the next morning, I had a quick small breakfast before leaving for the airport. fortunately, the hotel did provide a small array of foods before the normal breakfast time and they put out the bacon! i then took the shuttle to the airport to be on my flight to budapest, hungary. it was a short 2 hour morning flight, but that did not stop people from getting drunk. unfortunately the person next to me & what it appeared to be men from a work trip all got drunk.
once landing, i took the city bus which was super affordable. on a side note, i think this was the smallest international airport i have ever visited. on my way to the shuttle someone tried to trick me to purchase a private shuttle, but i knew better & researched all my transportation before my trip even started. i then took the 30 minute bus to the city center where I walked to my hostel. it was surprisingly hot & it stayed this way the entire time i was in hungary. i was prepared for cold weather & did not have summer clothes (since i only bring 2 outfits). it was not until my last day of my trip that i could honestly say it was cold. oops. and hungary was definitely the warmest.
anyhoo, the hostel was so cute and very homey. i do enjoy a more hotel hostel, but it is nice to stay at a place that feels like it has more character and like you were staying at someone's home. it was in the middle of a city square in what is almost like an old tenement building. to get to the hostel...
you must first enter a code at the the street entrance...
which then takes you to the courtyard...but then you have to take an elevator (occupancy 1) to the 4th floor...
you then use a code to get to the balcony, and then another code to the front door
the hostel was two floors, the floor you enter on is the one with all the rooms, the bathrooms, & the laundry room. i stayed at a 4 bed female room. to get to the 2nd floor, you then have to take a really steep stairway, which was really like a ladder with a slight slant. this takes you to the reception area, the kitchen, the living room, & what appears to be a room where the workers live (this is very common for hostels). there is actually another attic like floor you can take a ladder too, but i am still unsure what that is for. i climbed up there one morning & saw people sleeping on the floor. i am thinking it was friends of the workers. i did not feel weirded out or unsafe, but i was confused. funny enough, this was my first good night of sleep during my trip. i generally sleep better in hostels than in hotel rooms by myself.
after settling into my hostel and unpacking, i made my way and walked to the house of terror. this is a museum that tells the history of fascism & communism in hungary, whether it was the nazis, soviets, or other extreme organizations from home. this is an interesting museum because the interpretation of information was very different than what you would expect from a museum. this museum had no artifacts. it is a collection of rooms set up sharing information. in some ways, the rooms were like contemporary art pieces you can walk into. inside, you cannot take photos. almost everything was in hungarian, so i had an english audio guide.
for dinner, i decided to be brave and go to a traditional hungarian restaurant. most of the time, i skip restaurants because i find eating alone in a non-english speaking country more stressful than it is worth. i try to do it at least once when it comes to local foods. i ordered the traditional dish, paprika chicken with noodles. i also ordered a side of pickled cucumbers to get some whole foods
klasszikus csirkepaprikás with nokedli
i then went back to the hostel & talked to some of my roommates for a while. i met a middle age british woman (but who also had hungarian citizenship) who was in budapest for dental work. i talked to her for the next couple days & we had some good converations. i also met a girl from israel, but did not get to talk to her much as she went out for the night & left in the morning.
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the next day would be my full day on the pest side of the city. the city is split in 2 by the danube river. pest is on the right, is pretty flat, & has more of the night life & what i perceive as youth culture. buda is on the left, has hills, & has more of the historic sites & expensive homes.
i love walking early mornings & since nothing was open until later, i decided to walk to the museum. before that, a very nice british lady let me have some of her moka pot coffee at the hostel. we chatted & then i started my walk. i also wanted to walk as i would pass the old jewish quarter, which was in between the hostel & the danube riverfront. along the way, i saw the ghetto wall memorial & the dohany street synagogue. the synagogue was the largest in europe & was also damaged from both hugarian fascist groups & nazis during wwii. it was too early to go inside, but i looked at the courtyard from the outside.
the carl lutz memorial. carl lutz helped save jews during the holocaust. the memorial shows an angel saving a jew.
the little princess statue, probably the most famous statue in bubapest.
the turkish bank house with mosaics depicting the glory to hungry in the art-noveau style.
i walked to the riverfront to see more memorials, monuments, and some old building façade's. i wanted to see the old mcdonald's, which was the first mcdonald's open in the soviet bloc, but it was closed. i found a nice little café to get an egg and bacon croissant and a coffee while I waited for everything to open. a little birdy joined me at the table & waited patiently for me to give him some of my crumbs. i then made my way to the hungarian national museum.
the national hungarian museum (c. 1847 - neoclassical)
i then took the metro to the holocaust memorial center, a renovated synagogue from the 1920s that includes a museum of hungarian jews & others that suffered during the holocaust. after i took a bus to travel north near the parliament building. this is probably the most well known building due to the spires & neo-gothic architecture. i only saw the exterior.
the hungarian parliament building (c. 1902, neo-gothic)
i walked along the shoreline & decided to get a coffee & some food as szamos. this ended up being one of my favorite food places during my trip. here is where you could get premade sandwiches, cakes, and coffees at a decent price at a place that has been around since the 1930s. when i was eating, they played the theme music from the romantic comedy notting hill. i love 90s rom coms, so this was a big plus.
i had a slice of the sachertorte (a more famous cake from vienna that has chocolate with apricot jam) & a sandwich.
along the river is the shoes on the danube river bank memorial. it memorializes the hungarians who were killed by the arrow cross party, a hungarian fascist group, during wwii. when the group held executions, they ordered hungarians to line up in front of the river & take off their shoes. they were then executed by firing squad & the bodies fell in the ocean. people leave flowers & other mementos inside the shoes.
he danube river bank memorial
a little kermit the frog in liberty square
after walking to liberty square to see some monuments, i made my way to the hungarian state opera house. to my surprise, noticed what looked like film gear. when you see a lot of people wearing all black, just sitting around with black hard boxes & tons of electrical chords, it looks like a film set. i've learned this working in both downtown los angeles & long beach. The further I walked I noticed there were some old cars and also some props that were used to look like this area was paris art nouveau area. as someone who has watched a lot of period pieces I knew this was france as I know how the old metro signs look & i know toddler-level french. i later learned that this is actually they were actually filming the johnny depp movie modi. i did not hang out too long as there was a crowd forming. i just looked inside the box office of the opera house & made my way out.
the movie prop cars.
the stairway to the opera station decorated for the movie.
even the opera metro station was staged for paris. budapest has the oldest electric underground train system in the world. this is not surprising as budapest was the capital of the austro-hungarian empire, along with vienna. the railway opened in 1896, including the opera metro station. the station still looks from the era.
the opera metro station (c. 1896).
i took the metro to vajdahunyad castle. Now this castle isn't actually that old compared to the rest of the citt as it was built in 1896 to celebrate the 1,000 anniversary of the hungarian conquest. the castle reflects 4 architectural styles: romanesque, gothic, renaissance, & baroque.
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heroes square
vajdahunyad castle (c. 1896)
the statue of anonymous who wrote the history of the magyars
i then made my way back to the hostel, but first stopped at a grocery store to pick up dinner as i could not be bothered to eat at a restaurant. at the grocery store, i ended up getting a salad, yogurt, a mars bar, and a lemon coke. i saw so much lemon coke during my trip, which is not as common in the us. i ended up drinking it often since it felt special & there was no dr. pepper (other than one at a train station in germany); believe me, i looked. while i ate in the kitchen, i talked to a college student who grew up both in germany & turkey.
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the next morning, i left early to stop to go to pest. before going, i found a coffee place nearby bus station where i could drink coffee & people watch. i then took a bus to a transit center & then took another bus that took me to the outskirts of the city to the memento park. it is always weird to go on freeways in different countries. the park is an outdoor museum of soviet statues & plaques that used to be in budapest during the 1940s-1980s. the museum was opened 3 years after the fall of communism in hungary.
i was the first person here and they actually had an espresso machine so i took advantage and had a cartado before going inside. since all the displays are in english, i bought a little booklet that provided more info in english.
stalin's boots
after visiting the museum for about an hour, i made my way to the bus station. i took a different journey back & first went on a bus for a few stops to a small rail stop where the area only had a a flower shop and little convenient store. for not being too far from the city, it felt like the country. when i went on the rail, i was literally the only person in the carriage. as i reached closer and closer to the city, it ended up being completely full. it was nice to see outside of the city and just having a visual of how people live because when you stay in the touristy areas, you really have no clue as most locals live in the outskirts of a city. I got to see some other historical sites that i did not have time to visit, such as the gellert hill & the cave.
once reaching as far up as i could on buda hill, i took the escalator at the varkert bazaar up to the buda castle. i skipped the funicular since there are lines & it is not free. the escalator is on the backside & free, but took some advance internet research as the escalator was not mentioned much. this area was quite busy as you can see views of the danube river & pest.
the view of pest from buda hill.
a castle has been here since the 1200s, but the current palace is from the 1700s during the habsburg reign. the original castle was destroyed in the 1500s & 1600s during the ottoman invasions. the castle was destroyed again during the hungarian revolt of the habsburgs in the 1800s. it was then rebuilt again, but mostly destroyed during wwii. most of the artifacts that were inside the castle have been ransacked in the last centuries.
in one wing is the budapest historical museum which tells the history of the city & also displays some relics of the castle itself. there was an interesting exhibit that displays aspects of life in the 1900s compared to past centuries, such as cooking or shopping. one thing that stood out at this museum is that the exhibit font was so small. me and this french young guy commented on it as we both had to stand so close to read the damn things. it was not my age as this guy had to be younger than me. i also like seeing some old, worn leather boots.
the budapest history museum which is also the castle museum.
inside the castle is a gothic chapel
after exiting the museum, you are dropped off in the castle district & the touristy area of buda hill. here there are pretty buildings & monuments. i started walking down the hill where there are some shops, residential neighborhoods, & the old matthias church.
apple pie & ice cream (with a little mouth shovel)!
the most popular tourist site in the area is the fisherman's bastion. it is not as old as it looks as it is a romanticized reconstruction of the castle walls.
fisherman's bastion (c. 1902 - neo-romanesque)
taking the stairs down to make my way back to pest.
it took a while for me to find the tram stop as the walk down crossed through neighborhoods & dead ends. i kept having to walk back up the hill as streets would turn 90 degrees. i decided to get off the tram early & walk across one of the pedestrian bridges that go across the danube.
the liberty bridge, rebuilt in 1945
the central market hall opened in 1897. there are 3 floors: the basement is fish/meat, the ground floor is produce & other goods such as spices & alcohol, & the second floor is eateries & souvenirs. i spent most of my time on the second floor. locals still shop groceries at the market, but focus their time on the ground & basement levels. the second floor is more for tourists.
central market hall
i came here for the souvenirs & dinner. the souvenirs were a bit disappointing. i normally like to try to get something small & handmade, but there were mostly imports. i did get langos for dinner, which is what i wanted to try. it is a traditional fried flatbread that can be made sweet or savory. the most common way is with sour cream & cheese (not melted).
langos with cheese pepperoni & onion
all the paprika
on a side note, i noticed in budapest there are a lot of old people, both men & woman, who carry weaved baskets when they run errands. it is super cute. also, there were more times than expected that old people would come up asking for what i assume were directions. i guess i come off as hungarian. more than any other country i did have people approach me with questions.
after, i made my way back to my hostel and had a quiet night. the next morning i would be leaving vienna.
