Hungary anyone?

a cool coffee machine, Budapest

Parliament, Budapest

A Common Quail that hit a window on the Royal Palace, Budapest

Sarah and Matt at the Royal Palace, Budapest

Sarah on top of Citadel Hill, Budapest

The former Nazi Headquarters which was later occupied by Russian KGB during the cold war. Now a museum.

The weirdest bike I've ever seen. How do you ride it?

Hungary is known for its chile too!

Sarah with lunch: a dark beer, strudel, and goulash soup.

Central Market, Budapest

Budapest at night

Janos, Sarah and Matt!

Part of a holocaust memorial on the side of the Danube River where the Nazis lined up prisoners and shot them so they fell in the river. They always took off their shoes first, so the memorial is dozens of cast iron shoes along the bank of the river.

Budapest

Budapest

After a wonderful (and cheap) stay in Vienna with Eva, we boarded a train for a three hour ride to Budapest, Hungary's capitol city. This particular train trip turned out to be one of the easiest travel days of our entire trip. It was nice to have an easy one after some of the hellacious journeys we've been on. =)

Budapest is another big city situated along the Danube River. It was originally two towns, Buda and Pest, until it grew up and was eventually connected by a bunch of bridges. Buda is the hilly side, and has a wonderful historical district and a royal Hapsburg palace perched above the surrounding city. Pest is flatter and more of a shopping and governmental district now. This city is definitely rushing headlong out of the years of decline behind the Iron Curtain, with massive infrastructure projects going on all over the city (new metro lines, building refurbishing, bridge maintenance, etc). It'll be a totally different city in 10 years.


We stayed with a man named Janos (pronounced Ya-no-sh), whom we found on http://www.couchsurfing.com/. For those of you who may not have heard of this particular website, it is a wonderful way to stay places when travelling. Members offer up a room or bed in their home to travellers, but at no charge. The idea is cultural sharing, making new friends, and simple good hospitality. After a stay, there is a rating system for both guests and couch owners, so the whole system stays honest, fun, and safe. We've hosted a few people in Tucson, and will likely do so again. Anyway, Janos was a real gem. Not only did he put us up, he also made dinner for us the first night and ate dinner with us each night we were there. On our last evening, he took us out on a driving tour of the city at night, which I must say is quite a sight. Janos has one of the more interesting jobs I've ever encountered. In addition to working on his PHD in Norwegian/European Union interactions, he is a translator for English and Norwegian TV shows into Hungarian (which is a pretty tough and weird language, frankly). His translations are used for both subtitles and dubbing. He does all the translating work for such series as Bones, the Amazing Spiderman (a cartoon), nature shows, etc. What a crazy job! He is also an avid traveller, and jets off to some interesting destination several times a year. He has been in every single country in Europe (including all the little ones, like Monaco) except Lativa and Malta (we're talking over 40 countries here, from Ireland to Russia, Kosovo, and the Ukraine). He's going to Lativa in a couple months, and if Obama wins the election, he'll celebrate with a ticket to Malta. Anyway, he was a really interesting, intelligent, and caring host, so we enjoyed our stay immensely.

Other than that, we basically spent three days walking all over the city (literally), crossing back and forth over the Danube and seeing the sights. We especially enjoyed the Central Market -- it was slightly touristy, but we were able to get cheap and tasty strudel in various flavors (sour cherry, apricot and cottage cheese, etc) and do some great people watching. There was a line of food vendors on a balcony overlooking the market where I discovered Dreher Bak (a great dark beer) and Sarah found some great creme cake, so we sat and watched all the locals chatting over pints before they headed home. Interestingly (to me at least), Hungary is famous for its chile and paprika (though they call them both paprika), so it felt a bit like home to see all the chile ristras and tourist shops selling goods with peppers printed on them. Just like New Mexico!

Oh, and I had one of the absolute best burgers of my entire life here, too.

One of the "must do" activities in Budapest are the thermal baths that dot the city. I contented myself with looking into a couple instead of actually bathing, because even at home I'm not particularly interested in soaking in hot pools. I'm not sure why, but I've never been a fan. Sarah had the public hot bath (Hammam) experience when she was in Morocco a couple years ago, so she wasn't ready to jump in either. The bath buildings themselves were really neat -- some are many hundreds of years old.

Our stay in Budapest was really great. I highly recommend a visit if you ever get the chance.