Hungry in Hungary: Budapest

A long, grueling day of bus travel took us from Kraków in the early morning on Thursday, through Slovakia, and finally into Hungary where the last leg of our ten day trip would be. Budapest, Hungary was never on my top "To Visit" list of places, but I was excited to be in yet another country, especially one where I knew none of the history. I was hoping our friendly tour guide, Janos, who we met at Hotel Budapest that evening, would provide us with plenty of facts and stories about this foreign city.

Our first stop, as always, was dinner. We had about fifteen minutes to deposit our belongings into our rooms (I'm sharing with just Elise this time) and get back onto the bus to head to a Sports Club for dinner. Apparently, there's a big wrestling convention happening in Budapest now, so the hotel we wanted to stay at and the dinner we were meant to have tonight were full and unavailable. The Sports Club dinner, though quite a random place to have a meal for 45 people, wasn't terrible. It was buffet style, and my friends managed to get me to try the Hungarian version of a mozzarella stick because I unfortunately let it slip that I'd never tried one. The Hungarian version was made of Gouda rather than mozzarella, and it wasn't really my thing. Fried and breaded cheese in general doesn't really appeal to me. The beef stew appetizer, on the other hand, did. It was very similar to the beef stew Mom makes for me, except her meat is much nicer and has less fat! Once we were all fed and back at the hotel, Anna, Eddye, Elise, and the three Wake Forest girls, CC, Carly, and Julia, and I sat down to use the wifi in the hotel cafe and order teas, coffees, and ice cream. It's a bit of a pain that we don't have wifi in our rooms...this blog post had to wait until my laptop could connect again!

The next morning, I somehow managed to wake up at 6:30am and was ready to start the day. I looked out my hotel window and saw a beautiful sunrise over some gorgeous building that I did not yet know. However, I made myself nap until a more reasonable hour to go down to the delicious breakfast that included mini chocolate croissants and grapefruit juice at the hotel around 8am. 

View from my hotel window in the morning

At 9:30am, everyone got on the bus with Janos to tour Gellért Hill. The hill overlooked the Danube River, which split the city into Buda and Pest. It was an incredible view! On the hill was also the Citadella Fortress, which we quickly walked around while admiring the view of the city. The weather was lovely and not too hot, but the sun was shining brightly.

City View

View of Buda, Pest, and the Danube river between them

IES Group Photo at Gellert Hill!

After our tour of about an hour and a half (taking pictures takes us forever!), we got onto the bus to see Hõsök Tere (Heroes Square) and the Art Museum just outside the center of the city of Budapest. Janos, being an Art History teacher, was a great guide in the beautiful museum and knew how to keep a group of 20 year olds (minus teenage Elise of course) interested throughout the museum. He quickly pointed out the most famous and most thought-provoking pieces while giving us a brief history and description. We first saw the Italian Renaissance paintings, and learned that 13th century artists created the 3D innovation in pictures. Then we moved through to French naturalism, which became the basis for Impressionism. French nationalism changed from the Italian Renaissance of using just the imagination to create natural scenes to actually going outside to observe nature and paint what was seen. The art museum also had the second biggest el Greco collection in the world! The first collection I saw in the Prado a few years ago with Evelyne (my host family's daughter) and my family when they came to visit me in Madrid. This collection was also very impressive, and I could easily distinguish El Greco's artistic style with his dark images and holy scenes.

Budapest Art Museum

Italian Renaissance painting

One of my favorite paintings of Italy

After exploring the museum quickly, we went out to the Heroes Square to learn about the history of Budapest. I would have liked to learn the history, but it was so incredibly difficult with just one earphone and my mind kept wandering. I've literally never touched the history of Budapest, so trying to absorb the basics so quickly wasn't really working for me in the sunny square. I caught that the angel Gabriel sat atop the central column in the square, and that the first figure on the left was the first king of Hungary, King Stephen. The relief below him depicted him taking the crown on Christmas Eve year 1000, though he was actually thought to be named King three years earlier. Just as in 1999 when the year 2000 scared us, the year 1000 scared people back then, so Stephen waited to be sure he'd survive before officially taking the crown. It's funny how sometimes history repeats itself.

Center of Heroes Square

One side of figures in the Square

St. Stephen, first King of Budapest

After going through every single one of the statues around the square (I lost my concentration after Stephen...oops), we were told how to get to the city center and our chaperones left. They just left us in a strange part of town where people don't speak English, most of us had no money (yet another currency to deal with...the Forints), and we honestly didn't know where we were or how to get anywhere. It took Anna, Eddye, Elise, and I about 25 minutes to figure out which train to catch in which direction, choose a ticket, try and find a place to buy and pay for the ticket, and then finally catch the train to the last stop, towards Vörötsmary Tér. We had intended to visit the Murder museum, where we would learn about historical serial killers like Jack the Ripper and Dracula, but found an Italian place for lunch where we inhaled fresh salad (I haven't had my fill of salad recently) and pizza first. Our check came...and it cost 11,135 forint. This currency is a pain to figure out. It took us about 25 minutes to figure out how much each of us had to pay, and then we forgot about the tip, and once that was added in, we were somehow still 800 forint short. By that point, we were all just throwing in 100 forint coins, calling out, "Here's another 100. And another." It was ridiculous. I really don't like the currency.

Above left: Hungarian money

Above right: Our lunch bill...

Candid stress shot at lunch

By the time our meal was over and paid for, we had no energy to explore the Murder museum. Besides, the square was full of shops, so we wandered into Bershka, Pull&Bear, Zara, Six, and Reserved. The other three hit the jackpot at the stores, but I couldn't really be bothered to try and convert 8,000 forint shoes to what they would be in Euro, sterling, or even dollars. It took too much effort, and such large price tags turned me off. 

Fashion Street in Budapest

We had an adventure on our way back to the hotel. We had no indication of how to get there from our departed chaperones, so Anna and I managed to track down which bus stop and bus number to take. We asked a kebab stand owner on the busy bus stop street if we were in the right place and where we could get a ticket (for 350 forint...seems ridiculous, but only really 2 or 2.50 Euro) before managing to make it back to the hotel and get ready for dinner and our upcoming evening out in Budapest.

Lost and confused on the bus...but we made it (also, that guy behind Anna...)

We were going clubbing by the Royal Budapest Opera later, so our restaurant choices were around that area. We found a nice Hungarian restaurant where all four of us chatted about life and had deep, meaningful conversations while a violinist and pianist serenaded just us, since we were the only patrons in the restaurant, over our mozzarella grilled chicken. I've noticed that the food in Hungary is a lot better than in the other places we've eaten...but that might be because I actually got to choose my meal rather than eating whatever IES planned for us.

The Royal Opera at night

The famous St. Stephen's Basilica at night (we wandered past it as we were lost--see below)

After dinner, we walked to the Opera to meet up with other IES people and then try and find our way to a club/bar called Morrison's. We went the complete wrong direction and had to backtrack for 15 minutes to head right back to around the corner from where we started. We're all useless at reading maps, apparently. The bar we were going to for our student assistant, Julia's, birthday celebration turned out to be a 30+ bar, not a student bar as our chaperone, Tobi, suggested. It was awful. The 500 forint cover charge allowed us in to see older men and women trying to be hip at the bar, singing karaoke to "Gangnam Style." The words are all in Korean, so how on earth were they planning on singing them?? Elise and I stayed in the corner and talked and observed, before we decided we had spent enough time with Julia on her birthday. A group of us migrated to another club called Club INTENSE (seriously), which was designed to look like an enchanted forest, albeit a very grungy, strange one. It was quite interesting to look around, but not very much fun. Nobody here dances! And dancing to house music is impossible anyway (maybe that's why nobody dances? They need to play some top charts stuff!).

The creepy decorations at Club INTENSE. This is what an enchanted forest looks like?

Elise and I had enough by 12:15am. We bade the others farewell and walked back to the Opera to catch the metro home...before realizing the metro closed at 11pm. We had no map, no cab numbers, and no knowledge of what sort of transportation to take home. In addition, it was freezing. Not a good night to wear a tank top out. We half-panicked, half-laughed at our stupidity before I tried to search for a free wifi signal on my iPhone. Luckily, about 30 minutes later, I was successful, and figured out that we had to take the #6 tram to Moscow Square by our hotel from four blocks away.

Once we got to the tram stop, we searched for a ticket machine. Previously, we had discovered that you buy tickets only from inside the metro stops, which, lucky for us, were all locked up now. We frantically searched as three #6 trams passed us by, and finally found a machine by the stop...only to discover it didn't take bills, which was all we had. Frustrated, we agreed to take a YOLO moment and board the next tram without tickets. Nothing else could go wrong this night, right? We prayed that ticket collectors wouldn't stop our train and fine us  probably 10000000 forint for riding without a ticket. 

As soon as we got to the last stop, we sped out of there and quickly walked/jogged up the hill for 15 minutes to our hotel. The last thing I remember before showering and falling asleep was being so relieved to have conquered late night public transport in Budapest, and recognizing an uncomfortable itch in the back of my throat. I was getting sick.

The next morning, we left the hotel again at 9:30am and took a tour of the Roman ruins with Janos. Our first stop was the old amphitheater. The circumference of the amphitheater is larger than the coliseum in Rome! It was very strange that this historic ruin was in the middle of a busy road junction, and anybody could just walk in and use it as a park. Some guy was even walking his dog there and letting the creature relieve himself onto the ancient stones! In addition, there was a lot of litter and broken glass. Obviously it's a cool hangout for some people.

IES crawling all over the Roman ruins

It was still pretty cool to see the ancient ruins, and after the amphitheater, we went further out of Budapest to see even more, including the Roman hot springs baths and a small village settlement. We even saw the old gates of the city of Budapest...right next to a highway in a green park that people were running through to get to work or something. They didn't seem to really be respected, which I found strange. The baths were underneath a highway overpass (literally couldn't believe it...) so we didn't stop there, but the village was off to the side of the highway. So we got out and looked through the tiny museum and then spent two hours in the sunshine trying to discern which of the ruins were houses or butcher shops or baths. It could have been very interesting, but it struck me how long this ten day trip had been. We'd been cramming so much knowledge into our minds for the past week that all I could think about was getting soup and recovering from my new sickness in my own bed. I was relieved when we climbed back onto the bus to go to our lunch destination (which was on a boat on the Danube!).

The baths at the village ruins

My artsy shot of old pillars

View of the Roman village ruins

I wasn't feeling any better after lunch but I really didn't want to miss out and go back to the hotel. Our next stop was a tour of the Castle District and Buda Castle (Fisherman's Bastion). Most of us weren't paying attention to the tour (I think I'll have to read up on my Hungarian history by myself), but taking photos of the gorgeous Parliament building across the river (the one I could see from my hotel room!), the enchanted, movie-set-like castle, and incredible cathedral. I was getting worse (illness-wise), so in our free time (since we were all exhausted), we went back to the hotel and took a quick nap before our final, farewell dinner.

Buda Castle (looks like a movie set!)

Little market in the castle district

Mattias Church -- such beautiful roof tilings!

Budapest's gorgeous Parliament building on the Danube

The fairytale towers

Eddye, Carly, CC, Julia, Anna, Elise, and I in the Castle District

Castle District street

Artsy view of Budapest (thanks to Hanaa's fab camera)

This trip has been incredibly long. I don't think the amount of days is a long time in general, but if you're traveling long distances by bus with the same 45 people and moving around so often, you get so tired. I think this is what Mom and Dad try to tell me when I try to pack too much stuff in. Quality over quantity. Yes, it is amazing to go to a bunch of different countries and check them off your list, but you can't go so fast you miss out on everything there is to offer. And packing too many things in together is tiring and you won't appreciate everything as much as you would if you weren't so exhausted. Now that I've experienced this firsthand, without my family guiding me, I know how to begin planning my own trips in the coming weeks.

The farewell dinner was absolutely fantastic! It was almost like Atlanta's Fogo de Chao Brazilian steakhouse, with a gigantic salad buffet, but also with warm dishes and raw fruits, nuts, and veggies to choose from, and a gigantic raw meat (and veggies and cheese!) display where you could choose your own pieces and take to the grill to have them cooked in front of you. In addition, I got to drink numerous glasses of orange juice all night long from the never-empty pitcher at my table. It seemed like a surefire way to kill the cold that I felt coming on. Combined with steak, salad, and grilled veggies, this was my favorite meal in the past three weeks! It was an incredibly fun (and gluttonous) way to end such a trip!

On the way home, we encountered beautiful weather, so we made a quick stop to Statue Park. The park held many Communist-era statues that had been expelled from the city, but weren't destroyed. It was pretty cool seeing the statues, and I noticed that they were all made in the exact same style, as would be expected since they're from the same era. I just thought it was interesting.

Statue depicting labor and the labor movement

Pretty cool statues!