Bratislava and Budapest: Part 2

Let's see, I think I left off on barely making the train to Budapest?

BTW, hopefully you guys don't think this is too long or boring to read. If it is, don't read it all. If it isn't, then at least I've provided with tons of reading material for when you should be doing something else. I am forever grateful to other peoples' blogs for my hours' worth of procrastination in college.

K, Budapest. Well, the train got in around 2:30 or something. OK, before I talk about that, let me tell you about this couple that was in my compartment. The train was only compartments again, like the night train from Munich, so I had to find one that had spots that were unreserved. Most had open seats, so I tried to find one with the fewest people already in it. There was this (Irish? British?) couple in the compartment sitting across from each other by the door and another lady sitting in one of the seats by the window. Now, I've already told you how little leg room there is in those compartments. Being part of a couple is excellent, because you can stretch out across the aisle and your significant other doesn't care if your feet are all up in his/her space. But both of these people had put their stuff on one of the seats next to them, meaning that the only actually available spot was across from the other lady. Of course this didn't occur to me until I'd already climbed over the couple by the door and I didn't feel like looking for another compartment, so I just sat down. Luckily the lady across from me got off at the first stop so we didn't have to be uncomfortable for long. But I don't understand why people do that! It was a long trip, plus there were luggage racks. Why couldn't the Irish/British/whatever couple have shared some leg room with the rest of us?

K, Budapest. As soon as I got in I went to my hostel. Thank goodness they had given excellent directions, so I didn't get lost or anything. First adventure in Budapest: taking public transportation. In itself not that exciting or adventurous, but the tickets were. In Bratislava I bought tickets sporadically for the buses and trams, but I could have gotten away with never buying one. In all of the cities I've been to so far, the public transportation profits rely on the assumption that you're actually buying and validating your tickets before you ride the tram or whatever. In Budapest it was the same way. I decided that, to be on the safe side, I'd buy a ticket, even though it looked like I could get away without it. As soon as I came off the escalator getting out of the metro, I was grabbed on both arms by these two random people meanly saying stuff in Hungarian to me. I'd read that in a lot of these countries people will come up to you and pretend to be ticket-takers, tell you your ticket is invalid, then try to get you to pay them. And I didn't understand what they were saying, so I just kept walking. The lady kept yelling at me, so I was like, "I don't speak Hungarian", and she was piossssssed. She goes all meanly, "Ticket." And by that time I was freakin annoyed too, so I was like, "Show me some ID first." She did NOT like that, so she just kept saying "ticket." Finally I got in her face and grabbed her ID, then I showed her my ticket and she huffed away. When I got to my hostel, I asked the girl who checked me in about it, and she told me that it's really easy to identify the ticket-checkers--just look for the ugliest person on the platform.

After I checked in at my hostel, I went to one of the tourist information offices to pick up my Budapest Card, which I'd already bought and paid for. Well, I got there--and it was closed for 4 days for All Saints' Day (seriously, what is with these long holidays they like to take??). So I was pretty confused, since I wasn't really sure where the other office was. I eventually found it on my map and walked there, which took a lot longer than I thought it would. By this time it was dark, because it gets dark freakin early in Budapest! So I ate dinner at a place near the opera house. One cool thing about Budapest is that there are a ton of cool cafes. If that's the kind of thing you like, Budapest is the place to go. I ate in several while I was there. One not so cool thing is that there aren't a lot of places to get take-out food from. It's a lot more expensive to sit and eat, which unfortunately I was forced to do most of the time.

After dinner I went to a concert (Verdi's Requiem) at the Hungarian State Opera House. It was pretty cool because I got my ticket for 1000 Forints, or about $5.50 and I could still see really well (even though I was in the highest section there was). It was even better, because not only did I get to see the inside of the opera house AND a concert, it cost about 1/3 the price of a tour of the opera house. After that I went back to my hostel and went to sleep. Yes, it was only 9, but I was tired!

The next day I got up early so that I could cram as much stuff as possible into my day. And indeed I did. I went to the grocery store first, and got a Coke, a bag of chips, and 2 rolls for less than $2. Man, I love cheap food! Then I walked across the Margaret Bridge to the Buda side of the river (my hostel was in Pest) and walked along the river until I got to the bottom of Castle Hill. I took the bus up, because I was already tired of walking (plus it was free with my Budapest Card). Before I got up there I thought, oh, there's just a castle, I'll spend an hour or something looking around. Wrong. Turns out that in addition to Buda Castle, there was also Matthias Church (where King Matthias or someone was crowned king of Hungary) as well as the Fisherman's Bastion, plus a surprisingly large neighborhood of houses and apartments. Um, yeah, I ended walking around the entire thing. I thought it would be about half as big as it actually was. The views were great and everything was cool, but I was kind of too tired of walking to really enjoy it. I ate some overpriced goulash for lunch (did I mention that I love goulash?) and walked around the castle a little bit. That too was pretty neat and there were some semi-interesting looking museums, but 1) they cost money, and 2) I was really sick of walking and standing. I took the bus back down the hill and decided to go to Memento Park, which is a park in the southern part of the city full of sculptures, statues, plaques, monuments, etc., that the Communists erected in honor of themselves and used to stand all around Budapest during the Soviet occupation. I had really wanted to see this, but not gonna lie, my main motivation for going at that exact moment was that it promised to involve lots of time sitting on the tram and the bus.

This was yet another adventure. I took the right tram to the end of the line...but the Memento Park brochure I had didn't provide great directions. The bus station was hidden behind this huge construction site, plus I couldn't figure out which ticket to buy. Fortunately the lady at the counter saw the brochure in my hand and gave me the right ticket. After that I paid 80 Forints for the bathroom, but only because I was desperate.

The sculpture park was cool, but not as cool as I thought it was gonna be. There were no signs or anything describing the stuff, so I had to pay 600 Forints for an English guide book (not that expensive, but still. It's the principle!). Reading was a little bit better, but it didn't go into that much detail about the sculptures and stuff, a lot of it was more about who sculpted it or something kinda lame like that (hahah, oh man, this makes me sound so ignorant!). All I mean was that it could have been done better.

After coming back into the main city, I decided to go to Franz Liszt house, which turned out to be a Franz Liszt memorial apartment inside the Liszt Academy of Music. It had a lot of cool stuff, but didn't really explain them very well or even that much about the composers life. Apparently he was BFFs with Edvard Grieg, because there were a ton of letters between the two displayed there. Also, thank goodness I can read German, because almost none of the descriptions were written in English.

After that, I went to a museum that was probably the highlight of my trip, the House of Terror. The museum was in a building on Andrassy ut, Budapest's most famous and most beautiful street, that had been the headquarters of the Nazis that occupied Hungary--and was later also chosen as the headquarters for the Hungarian Communists. Unfortunately almost everything was in Hungarian, but in each room there were extensive information sheets about the subject of the room in both Hungarian and English. The info sheets didn't really explain the exhibits, which was pretty disappointing, but it gave a lot of really good background info. The whole museum and all of the exhibits were very well done. In the basement there were recreations of the cells the Communists used to detain and torture people. It was a very modern museum, one that I really wish I would have been able to understand more of. Well, I'm not planning on learning Hungarian, so I guess I'll have to scratch that. Before going to this museum, I had no idea that there had even been a Nazi occupation of Hungary. It seemed like it was mostly towards the end of the war, but it sure explained a lot of the "Soviet Liberation" statues in Memento Park--I guess the Communists thought ridding Hungary of the fascists and putting in place their own dictatorship was "liberation"? It also had never really occurred to me that Hungary had been controlled by the Soviet Union. I guess somewhere in the back of my mind I sort of knew that--most of Eastern Europe was under Soviet control, after all. I just didn't realize Hungary specifically (and actually, I didn't realize Slovakia either) had been Soviet occupied.

Hmm, OK, after the House of Terror...I was starving. So I went and ate dinner in a restaurant on Liszt Ferenc ter, the place where there were a ton of nice cafes. Liszt ter was really the only place around (unless you count McDonald's) that had not too expensive restaurants. After that I was exhausted and went back to my hostel. I definitely way overdid it that day; by the time I got back to my hostel, all I wanted to do was go home and not have to walk around and see stuff anymore. Luckily I got a really good night's sleep and woke up ready for another full day.

Side story: there happened to be two German girls staying in the same room as me, and they were really nice. One of them came in, and asked if she was German (bc I'd heard them speaking German that morning) and she said yes, and was struggling to speak to me in English. I offered to speak German, and she seemed extremely relieved. It was nice to speak German after a few days of only English. I mean, I'm obviously very used to speaking English since it's all I speak with the kids (and, duh, because I speak it as a first language), but I'm not used to hearing responses in English. My little four-day break from German really makes me wonder, though, what it will be like when I get back to the US. I won't have anyone to speak German with, and I know I'll forget a lot of it really fast.

OK, Budapest, full day #2. I got up early again and had a little bit of trouble finding something to eat for breakfast since, like all of Europe, everything was closed since it was Sunday. So I figured I'd find something eventually, so I took the tram across the bridge so that I could take another tram to Gellert Hill. Except I took it a little too far...oops. Once I got to the right stop, I realized that I'd thought the two trams connected up when they really don't, so I had to take another line called HEV, which apparently runs to the suburbs of Budapest. In the HEV station I found a bakery that was open (thank God!!!! It was the first bakery I'd seen since Germany!) and got this odd and kind of expensive muffin. Anyway, I took the HEV, connected up to the tram, and rode to Gellert Hill (I'd learned my lesson about walking too much too early). I started walking up the hill, and the first place I stopped was this weird Cave Church. Yeah. That's right. It was a church in a cave in the side of the hill. There was a service going on, so I could only look at the exhibit right inside. I kept walking up the hill and eventually got to the part right above the cave church, where there was a huge cross. It was pretty cool but kind of reminded me of those KKK crosses that they set on fire...even though it was wasn't wood and wasn't on fire. I don't know, it was kind of creepy, so I kept walking. It wasn't very nice out and even started raining a little bit, but I had come prepared with my umbrella. And even though it was gray and gross out, the trees all looked these amazing fall colors. I went a little overboard taking fall-foliage pictures, but it really was beautiful. And, of course, I saw graffiti. There was some kind of monument that had been completely graffitied over, so I couldn't even tell what it was. And I even saw a tree with graffiti on it. I mean, really, who cares enough to graffiti a tree?

So, I finally got to the top of Gellert Hill, and it was really cool. It was way higher up than Castle Hill and the view was amazing. If it hadn't been so gray and overcast, it would have been a really great place to spend the morning. There was also a gigantic citadel up there with a Liberty Statue. It's so big that you can see the statue from all the way down the river. The citadel was pretty cool, but of course it cost money to go in, so I didn't bother because it was still raining a little bit.

On my way back down I went into the cave church since the service was over and looked around a little bit. It was really weird and not what I'd pictured. It must be difficult to hold services in there. It looked more like a few small chapels coming off of one central point rather than one big church.

When I got back down the hill I walked across the Liberty Bridge. There's a big central market right on the other side of the river, but it was closed! It's usually open every day, but since it was the weekend after All Saints' Day, it wasn't. Instead I took the metro to the botanical gardens, which was free with my Budapest Card. I got there...and it was really lame. It was small and not well kept up. There were, like, 5 flowers. And leaves ALL over the place that I guess they didn't feel like raking up. I'm glad I didn't pay money for it.

After that I was like, ummm, I'm really hungry, but there was nowhere around to eat. Instead I took the metro up to St. Stephen's Basilica in hopes that I could find somewhere around there (as well as go to the top). I decided I'd go up before lunch. Thank goodness for elevators. It was a really amazing view, especially since you can walk all the way around the cupola and see Budapest in every direction, but it was also really cold so I only stayed up for about 5 minutes. I took the elevator back down (I was tired, ok?) and ate lunch at this really cheap Chinese place.

OK, side note about Chinese food. So, if Chinese food in the US is fake Chinese food, how come Chinese food is the same everywhere??? I've eaten Chinese food in the US, Germany, Slovakia, and Hungary, and it was all the same! Did all of the Chinese emigrants get together and decide before they left China that they WOULD NOT under any circumstances reveal what real Chinese cooking is like? And an even better question is, do all those Chinese restaurant owners eat REAL Chinese food at home?

K, this is getting too long again so I'm gonna end it here and start a part 3.