarian style. It was a blast.

From there we went to dinner, where we had some great Hungarian food, for cheap. Budapest is the cheapest city I've been to so far. I can't imagine it will be cheaper anywhere else. Anyways, I had some goulash and fried food, and we shared and it was good and filling. At that point, Michelle wanted to go to the hostel and crash, but it was only 9:30 or so and I was having none of that nonsense. I said "hey, let's go climb that hill in Buda!", and so we did. Excellent decision. A highlight of that whole experience was us running across the bridge over the Danube to Buda. The run was long (big river), but exhilarating. I will never forget that. Nor will I forget the sweet view from Buda. Budapest is the "Paris of Eastern Europe", and it was truly a city of lights. From there, we headed back to the hostel, got some tea, and I beat Andy in chess. We went to bed at 1:30. Long day.

The next morning, we left the hostel around 10:20. Most of the group went to these famous public baths of Budapest, but Michelle and I weren't really in the mood, so we explored Buda and went up to a Castle. More great views were seen, etc. We also went into some church. We met back up with the whole crew at this labyrinth area under the Castle, where Hungary installed some kind of fake historical stuff down in real old caves. "Authentic copies", I think were the words on the pamphlet. Anyways, the museum was fun, and it had rocks with fossilized computers from the future and stuff. Odd, but fun. We then went to a sweet art nouveau cafe, took some pictures at the top of the hill, and then went down. The others went to the hostel to pick up their stuff, while I went to the Christmas market for some hot wine (I had my stuff with me all day). We met up at a restaurant near the train station. We had to kill a lot of time, and we milked that restaurant for all we could. We were there from about 7 until 10:30. Good times. Good food, as well. Fried = delicious. There's probably a reason Hungarians didn't look so great. That and the sun not coming out. Not that I'm in position to fault people for not having a tan. Anyhoo, we eventually got on our train at 12:30 AM for the airport (our flight was at 6 AM this morning), but we missed our stop at the airport, so we had to improvise and walk three or four miles in the dark using our sense of direction in random Hungarian streets to the airport. Success. From there, we got on the plane, on time, back home, no problem.

A problem did arise when I was riding the bus back to Medag. For the sake of legality, I will keep this in the hypothetical realm. Theoretically, I might have attempted to free ride on the bus by not stamping a metro ticket, and I might have unsuccessfully attempted to stamp the ticket when a group of transportation people jumped on the bus at a random stop to check tickets. One of those dudes might have noticed, and might have tried to lecture me and fine me, but I might have gotten off because I couldn't really understand him and he couldn't understand me. I might have gotten off the bus at the next stop, in case he changed his mind.

All things considered, it was an excellent trip. That's my last trip before the end of the semester. That's sad.