Budapest, Hungary

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  Budapest, Hungary
Sunday, April 13, 2008

Day 45- We left Vienna for Budapest about midday. The train ride took just three hours and I was amazed at how much can change in such a short period. We were now behind the old Iron curtain, and it showed. The trains were older, the rooms were less clean, the quality of everything seemed a little.....I don't know....socalist?  Am I allowed to say that? I don't know? Anyway, this does not detract from Budapest's overall beauty as a city. It is much older and greater than Communism and it is just a single step on Budapest's ladder of history.
Budapest was at one time, two separate cities: Buda and Pest. It wasn't until the chain bridge was built that the two cities began to interact and then soon, merged together. Buda is on the west side of the river and it has the palace, government archives, several large cathedrals, and expensive houses on the hill. Pest, on the east side is full of suburban houses, nightlife, markets and parks.
Immediately after stepping off the train we were bombarded with people asking us if we had rooms for the evening

Baths

. Apparently many people who live in the city let out single rooms as a means of extra income. We had already made bookings so we gratefully declined the numerous offers. We noticed very quickly how friendly people were. Standing with our backpacks on looking for something, or studying a map it was not uncommon for people to approach us and ask us if we needed help or directions. We found our hostel and got checked in. Our room was on the top floor and had windows that opened in a sloped ceiling. Across the street was the Linszt School of Music and I could hear the sounds of dozens of students practicing simultaneously. This should be annoying to any normal person but I was transported to the Oregon School of Music practice rooms for a moment and smiled to myself. I felt the pain of those in the rooms practicing and I was glad that I was far, far away from having to do that myself.
Geographically, Budapest is a lot like Portland, Oregon. There is a river running North to South through the city, there are 6 bridges connecting the city. In the east is all the sprawl of suburbia, to the west there are hills where the more wealthy people live looking over the city. Trees are planted along the sidewalks and the whole metro area retains a "green" feeling. Portland is of course, missing a royal palace, but if it doesn't already have a sister city somewhere, I think it should be Budapest.

Baths1

We were now in the part of our trip where we moved quickly between cities, so there would be no time wasted on relaxing in the hostel, we had to take in as much as we could before moving on to the next city. I know this isn't the preferred way of traveling, especially not for us. But our options were to see Hungary and Romania quickly, or not see them at all. In the end, I'm glad we came. We walked along the river and admired the beauty of the city. We walked to the Parliament building and up the main street on the Pest side of town. We went to the large park at the outskirts of the city. Bought corn on the cob from a street vendor and visited the public baths. Budapest is apparently famous for their large number of thermal baths in the city. I did not know this but was pleasantly surprised. This particular bath stayed open until 10pm so we decided to run back and get our swimming gear on and enjoy the bath.
The Szechenyi baths are open air thermal baths, surrounded by beautiful 19th century changing rooms, saunas, and massage parlors. The water is naturally heated and it was very relaxing to lounge in the warm water and relax after walking around all day. There were two thermal pools, one about 95 degrees and the other about 105 degrees but  because of their size, they were cooler on the outsides than in the middle. In the middle was a lap pool that was a normal temperature for those who wanted to do laps in between lounging sessions. Some locals brought their plastic chess boards and passed the time in the pool playing chess with other locals

Baths2

. I wanted to play one of them but I was sure that they would hand me my ass and then make stupid American jokes behind my back so I refrained. On the way out of the pool Karla saw a sleeping kitty on a bench in the lobby. She bent down to give it a pat on the head and like a flash it grabbed on and bit her hard in the palm. She was not injured, the cat didn't break the skin, but she was quite scandalized that a member of the feline race had rejected HER a general lover of all things furry and cute. I consoled her as we walked and we decided that it was only orange cats that were temperamental, or possibly only Hungarian cats, and she was still loved by all other furry felines. Our next stop was Hero's square, where the Hungarians commemorate all the heroes through the centuries. I felt a little stupid that I didn't know a single person in the square but I chalked it up to the fact that this was Eastern Europe so our education system didn't go this far unless it was talking about communism and how un-American it was. While inspecting her wounded hand, Karla accidentally dropped my camera on the granite tiles of the square. I picked it up and it was unresponsive... Tonight was not her night. It was a solemn journey all the way home and I tried not to get mad at her since it was a legitimate accident but she knew how much I loved my camera and how much I used it on the trip.  That night we intended to drink wine and enjoy ourselves after the relaxing baths but instead it was silent and mildly tearful.

Budapest

At the end of the night I resigned that my camera was beyond repair and resorted to the technical-method of camera repair: I turned the camera over and smacked it hard against my palm on the opposite side that had struck the granite. Low and behold, it sprung to life, like nothing had ever happened. I was astonished and Karla was relieved. I should have thought of it earlier because this wasn't the first thing that I've fixed with the "smash it against the table top" method. The bed was hard but we made it to sleep.

Day 46-Today it was time to explore the other side of the river. We bought a metro pass for the day and headed over to the Buda side of town. The royal palace is located on a very high hill overlooking the bank. You can walk up to it, but it's much quicker and easier to take the funicular up to the top. (I just learned what a funicular was this trip so don't worry if you have no idea what I'm talking about. It's an inclined train on a pulley system.) At the top we walked around the royal palace and realized that we couldn't go inside unless we wanted to pay to see the museum of Hungarian natural history. Strike one. By this point I have had enough of any kind of museum so we just admire the palace from outside. There was apparently a labyrinth underneath the palace but we soon found that it was closed. Strike two. Not to be deterred, but out of ideas, we walked along the streets checking out the architecture of the houses and enjoying the view of the city

Budapest Palace

. I bought a fuzzy hat with the ear wings attached. It looks like a Bolsheviks hat, not very stylish but I can pull it off. After walking all over the palace grounds and most of Buda, we caught the subway back to the Pest side of town. Here we went to lunch at a pub. Karla had wiener schnitzel and I had a burger and some excellent vegetable soup in a bread bowl. (Notice to those savvy to my eating habits! I will now eat various forms of vegetable soup. The news is hailing this as a modern miracle and Karla is floored that I will eat any vegetable other than corn.) The tab for the food and a beer was only $25 for both of us. A really good deal considering where we ate and how good the food was. It took a little while to realize that it was this good of a deal because Hungary still uses its original form of money, the forint. The conversion is about 160:1 USD so it's hard to do much more than estimate the price of anything. Looking back on it, things were really cheap compared to Vienna.
After lunch we went to St. Stephens Cathedral. In Vienna, we had also been to a St. Stephens Church and I was wondering just how many St. Stephens there were. As it turns out, the Vienna church is a Catholic church and the Budapest St. Stephens is an Orthodox church. Being the first non-catholic church we've been in on this trip it was neat to see the differences. Most notably, it's not in the shape of a cross. This church was square with the dome in the center directly over the seating

Chain bridge and Budapest

. The altar area was the same size as others we've seen but it had a more personal atmosphere because everyone was closer to the alter in a large square group, rather than in a long hallway.
90 pounds of gold were used to decorate the ceiling. Not gold leaf, solid gold! In a chapel behind the main alter the church also boasted and displayed it's greatest treasure, the 'sacred right hand'. Though at first one might think that this is symbolic, it's not. The real right hand of St. Stephen is displayed in a small ornate box behind layers of glass. There is a story board next to the display that talks about how the hand was removed from St. Stephen after he was canonized and it had traveled around, avoided communism, even lived in the states for a while, before Jimmy Carter made whoever had the hand give it back to the Budapest church. 'I saw it, now let's get out of here' I thought not fully understanding the sacred value of a severed, decomposing hand. Slightly queasy we made our way back to the tram and caught it back to the Buda side of town. We enjoyed ourselves so much the previous night that we decided to visit another thermal bathhouse in Budapest. This time we chose the famous Gellert Baths attached to the Gellert Hotel. The bathhouse is a maze of steamy passageways marked in Hungarian and more confusing than Venetian navigation. After several minutes we made our way to the thermal pools. The pools were indoor and beautiful. The entire hall was covered in tile and marble. In a separate two-story hall there was a lap pool and an area for sunbathing. There was no doubt that this bathhouse was beautiful, but for some reason it didn't have the same magic that the previous one did. Never the less, it was very relaxing. After dinner we packed our clothes and prepared everything for the morning. We had to catch a 7:30 train the next morning. It was the only one that went to Sighisora, Romania. 'What kind of place is this if it only has one train a day' I thought to myself....

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

Chain bridge and Budapest1	dome inside St. Stephens	Falconers	Funicular
Gellart Baths	Gellart Baths upstairs	Hall of records	Hero's square
Imperial palace	inside St. Stephens	Karla and the cat	Karla by chain bridge
Kevin by the river	Kevin in Budapest	Palace at night	Parliment building
St. Stephens Basilica	The old chain bridge	Window inside St. Stephens

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