BUDAPEST

HUNGARY

I've not really given this much attention blog-wise, but this week I am doing a very mini trip to Eastern Europe. I should have been in Ukraine this last week, which would have been the absolute dogs bollocks, but due to circumstances that may as well have their own entry devoted to them, it didn't happen.

So the first leg of the tour is Budapest. In case anyone else wasn't aware, Budapest is actually two areas, Buda and Pest, the first one being on the west bank of the Danube and the latter on the East, which are now linked by bridges. I think historically this symbolised the division line between the bourgeois and the mad gypsy proles.

This is one of the first signs we saw, on our train towards the city centre. We took it to mean "No Austrians"

As a general rule, the place is very nice looking; most of my friends drew comparison to Prague. These pics are from just outside our hostel and I guess are fairly typical for most of the streets we saw.


I'm not certain f it was because of the time of year, or if we were in the wrong area, but contrary to my weary pre-departure fears of running into groups of moronic stag parties hunting for hookers and crack, we actually saw none. Maybe this was a dumb fear.

I think somewhere at the back of my mind there was also the image of being mugged by some Eastern European in a tight T shirt with a wrench if I left the hostel alone. Call me naive, but I felt a lot safer walking round there than in many places in the UK.

One thing we did manage to avoid, fairly successfully, was Budapest's tourist traps. Because Hungary, alongside Japan and Russia and an uncountable list of other countries, has a currency that translates into thousands for a few measly quid, it's mind blowingly obvious to see how people think they're richer than they are. We were probably loathed by a good deal of the people we bought from for our general money savvy-ness when in reality the dumb Brits abroad should just be fair game.

The previous point leads me to language. After god knows how long studying German and having no qualms about being thrown into a group of Germans and being told to socialise, to suddenly arrive in a country where the language isn't similar, nay totally unrecognisable, in comparison to others was a bit of a shock and probably a bit of a sore point for us all.

On the second day we went exploring properly, but the weather decided early on that it was going to be both rainy, windy and muggy, in whichever order it felt like. First step was windy and rainy, so we took shelter in a playground.



Another thing that didn't help us language-wise was that all we had to go on was a 30 second mp3 of basic Hungarian pleasantries, which would get you about as far as saying hello and then apologising before the bloke in front of you spoke broken but perfectly understandable English. Having said this, we did meet quite a lot of people in touristy areas who didn't seem to speak English, which was terrible purely because it intensified the feeling of harbouring the ignorant foreigner mindset of "I am in YOUR country, why do the people not have the basic courtesy to learn MY language?"

Once the rain cleared up a tiny bit, half of us went off on a walking tour of the city while the other half (me included) headed over the bridge to make the mother of all treks up a large large hill to see the city from on high and check out some old communist sculptures.

This bridge was actually a pretty awesome bridge.

Me on the bridge in rainy rainy Budapest, shortly before climbing the hill in the background.

Team Hill, halfway up, and a couple below of the view so far.

Right at the top we found the promised Communist sculpture. It was the shameless communist stuff too, y'know, like the giant of communism slaying the capitalism allegory dragon.

Yeah, that kind of laughable stuff. We insulted communism.

Sheeran and Pipsquin re-enacting Communism vs. Capitalism.

Even further up we found the world's answer to Minas Tirith. That's Lord of the Rings trivia for anyone vaguely like half the cinematically unfulfilled people on our trip who also didn't understand. Remember the dragon scene? It was basically that, disappointingly without the dragons (except for the capitalist ones).

Like this but without hobbits and a volcano

See?

We did a fair bit of exploring in this bit, although half the balconies you had to pay for so it was hardly budget tourism, nor did it seem worth paying to look at the same view but 10 feet higher. The views we got for free were pretty spectacular.


So the hill was a bit knackering at times and it was a sweaty sweaty ascent, but well worth it.

We saw this sign outside a cafe I believe, somewhere near the bottom of the hill, which presumably only lets good looking people in.

One thing that Team Walking Tour found that we discovered a bit later was a statue of horse. I don't know to what extent the Hungarians are practical jokers, but at least one tour guide gets away with "if you grab the horses golden balls it improves your sex life" every single time. Are we gullible, or superstitious? You decide.


A highlight of Budapest would have to be 'ruin bars' which are essentially old buildings which have been bought, been outfitted with 3 or 4 bars on 2 or 3 levels, and filled with anything and everything. I wish I had photos of them. The first one was a building which had been taken over by someone or some group who gave the building an indoor woodland theme for an art project, the remnants of which are hanging from the walls and ceiling. In the second one we drank sitting on a dentists chair and in an old Trabant car fitted with sofas. You get the idea.

I'll finish up this entry with miscellaneous things.

Pasta called "Nakedli". Immaturity success.

And, in case you didn't see it on the pasta label, Hungary has Tesco! We were probably a little too excited about that, but after 8 months of Lidl and Rewe, Tesco was a welcome blast from the past.

Apart from which, reading signs like this just makes me wish the English language had more interesting characters.

We found a cafe selling freshly 'squizzed' juices. They get maximum points for being able to convey the accent through spelling. But the menu above seems a little more adventurous than the previous place, which simply offered -

€2.60 for cabbage. Tempting, but no.

So that was Budapest. We battled with the 18th century queueing system for train tickets at the station, then caught a train with actual compartments (kind of Hogwarts Express style) where an old man joined us to make it a little awkward and Sophie cut open bread rolls with the handle of a comb.

Viszlát!