Let me start by saying that I knew I should have written this a few days ago. I’m on day 3 in Krakow, and already my Budapest memories have thinned out.
I’ll give it a shot though.
Budapest is great. It’s a big, beautiful city, and like most big, beautiful cities I’ve been to, pictures just don’t do it justice. City pictures of buildings never seem to capture the allure of standing next to that building, and usually in cities I find myself taking fewer and fewer pictures, despite how much I enjoy being there.
Budapest caters to tourists. The city is clean, remodeled and helpful to foreigners, and that of course makes things pleasant. It felt a lot like Prague, as many of my friends who had been told me it would, but I felt that Prague has more old charm. Budapest’s buildings, while showcasing interesting architecture and history, look like they’ve had some work done. The old stuff looks new, if that makes any sense.
This doesn’t necessarily take anything away from the city, it’s just my observation. (After a while, every city just looks like a city, and it’s details like that that help me differentiate the character of each.)
One somewhat confusing aspect of Hungary is its currency. I paid 6,600 florints for my hostel. Crazy, right? The florint is weak (which I guess I don’t need to say), and 1000 florints is the equivalent of about $5.
I did a free tour of Budapest, and the guide made a point of explaining how expensive Budapest is, but how most Hungarians can’t afford it. In her opinion, tourism is the #1 factor of their economy, which explains why all of their tourist sites look recently remodeled, and why absolutely everything had an entrance fee. And you know, I could tell that this was a bit of a tourist’s oasis in a poor country just by the number of homeless men I saw. I noticed more homelessness in Budapest than any other city I’ve been to over the past few weeks. Maybe Budapest doesn’t have any more homelessness than the next city, but there was certainly a lot of contrast between the homeless men and their wanderings down the pedestrian walkway next to the most expensive stores in Budapest.
I did a lot of walking in Budapest. One particularly epic day involved a walk to the exercise island, a run and more walking, totaling to something like 10 miles in one day. Walking was about all I could afford, but I decided to pay an entrance fee for one thing. It was between the spy museum or the thermal baths, and I went with the baths.
This is apparently the thing to do in Budapest. I’d heard a lot about it, didn’t know what to expect, but budgeted $20 and a few hours to spend there. They have a few big “spas” in the city, and I chose the one that is both indoor and outdoor. I didn’t think I would actually enjoy the hot water, given the temperature outside, but it felt really good. And it was interesting, walking around the premises testing each of the 16 pools and their different temperatures. But after about half an hour I had one of those “I don’t like being here alone anymore moments.” It was like being at a very awesome pool, where the building looks (and is) like it’s straight out of the 1800′s, but there was a very limited amount of chairs (which you had to pay for) and I wasn’t able to get one. This meant I had to sit on the concrete or sit in the pool. Totally ok, for the first 30 minutes. I would have been ok reading my book in the sun for a few hours, but the concrete wasn’t doing good things to me, and eventually I just felt lonely. But, if you’re ever in Budapest with a few friends, go to the thermal spas, they are pretty cool.
One of the confusing things about planning for Budapest was trying to decide if I wanted a hostel in Buda or Pest. Up until the tour, I kept getting the 2 confused. Buda and Pest used to be 2 separate cities, the larger one, Buda, on one side of the river and Pest on the other. My hostel in Buda was pretty much right in the center of Buda, which was nice, but the hostel itself was one of the least pleasant experiences I’ve had on this trip.
It was a nice hostel, but not exactly accommodating (the portion I stayed in was separate from reception, and I couldn’t get to the kitchen before 8 am, which was really annoying the day I had to leave at 6:30), and the building caught on fire the night before I left.
So I went to bed at about midnight my last night in Budapest. I was in a room for 4, but my 3 French roomies were out in the city, so I had the room to myself. I was going to have to wake up at 5:30 in the morning to get my 6:30 bus to Krakow, and I just wanted to sleep, especially after walking all day. Sometime around 2 am I woke up to a very large truck outside. I was so mad at this truck, because it was very loud. After a few hazy minutes, I realized that this truck had a loud speaker, and then I started to get curious. I finally got out of bed to see what was going on, and realized it was a fire truck. I got up just in time to see about 6 firemen walk into the entrance of my apartment building.
I was on the 3rd floor of this building, hadn’t heard a single alarm, and had no idea what was going on. I opened the door to my room, saw nothing, heard nothing, so I tried to go back to bed. Then I smelt smoke, and I started to think maybe I should figure out what was going on.
I went to the main door of the apartment, and as I opened it a haze of smoke and a French guy in his boxers came through the door. He told me that someone had dropped their cigarette in the trashcan, and the firemen hadn’t been there for very long. I asked if we should leave, and he kind of shrugged his shoulders and said maybe we should wait a few more minutes.
So I went back to bed.
Or at least I tried. I even considered putting in my earbuds to block out the sound of the loudest truck in the world. But then the worrier in me starting to think that this was stupid, and that I shouldn’t go to bed until I figured out if I needed to leave the burning building. I spent a while leaning out my window looking at the fire truck, and I noticed that the firemen seemed very calm. No running or anything. At one point some guys from my hostel walked up and, I’m assuming, asked if they could go inside. The firemen let them in, and that’s when I decided it was ok for me to go back to sleep.
Not actually a big deal, but just the cherry on top of a lack luster hostel experience.
All in all though, I enjoyed my time in Budapest, and now here I am in Krakow, but that update’s to come soon.
