When you’re on a super strict budget, you start to appreciate the little things. The little things like having four grocery stores within a two block radius from your accommodation and having an aircon to come home to after a super long day of walking around and taking in all the sights on foot. We started to really appreciate all the small luxuries that we were occasionally afforded and would obviously give a glorious Airbnb review afterwards because of them.
We also loved just being out of the tourist areas for a few hours and were pretty lucky finding decent accommodation that could give us the time to just chill in the evening before we would start out the next day getting bombarded by the hoards of tourists once more.
That and the fact that the food was amazing in Hungary. When I listen back to the recording I made while we were there, I remember the tastes so well and how I had no idea that the thing we’d bought in the grocery store that I said looked like naked sausage rolls was really Cevapcici. All we knew was that it tasted great with the wasabi hummus that we also just had to try. We also ended up buying Strawberry wine and yoghurt bars to get us through.
When I say that Budapest started with a party on the train, that is a bit of an understatement. We actually spent the 2 and a half hours that it took from Bratislava to Budapest trying to block out the noise from the cabins around us. Apparently people like to travel to Budapest for a fun weekend away and the party has to begin on the train. It seems to be a rite of passage or something. 🙂 What with a bachelorette party on our one side and another group of guys drinking copious amounts of beer on our other side, I was just surprised that the two parties never joined up. When we left the train, I just had to walk past where the bachelorette party had been and couldn’t believe my eyes as there were like 10 empty bottles of champagne and I literally only saw four women leave the car. I was so shocked that they were still standing!
We couldn’t find a normal train (that would have been included in our rail pass) to get us to our accommodation, so we decided to brave the Metro and it actually ended up being a pretty cheap option with us only paying R34 for the two of us and getting off after only two stops. Of course, we used our feet for the rest of our visit to Budapest cause those are always free! 🙂
We did another free walking tour of course, as was becoming our norm in every new city. It helped us to orientate ourselves and also helped us to know where all the sights were and get a bit of background history as well. It was also great to here funny stories about every city and to meet someone that had lived in the city and could recommend restaurants and places to visit on the side.
We got to all the main sights including the Buda Castle and Castle Hill, Matthias Church, St Stephen’s Basilica – I still thought it was the most random thing that St Stephen (who was also a King) has his mummified hand inside the Basilica and that they bring it out once a year during a procession on the 20th of August.
We also managed to see some sights that I had no idea about until we arrived in Budapest like the Fisherman’s Bastion – I thought it was so great with it’s medieval looking towers and picture box windows that were perfect for aerial shots over Budapest.
And the Hospital in the Rock Nuclear Bunker was another unexpected gem for us. Although we never really got to take any photos inside, it was such an interesting tour and we learnt so much of what it was like during war time and how many people they treated in this underground bunker hospital.
We also spent tons of time taking photos outside the Houses of Parliament and walking along the Danube Promenade with the Shoes of Danube sculpture making a huge impression on me. When I read about how in World War II, the Jews were lined up and told to take off their shoes and stand on the edge of the Danube, so that when they were shot; their bodies would just float off down the river. What a stark monument of remembrance, but it definitely is eye opening.
After getting up early on a Sunday morning to walk the hour it was going to take us to get to Heroes Square and the Millennium Monument, we never thought that we would get to see the seedy underbelly of the city. Not realising that of course many young people had been drinking and having parties all over the city the night before, it suddenly didn’t feel safe to walk the streets any more. I saw more than one person passed out on a street corner in just their shorts or even worse, still stumbling along with no idea how to get back to their accommodation. There were also cigarette butts and empty beer bottles littered all over the ground. At times we thought about just going back to our accommodation, but we decided that we couldn’t go to Budapest without seeing Heroes Square.
It actually turned out to be one amazing sight, but also led us to a sight we hadn’t even heard of just around the corner from it and we were spoilt for photo opportunities there. It was a castle by the name of Vajdahunyad and it looked like something out of a Disney movie. I turned on my black and white filter on my phone and felt like a professional photographer for a few minutes.
Although Budapest definitely had it’s rough side with opposing beautiful (mainly tourist) areas, we both just enjoyed the culture. It was like you could feel the people of the city wherever you walked and their history radiated from every corner we turned around. At least that is how I felt. Luch just liked the cars. The very fancy and expensive cars that he just wished he was driving! 🙂
