A Hungarian Experience: Budapest

The next morning, Saturday May 21st, 2011 I knew I had to leave Salzburg, if I ever wanted to continue on with my trip. If I didn’t leave then, I probably would have just stayed there. I loved that city so much. Well I decided to commit and booked my hostel for that night in Budapest so I knew I would have to leave.

After breakfast, Eden and I went off to visit Mozart’s birthplace downtown and we did a little shopping, Eden did more shopping than I did. I think all I got were some of those delicious Mozart chocolate balls. Mozart’s house was cool, pretty much what you would suspect from someone’s birth house, small, cute neighborhood, etc. Outside the house, Eden and I danced the polka to a local band, and then carried on as if nothing had happened. We wandered the city some more and found ourselves inside the big cathedral in Salzburg. Finally, I looked at the time to realize I wouldn’t be making the train I had originally envisioned taking, so we sat at the hostel and waited for the next train. Eden and I took the same train as he was headed to Vienna, and the train to Budapest goes through Vienna to get there. He was lucky, he was only on the train for 3 hours, I was there for 6 hours.

I said goodbye to Eden, switched trains, and got on a janky train full of barking dogs and crying babies headed to Budapest. Fortunately, on the train I met Judith. Judith is a lady who is working in Vienna, but is originally from Budapest. She helped give me advice as to where I should go, how much money I should take out (as in Hungary they use the Hungarian Fronks, I think is what they’re called), explained what train station I should get off to get to my hostel, etc. All around super helpful.

Eventually, I found my way to my hostel, got checked in, and just crashed. I was in a 8-bed room full of old men and was frankly too tired to think about it, so just went right to sleep. The next morning, I got up and had breakfast. Then decided to go see the day. But first, I made the decision that I was going to return to Austria that night and stay in Vienna for a few days. Despite being there for only a few hours, Hungary was already quite confusing for me.  Also, I knew I had a friend back in Vienna that I could travel with, opposed to exploring a random country by myself. I knew I would have 2 whole weeks to do that later, why not hang out with others while I had the chance.

Once I booked my hostel in Vienna, I went exploring. Not knowing anything about Budapest made it a little difficult to know what I was looking for, but even still I found things to do. I left the hostel and just began to wander; I ended up at a giant synagogue. Having vaguely remembered Monsieur Piette telling me about synagogues in Budapest, I went. It was my first time ever-stepping foot inside a synagogue and it was not that different than a church. Men had to cover their heads and there were no crosses, but otherwise, they were pretty similar in structure. In the backyard of the Great Synagogue housed a symbolic memorial cemetery to the Jews who had been killed in the Second World War. Additionally, there a really cool weeping willow monument made from steel in the garden with names of Hungarian Jews who had been persecuted and killed.

Once, I left the Great Synagogue, I got a little lost, but somehow ended up at the other synagogue. This one was mostly ruins, but it was still cool to go inside and see the destruction caused by the war. I guess cool really isn’t the best choice of words, but it was enlightening and disheartening to see wreckage of what one can clearly tell used to be a magnificent place to worship.

From these synagogues, I went off in search of the opera house, but got sidetracked by a ice cream parlor. Since everything is so cheap in Hungary, 2 scoops of ice cream only cost .75-euro cents, something like 200 HUF! After sitting for a while, I forgot how nice it was not to be walking around frantically trying to find something when I had no idea what was in the city, and that’s when I decided to do a bus tour. First I walked through the Sunday market, and admired some cool art pieces, then I walked back to my hostel, where right outside a bus was picking people up for the tour.  The tour was brilliant because the city is quite large and split into two sections by the Danube River, Buda and Pest. The tour took us all over both sides and had an audio component for 16 languages. It was similar to the bus tour I did was Mom and Aunt Barb in Paris; it was a hop-on hop-off type deal.

The bus took us all over. We went to József Nádor tér, Erzsébet tér/Deák Ferenc tér, Andrássy út, and the Opera House. The Hungarian State Opera House (Hungarian: Magyar Állami operaház) is a neo-Reneissance opera house located in central Pest, (a part of Budapest) on Andrássy út. Although in size and capacity it is not among the grates, the beauty and the quality of acoustics the Budapest Opera house is considered to be amongst the first few opera houses in the world. Then, it went to Liszt Ferenc tér / Oktogon, and Heroes’ Square / City Park, which is Hungary’s biggest square, complete with historical statues and famous museums. Next to the drop off point was the Budapest Zoo, the Széchenyi Thermal Bath, the Gundel restaurant, and the Vajdahunyad Castle.

Then we went to Keleti Railway Station / Hungaria Hotel, the Astoria, in downtown Pest, near the National Museum and the Synagogue. Following that was the Chain Bridge / Funicular, found on the Buda side, at the Buda bridgehead, underneath the Castle Hill. Castle District / Dísz tér) On the Castle Hill, within walking distance from the Fishermen’s Bastion, Matthias Church, and the Buda Castle was after that. Citadel, which is the highest point of downtown Budapest, with breathtaking views of the city and its river followed. It stopped at Váci utca – Március 15. tér, and finally went to Parliament, which is Budapest’s most revered building in the government district.

Part way through the tour, I caught myself falling asleep, and I wasn’t prepared for that, so I got off the bus at the opera house stop and did a tour of it. The opera house in Budapest is smaller to the one in Vienna, but its inside is more elaborately made, its detailed with real gold, and the ceiling is painted with a picture of the gods. Also, there is a special seat in the back of the audience dead-center known as the king’s seat, and only royalty or presidents can sit there. The only person who has ever sat there without fitting that criteria is Madonna because she’s a diva and got her way when they were in Budapest filming Evita.

After the tour, I got back on the tour bus and got dropped off at the hostel. From the hostel, I picked up my bags, and went to the Keleti train station and was on a train back to Vienna in no time. Back at the Vienna train station, Eden was there waiting for me, and he helped me find my hostel for that night, since the hostel he was staying in claimed it was booked online. My hostel was at the end of the U4 line, in the boonies. It was in the back woods of Vienna, I don’t think it was even Vienna, I think it was some suburb of the city. Either way, we found my hostel. Despite it being so far away, it was nice because I ended up having a 4-person room to myself. This room even had its own bathroom and shower in it! Once I was all checked in, we went out for dinner discussing what we had done with our days apart. Eden hadn’t really done anything, and I told him all about Budapest. As it was getting late, he took the metro back to his hostel and we said goodnight.