Budapest

When last we left him, our hero was leaving Vienna for Budapest.



I got to the train station, which was genuinely, quite ugly, and exactly what you would expect from an Eastern Bloc nation. I followed the wonderful directions that my hostel provided, which read "take any bus, as they all go past the hostel" and promptly went in the complete wrong direction. Fortunately, the driver, who was encased in what I can only assume was bullet proof glass, was kind enough to inform me that the bus would eventually turn around and go back to where I wanted to go. I therefore found myself driving past said ugly train station a solid three quarters of an hour after I had left it going in the other direction.

I finally got to my hostel, gladly got rid of my bag, and headed out for food and a beer. Fortunately for me, both of these are served in mammoth portions. All Hungarian food is just meat in some sort of sauce with potatoes or bread on the side. There are many different variations of sauces/meats etc. but it never differs beyond that. Beer is also served in litre jugs. It's quite impressive when it gets to the table, but a little warm towards the end, unless you make sure to stay on top of your drinking.

Whereas Vienna was recovering from the Euro Cup, Budapest was just under construction. All of it. There were many beautiful buildings that I wanted to take pictures of, but they were all covered in scaffolding, and swarming with scary looking construction workers. Definitely not the type that you would want to meet down a dark alley. The only problem being that there are few roads in Budapest that aren't small dark alleys.

Sorry, I must clarify. Buda is all small dark alleys. I never actually made it to Pest. I was at the river and took pictures of Pest on the other side of the river, but I never actually walked across the bridge. For all I know, Pest could be broad, sun dappled avenues of the finest nature, and I was just too lazy to walk the hundred meters or so to find out.

Went up to the castle at night, which was gorgeous. It was all lit up and none of my pictures do it any justice. Apparently the homeless population agrees with me, because as I was walking around the back side of the building, I heard some definite snoring coming from amongst the bushes. Either that, or some workaholic gardener was sawing logs in the deep brush in the middle of the night.

I came back and played some poker with some guys in the hostel, taking great pleasure winning money from the French guys. I have nothing against the French, but my sax player keeps busting my chops, so any kind of dig I can get against the French feels good.

The next day was more wandering around, and went out at night with a few kids from the hostel, and had a really good time. Made it to two different pubs, both of which were quite strange. The first one was down an alley, past the dumpsters, and through a bicycle parking lot before actually finding yourself in the place. It had a big open square with a random car sitting in the middle. The second place was tricky to find, but it had a rooftop to hang out on, which was awesome as the sun came up (yeah we stayed up pretty late that night). At the table next to us, cool as a cucumber, some guy just chopped out lines of coke and tossed them back. It was quite surreal in the middle of a bar for someone to just be so nonchalant about something like that.

I had a blast in Budapest, and wanted to stay another day, but my reservation was set for Prague, so it was time to move on.

To be continued...