Budapest Day 3 and Overnight Train

So, we've made it to Belgrade and have survived one day here thus far. Yesterday was a pretty long day because everyone left us with 8 hours to kill in Budapest. It was interesting.

We got up pretty late compared to the last few weeks of traveling and we sorted out the laundry that arrived (yay clean clothes). We then had our massive rush to get things together before the check out time and managed to check out our stuff right at 11. Good timing. They let us store our bags in the hotel while we ran around the city to do last-minute sightseeing too, which was convenient.

We stopped by the nearby mall to get some breakfast-ish food for everyone. More like a lunch, really. It was all food court food. Mia, James and I got kebobs and Halmony and Umma split stuff from some Asian restaurant. The mall was actually pretty nice (and air conditioned). We wandered around the H&M for a while too.

Our major sightseeing trip for the day was Memento Park. In retrospect, it might have been better to do that stop the day before, but there are no complaints because everything worked out fine. When Hungary got rid of its communist regime, they got rid of all of the propaganda statues that were scattered around Budapest. Many of them ended up in Memento Park, which is this small park on the outskirts of Budapest. The trip out there was pretty far. It took us a good hour to take various buses out to the park. It was long and there were times that we were concerned that we would not make it back to the hotel by 3 so Umma Halmony and James could get their airport taxi. The park wasn't as big as I thought it would be, but it was still pretty impressive. The statues are enormous and cover a wide range of topics. You have the statues of the major communist dictators (except for Stalin because most of those were apparently destroyed in the 1956 revolt). There are statues of other major communist heroes and then there are statues that represent communist ideals. My major regret is that when we came here on our backpacking trip several years ago, that we didn't take Gianni or Andrew to it. I think they would have enjoyed it a lot.

By the time we made our way back to the hotel area, it was almost three, so our timing was quite perfect. We helped everyone get their stuff up from the storage room and then saw Halmony, James, and Umma off as they were laughing and waving with their taxi driver.

Because our overnight train was at 11:30, we had a long time to kill and were not quite sure where we could use that time. Sure there were plenty of other sights to see, but I handed over my Rick Steves book and felt empty sightseeing Budapest without it. Also, it was incredibly hot, so we didn't really want to stumble around more in the heat. So, we did what we would have done on any obscenely hot day in the states, we went to the movies.

The movie theater near the hotel dubbed the movies, which made things quite inconvenient for us, but we ended up finding a well-timed showing of Green Lantern to go see. It was fun to watch in Hungarian, even if we didn't understand anything. Paralax's voice was also a lot creepier in Hungarian. The theater in general was pretty cool. They had WiFi in the theater, the popcorn was cheaper, and they had assigned seats.

After the movie was over, we went back to the Vaci Utca area and ended up eating at Raday Utca, which is what Rick Steves referred to Budapest's restaurant row. We even found a restaurant that he recommended and finally got our Hungarian goulash. It was so good, but the service was slow. We also tried a pretty interesting pastry dish while we were there.

By the time we were done with our dinner, it was 7:50 and our 24 hour pass ended at 7:56. This left us with not much time to get back to the hotel. Somehow, I dumbly went the wrong way and we blew our last few minutes of our 24 hr pass on a wrong turn and had to buy new single ride passes. It was depressing, but whatever. We picked up our bags and then made our way over to the train station. First, though, we stopped at the convenience store near the hotel to get some snacks for the train. We didn't end up with as much as we thought because we had to spend some of our snack money on extra Metro tickets :(

The wait for the train was a long one, but we stood close enough to the ticket-only area that there weren't too many shady people around us. Eventually, it was littered with other backpackers on their way to Belgrade anyway. The train was a little late, too, so we left around midnight rather than 11:30.

The overnight train was an interesting experience. We splurged and got the sleeping coach, which normally will sleep up to 3 people. It was only the two of us in there, so it worked out well. The train conductor took our ticket and Eurail pass at the beginning of the ride, which put me into quite a panic because that had never happened before. Had it not been for the fact that I later saw the conductor hanging out in the conductor's room, I would have spent the whole night thinking that we had fallen for some elaborate Eastern European train scam. For the record, we got our ticket back.

The train was pretty rickety and the Canadian couple next to us were loud the entire night. Also, we had to clear customs at 2 am and 3 am. That was fun. I think somehow, we managed to get some sleep in though.

Budapest (Day 2)

I must be almost caught up because I'm actually writing about things that went on today. Yay. Exciting.

Anyway, I love Budapest. It's definitely one of my favorite cities, definitely of Europe and possibly in general. I thought returning would be disappointing, but the city is just as cool the second time around and I still have yet to try out one of the famous thermal baths.

Because of our late night last night, we got up relatively late. Rather, James, Mia and I got up late. Halmony always gets up early and Umma had to get up early to give the hotel people our laundry (so glad to have clean clothes again). We didn't leave the hotel until around 11, and then we were hungry. We discovered that there was McDonalds relatively nearby and decided to lunch there.

Now, I will defend overseas McDonalds trips for many reasons. First, the restaurants (for the most part) tend to be significantly nicer than they are in the States. This one had free WiFi. Depending on where you are, you also tend to be eating with more of the locals. You won't get this feeling at the McDonalds near the Spanish Steps, for instance, but when you're in not-so-touristy areas of a city like we were today, you end up hearing more of the local language. Also, McDonalds tends to change its menu when you're abroad. For instance, today I got a Greek sandwich that actually had a bit of that kebob-y taste to it. Anyway, that was kind of a random side tangent, but I always think it's kind of fun to go to McDonalds abroad even though I very rarely eat it at home.

Once we were done with lunch, it was finally time for some sight seeing. Our first stop of the day was the Great Market Hall. This involved some winding around streets as well as dragging Umma away from touristy shops lining the touristy pedestrian street, Vaci Utca. Once we finally got to the market, I think Umma and Halmony were in their happy place. The Great Market Hall is an enormous marketplace in Budapest. It was apparently one of the four built in Budapest in 1896 (which was a big year for the city as it was their millenial year). This one remains as an incredibly large market that caters to both locals and tourists. We circled around the bottom floor for a while, which was more or less a farmers market. We passed a ton of fruit stalls and some meat stands. We even bought some nectarines to eat later.

We then explored the upper level, which really only has an insane amount of tourist stalls and some food stands. I finally got to try langos, which I've heard Rick Steves rave about in his podcasts and in his Eastern Europe guidebook. They kind of tasted like funnel cakes, but the concepts very similar to crepes, where you can order them with both sweet and savory toppings. We got a simple sugar one and were quite happy with it.

I'm pretty sure that we could have stayed around the Grand Market for much longer. We still hadn't even explored the basement floor, where there is even more food. However, we still had much to see, so we went outside and ate nectarines and got our bearings for a while before heading out. We took the tram over to the Chain Bridge and crossed the bridge by foot. If you're unfamiliar with the layout of Budapest, the city once consisted of two separated cities, Buda and Pest.  The Chain Bridge is this massive bridge that crosses the Danube and connects the Buda portion of the city with the Pest side (we'd so far been on the Pest side). It's pretty fun to walk across if you're able to dodge all of the bikes that pass you.

Once we made it across, we took the funicular up the hill to get to the Buda Castle. Apparently, they're doing some major folk art festival up there, so we couldn't actually get into the surrounding palace area without buying a ticket to go to the festival. It's a pity too. You can get some great views of the city from the Buda Castle. We explored the Castle Hill area a little more, visiting St. Matthias Church and some other spots before deciding to head back down.

From there, I had planned to take a tram from the chain bridge to the Metro line that would take us under the Danube and back to the Pest side. Turns out that tram that I wanted to take was out of service until September so we had to walk. It actually went by faster than I thought it would. In any case, we took the Metro to our last sight seeing stop of the day, Heroes Square. I said before that 1896 was a big year of the city and Heroes Square is further evidence of that. It was built as part of the major celebration to commemorate the 1000 years since the Magyars first arrived in Hungary. In that square is the Hungarian War Memorial as well as statues memorializing many of the most famous Hungarian leaders. It's a pretty epic square. We sat around there for a little while, until a cricket bit Umma and we got chased away by a bee. We may or may not have embarassed ourselves in front of many locals and fellow tourists.

By this time, it was running close to dinner time and our big task of the day was to surprise Halmony for her birthday with a Korean dinner. We had used the McDonalds WiFi earlier in the day to locate what Lonely Planet named the best Korean restaurant in Budapest. Unfortunately, it took us on this tour of what Mia said was the Inglewood of Budapest before we could actually find the restaurant. On the upside, we all got a glimpse of what I believe was the soccer stadium of Budapest. That was cool at least.

The Korean restaurant was interesting. The main people serving us there were these two big burly Hungarian men who did not look Korean or speak Korean and looked like they could have belonged to the Hungarian mafia. They were nice, but kind of intimidating. The food was pretty good. A lot more authentic than the place that we had gone to in Prague. It was, however, incredibly spicy. Moreso than normal Korean food. Even the kimchi was painfully but deliciously spicy. We all left utterly defeated by the spiciness of Hungarian Korean food and had to console ourselves with ice cream. At least the walk back wasn't as bad as the walk there.

After our trip to eat Korean food, we made our way back to the hotel and have been getting ready for our next day of travels. Umma, James, and Halmony are flying to Milan tomorrow. Mia and I take and overnight to Belgrade. I'm going to have to get rid of my beloved Rick Steves book because he doesn't cover any of the other stops we'll be going to. It'll be sad not carrying that around in my bag anymore, but at least my bag will be a little lighter. Before everyone leaves, we plan to try to go to Memento Park and eat some goulash. Mia and I will also try to find that Hungarian Mexican restaurant again for dinner.

Long Train Ride and Budapest

Most of this day was spent on a seven hour train from Prague to Budapest. It sounds kind of painful, but it wasn't so bad. We had to wake up around 6:30 to get our stuff together and take the tram over to the train station. We waited a while in the train station trying to figure out what platform we'd be on. Mia and I tried to get our next batch of tickets. We ran into a problem when we were told that the train that we wanted to get from Sofia to Brasov did not exist. Instead of dealing with the nicer person at the train ticket office, I figured I'd save it for Budapest. 

Anyway, like I said, the train wasn't too bad. I think Umma was delirious for a while because she kept on laughing at everything and was making weird faces at James.  I watched some Dr. Who and slept for a while. We were in one of those 6-person compartments, so we had one seat empty. There was a period where Mia was sprawled across both her own seat and the empty one next to her in order to sleep. Got some reading in and some blogging. We went through Bratislava, which delighted Mia as parts of the city that we did see from the train really did look like the Bratislava you see in the movie Eurotrip. We also saw some goats along the road, which also made Mia incredibly happy. Umma also made us pack up all of our stuff and wait around 20 minutes before we got to Budapest. One of the people working on the train laughed at us. Good times.

We arrived in Budapest around 4:45, but we had to exchange money and deal with the whole train issue. We grabbed our tickets for the international train ticket line and Umma went off in search of a way to ATM. While we were waiting, we were approached by a homeless man who was digging through the trash and eating off of scraps of chicken. He started talking to Halmony, so we all pretended we only spoke Korean and ran away. We later felt bad and gave him some bread and leftover salami that he had. That made him pretty happy.

Meanwhile, we should have been foreworn that waiting at the Budapest Keleti train station was hellish as many, many people had written something to the extent of "I hate this place" on the walls. We wait like 30 minutes to get our number called and when we finally did, we ended up with this devil woman who barked different things at us the entire time. When we asked to book trains, she yelled at us and told us to go  back to the Information booth to ask about the times. When we told her that we had the times we wanted, she glared at us, checked our computer and then told us the train from Sofia to Brasov through Bucharest didn't exist. She clearly did not want to answer any of our other questions or help us in anyway, so we eventually took our Information ticket and sat back down. The woman at information confirmed that the only train that we could take from Bucharest was an overnight train. This threw off the carefully planned hostel reserrvations that we had made, but seeing as we're eventually flying to Milan from Bucharest, we didn't really have any other option. So, we took another train ticket number and waited another 30 minutes. This time, the woman we were working for was significantly nicer and we managed to gett from Sofia to Bucharest. She claims that we don't need reservations for any of the other trains we're taking in Romania, but I don't think that's true. I'll double check at another train station. I don't want to deal with the Budapest train station ticketing offices anymore.

Anyway, by the time that hellish process was over, it was 6 and we still had to lug our stuff to the hostel. I made sure to check directions from the Budapest train station to our hotel in Prague, which made life significantly easier for us. Cut down at least some of the random circling that we usually end up doing. Other than the problems we had finding the Metro stop, the trip to the hotel was relatively smooth. The area was significantly nicer than the place in Prague and the room is huge and has a normal shower. It actually kind of reminds us all of a smaller and more European version of the place we stayed in Korea. The Internet's also very fast and we have a flat screen. It's awsome, I know.

We decided to go back out again at almost nine-ish. We were hungry and I thought that if there was any sight that I thought everyone had to see to shed the image of Budapest's kind of shady train station, it'd be a walk along the Danube River at night. There's definitely something magical about that walk, and you can't capture the view of the river on film.

We took the Metro to the Parliament building and walked along the Danube from there. We looked at the Buda Palace and the Fisherman's Bastion across the way and I showed everyone the pretty moving monument of shoes along the river. It's a Holocaust Monument of 50 bronze shoes. It memorializes the Hungarian Jews who were killed by the Nazi's puppet government. They were shot along the river bank, but were forced to remove their shoes so that they could sell them.

We walked further along the Danube and passed the Chain Bridge and decided that it was probably about time that we ate something. We thought about trying out one of the boat restaurants along the way, but at 10:30 at night, there apparently are pretty limited dining options. We ended up at this Thai restaurant. It was pretty good, better than what I expected at least.

By the time that we got out of the restaurant, it was almost 11:30, which was a problem because, according to my guidebook at least, the Metro and other forms of public transportation stop running around. This posed quite a problem, although we did see some random buses running along the street, so maybe the times changed or something (?). In any case, we just decided to walk. The walk from the Parliament building to where we were (around the LIberty Bridge) actually took us about halfway back to the hotel anyway, so it wouldn't be too bad. It actually wasn't. And the streets of Budapest, even at midnight, definitely felt a little safer than the streets we walked around in Prague.

We made it back and I think all of us got to bed fairly late.