Budapest 1 & Slovakia
Trip Start
Nov 14, 2008
1
45
102
Trip End
Feb 26, 2009
Budapest,
Hungary
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Bratislava is surprisingly nice for a small city, even if it does look Brisbane. There are statues everywhere, eg. near a restaurant called Paparazzi there's a statue of a paparazzi guy peering around the corner. Tow and I went to the castle area which had great views of the city, where we walked around for about an hour and took cool statuesque photos of us with the view in the background.
Budapest: House of Terror
Vicki recommended this museum, which was the site of the former secret police headquarters. The museum was about the dual tyrannies in Hungary - Nazi occupation, and communist rule. We could see the dungeons where the political dissidents were locked up in cruel conditions and the place in the basement where the gallows were. It was a pretty emotional place.
Back at the hotel
The hotel is amazing, at least by Contiki standards. It has a pool, gym, sauna and even a free solarium room! I was tempted to go in but a little short on time, so I opted to do a 20 minute run at 12km/h, which was quite an effort given my European diet of McDonalds.
Our night
We headed to a hill atop Budapest with great views of the city, but it was really annoying that it was too dark to take good pictures. A photography expert in our group took a photo of us all, as only 3 people were stupid enough to pay for the official "group photo" that never happened, but it was too dark even for him to work his photography magic.
Afterwards about 20 of us went to an awesome bar that must have once been an apartment block or something, as there were redesigned rooms appearing everywhere. We spent about an hour here before doing even more karaoke - Jess and I sang a stupid cowboy song Cotton-Eyed Joe while Tow and Deutsch got the entire room line dancing, throwing invisible lassos and chanting "yeehaw". I never thought such a dumb song would work so well. Tow reckons his "Livin' On a Prayer" got an even better response after I left but I think he was just drunk.
