So, since I know you, my loyal and faithful and no-comment-leaving readers, have been just dying for the final installment of my trip behind the Iron Curtain, I'm here to deliver. Prepare yourselves...for another long, and possibly boring, account.
OK, where did we leave off? Oh yeah, that's right, after lunch on my last day in Budapest. After eating lunch at the extremely cheap Chinese place, I went back to a bakery I had passed while looking for a place to eat and bought these three little chocolate pastry-fudge-like things. The lady was not very nice. I mean, she spoke in English, but when I asked her what things were, all she'd do was tell the name. In Hungarian. And I was like, "...Can you describe it a little bit?" And she was like, "No, not really." But whatev, they ended up tasting pretty good (although a little bit odd) and cost me less than 1 USD. Oh yeah, during my wanderings I came across an Indian restaurant called Kama Sutra. And it wasn't a strip club. I know, because I looked in the window. It looked like a nice restaurant. Either the owners were not Indian and could think of only one thing associated with India, or they were Indian and have so little faith in the general population that they figured they'd better name their restaurant after a sex book. I also saw a restaurant called Nimrod Etterem (Restaurant). I'm hoping, for the owners' sake, that nimrod is a Hungarian word that means something completely different.
After lunch I walked towards the river so that I could walk past Parliament, which so far I'd seen from just about every possible view except up close. The girl who checked me in at the hostel had told me that there was some kind of promenade or something running along the Pest side of the river (where I was) that I could walk along and see all the sights. Well, she neglected to tell me that there was no sidewalk going past the nice buildings, and that the promenade was on the other side of a 4-lane highway. On top of that, there wasn't even a real entrance to it. To get across you have to run across the highway and then jump over the guard rail. Which I did. Just my luck I also happened to be crossing at a part where there was an entrance to the highway, meaning that not only did I have to make sure cars weren't coming from both ways, I also had to check and make sure no one was coming up the entrance ramp. Even though I was mighty tired of walking, let me tell you, I ran across that highway faster than I thought I could. Walking along the promenade didn't really help with views of Parliament, mostly just because it's so large, but there was a great view of the Buda side. Buda looked a lot nicer from across the river than it had looked up close. Anyway, I of course took a bunch of pictures of Parliament, then once again took my life in my hands and ran back across the highway. By that point I was almost at the Margaret Bridge, so I took the tram across, took the HEV up a stop, then from there somehow managed to find the bus stop for the bus I wanted and took the bus to Pal-Volgyi Cave. Apparently there's a huge network of caves running under Budapest, and with my Budapest Card I got into the Pal-Volgyi one for free. One thing I hadn't considered was that the tour would be entirely in Hungarian. A German lady even asked at the beginning if the tour guide spoke any English, and when she said a little bit, the German lady asked if she'd say anything really important in English. Shock of all shocks, the tour guide spoke not one word of English on the entire tour. Not even when she turned out all of the lights in the cave, leaving us standing there in pitch black. I was pretty annoyed that she didn't give ANY warning for that, especially when someone had already asked her to make sure to do just that!
Whatev, it was a cool-looking cave, but the tour was really long and caves are not interesting enough to warrant a long tour in a language you don't understand. But after that, I caught the bus back, took the HEV back, then took the Metro to Heroes' Square, which is at the end of Andrassy ut. I'd been contemplating not going because I was so tired, but I'm really glad I did. It was pretty amazing. It was this huge open square with a statue of the angel Gabriel on top of a really tall pedestal. Behind that statue were two more sections of statues of some kings of Hungary (but I guess only the heroic ones). I happened to be there just as the sun was setting (at 4 PM), so the sky looked pretty spectacular behind the square. After that I walked around the city park a little bit. There was (yet another) castle there. I have no idea what it was called or who originally lived there. It looked nice though. I also accidentally found the Szechenyi Baths, one of the most famous and popular thermal baths in Budapest, while I was trying to find the Metro (fyi: never found it). I ended up having to walk back to my original metro stop, then I took the metro and the tram back to my hostel and picked up my stuff. I asked the girl who was working if she knew of any good places to eat nearby. Her suggestion? McDonald's. Not even kidding.
Needless to say, I didn't eat at McDonald's. I walked back to Liszt Ferenc Square (walked because my Budapest Card had expired, which meant I now had to buy pub. trans. tickets) and found a place to eat there. While I was eating there, a group sat down next to me, and from my eavesdropping I figured out that the girl was American, her boyfriend was something that was not Hungarian (couldn't figure out the accent), they were eating with her Hungarian grandparents, and the girl was at some university there (she also spoke Hungarian). I also learned that her grandparents had just recently been to--get this--Cape May, New Jersey! It was pretty interesting to hear non-Americans describe it to people who've never been there.
After dinner I decided to just go to the train station. I wanted to be there around 8, and it was about 6:30, so I figured now would be a good time to leave. I had enough time to make a short stop, so I took a detour to Dohany utcai Synagogue, the largest synagogue in Europe. Of course, like everything else, it was closed, but I was able to at least walk around the building and look at it. After that I took the metro, and then the tram, to get to the train station. I had been there before (on my adventure getting to Memento Park), but it hadn't looked so.....ghetto. At night, it looked pretty bad. When I went in, I, like a typical train-goer, looked at the big board to see when my train was coming. It took me a few minutes to realize that it didn't work (I happened to get there at a time when all of the times on the board would have been about accurate). So I was kind of like...umm, I guess I'll just sit here and hope I figure something out. There was this pretty awesome family sitting next to me. It consisted of a woman with THE largest and thickest glasses I've ever seen (if ever you could call glasses "Coke bottle", these were the ones) and her two grandsons. The entire time they were there, the woman was eating these nuts that she had in the pocket of her (10 sizes too large) coat. Her method of eating them was: put the nut into her mouth, crack the shell loudly with her teeth, spit the shell out, then eat the nut. She did this non-stop for about a half an hour. Needless to say, I found this just a tiny bit annoying. Once her daughter got there, though, it immediately became clear: oral fixation. When her daughter walked in, the woman pulled out a pack of cigarettes and started dividing it up between the two of them. Ah, the joys of mother-daughter bonding. Then the whole family walked out so they could have a mother-daughter smoke break.
OK, side note. Topic: smoking in Hungary. INSANE. I thought Germany was bad. After going to Hungary, I'll never complain again (OK, that's not true, but I won't complain as much). I swear, half the population there smoked. One of the cafes I ate in one night, I was literally the only person in there not smoking. And there was no concept of smoke-free buildings. I mean, some buildings and restaurants half-heartedly posted signs, but they were really small and easy to disregard. In Germany they don't enforce it at all either, but at least the signs they put up are really big and don't look like I printed them out on my computer in 1995. In Budapest people smoked EVERYWHERE, including the train stations.
Back to the train station. Around 8:15 I looked at the posted schedule and walked to the track that was on there, hoping there would be more accurate information. Luckily the boards down there worked, so I found where I was supposed to be. Down side: it was freezing down there, there were no benches, and it smelled like pee. It also looked like people had recently peed there. About 20 minutes before my train was supposed to leave, I went up onto the track, because sometimes the trains come early and sit there for a while before they leave. I waited up there until, at about 8:48, two minutes before my train was supposed to come, there was an announcement saying that the train was going to be 40 minutes late. So, I went back down, waited for a while, then went up a little bit before it was supposed to come. Another announcement: now it was 50 minutes late. By the time it got there, it was almost 1 hour late. This all wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't been windy and FREEZING.
Anyway, the train got there, and after wandering around confused for a while, I found my train car and my couchette. Those sleeper berths are niiice! I had a blanket, pillow, and sheets, as well as an actual bed. The best part was, it was actually cheaper than the seat I had reserved leaving from Munich. That is the way to travel.
And then, I got back to Munich, took the train to Heidenheim, took the bus to Heuchlingen, walked to kindy, and picked Johanna up. The end. Finally!
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