Adventure in Budapest, Part 2

I was going to continue documenting the rest of my Budapest trip in a more timely fashion, but somehow time swept away as usual. Better late than never.

The second day of my trip in Budapest, I awoke to the pleasant sounds of a city neighborhood. People laughing, cars moving, and the faint drill of construction in the distance. How nice to be back in the urban jungle, I thought! And I meant it - never again will I question my need for the city after living in a village for a year. Lena and I awoke fairly early and ate the standard Northern European breakfast - bread, meat, cheese, yogurt, and tea. She thought it would be the perfect day to visit the traditional Hungarian town of Szentendre. And in fact, it was. It was a beautiful April day - the sun shining just enough to make the temperature pleasant, but not overbearing.

We boarded a bus - overall the public transporation system in Budapest is quite user friendly, even to those who have never seen a word of Hungarian in their lives, like me - which was a much better experience than the night bus the night before. We arrived in the village, which reminded me of a combination of the villages I'd seen in Bavaria and Poland. Szentendre is known as an artists colony and is quite touristy. The flocks of Italian tourists was quite astonishing in my opinion, but we left them alone.

We wandered around the village, looking at the old churches and the terraced houses, built in a Hungarian-Serbian style. We tried a traditional Hungarian street food - langosh - which is a piece of deep-fried bread with various toppings like cheese and meet. Some British woman came up to us and asked if it was a pizza and then if it was fatty. 'Well, it is deep-fried', replied Lena. 'Then it's not a pizza?' the woman asked. However fatty it actually was, it was delicious with the garlic paste on the side of the counter, replacing the standard condiments of pepper, brown sauce, or ketchup. We wandered over to a point next to the Danube and ate our lunch. Afterwards, Lena and I decided to go back into the city.

That afternoon it became overcast, but the city of Budapest was only more resplendant in its decaying beauty with a layer of clouds overshadowing it. We wandered around the main streets, looking at St. Stephen's Basilica, the Grand Market, the main shopping district, and the Pest side of the Danube. What I did not know when I first arrived in Budapest was that it was once two cities - Buda and Pest - and they were united in the mid-1800s. There is also a section which was a separate area, the island of St. Margaret, which before the Turkish invasion was a convent. The majority of Pest was built after 1800, during the glories of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire and are all magnificent in the tiniest architectural details. In 1896, in celebration of their 1000 year anniversary, the city redesigned major areas to resemble Paris and put in the first metro in continental Europe. Most of these places are still in use, although many still neglected from the years of war and communist regime.

After wandering around for awhile, Lena and I stopped at the Grand Market, also built in 1896, in order to buy dinner. It is an indoor market, with stall upon stall of almost everything imaginable. And my god the paprika sausages! I do not recommend them in general as the are in the best circumstances as good as a very poorly made salami. However, the pickled bell peppers were excellent and the amount of produce surprised me. I had rather thought it would be like Poland, which had very few fresh vegetables. Then again, I was there in November and this was now April.

Eventually Lena and I wandered back to her apartment with our bounty and made dinner, complete with the very drinkable 60 cent wine. However, an interesting night was to follow.

Budapest, Part 1: Arrival

It's been awhile since I set foot in the land of writing blog entries. For the past several weeks, I travelled to a myriad of places. Nothing too obscure - unless we want to discuss the Beckett I read for my Irish literature class - I jaunted my Bohemian self across the plains of Europe to better explore Budapest and Paris. Of course, if I needed any less Bohemia, it might be now. But that may be another story to follow.

I arrived in Budapest around midnight, following a day of airports. If I ever appreciated train travel, it is now after spending at least 2 full days at airports in order to acquaint myself with Europe on a budget. I have come to learn that the budget airlines of Europe are all talk - they are extremely uncomfortable, inefficient, and often make up the 'budget' price with a variety of fees. However, after a jaunt with WizzAir from London to Budapest, I was more than happy to meet the transportation of Eastern Europe. (My experiences of public transportation in Poland were very limited.) Lena, who I was visiting, met me at the airport and we then took the night bus back to her flat in the center of the city. Unfortunately, she had never been on a night bus this far from the center of Budapest and it proceeded to become an adventure, one in which we picked up some random Italian guy, also hoping to get to the center of town.

After getting off the airport shuttle at the metro stop, we waited for a bus, Lena, me, and the Italian. We waited at the stop, trying to ignore the exceedingly drunk and fat Hungarian man. But unfortunately this was no ordinary drunk, content with talking to himself. He kept making noises at us, "Wsht, wsht, wsht" he would say, and then he kept getting closer, close enough for us to see the spittle we had previously imagined. Luckily for us, the bus arrived. Unluckily for me, the drunk decided to climb on the bus ahead of me, and as I tried to climb the stairs with my suitcase, he fell backwards off of the steps. I jumped off before he could hit me, jamming my finger against the handle of the suitcase, while tentatively trying to get past him. Eventually, I joined Lena on the bus and we were off.

After about forty minutes, we made it back to Lena's apartment, a grand relic of the Soviet era. It was like the similar Polish relics I had seen, but it was surprisingly decent on the inside. While small, the apartment was comfortable and the owner had made a thorough attempt at decorating it. I readily admired the various retro Hungarian ads the filled the walls and the simple, yet attractive mixture of antiques and Ikea. As it was late, we went to bed, Budapest waiting for the next day.

Un Cafe Creme, Milchcaffee, etc.

One of the biggest frustrations from living here in Scotland is the absymal lack of good coffee. Originally, I thought I wouldn't be drinking it because lattes are around 3 pounds and who needs a $6 cup of coffee? Luckily for me, I am not even tempted by $6 dollar cups of coffee when they are most similiar in taste to the free burnt coffee you get at church socials or other such events. With the exception of Egypt, where they serve turkish coffee, this is how I rated the coffee of each country I've traveled to:

1. Germany
2. France
3. The Netherlands
4. Poland
5. United Kingdom

Unfortunately my coffee drinking in Poland was very limited. But so far British coffee has been the absolute worst. Tea is another story...