Budapest

I take the night train to Krakow tomorrow evening and I’m not looking forward to the trip. It isn’t the fact that I’ll be arriving in town at 4AM and I still don’t know where I’ll be staying. No, I’m just having a wonderful time here in Budapest. For the past few nights I’ve been staying at the ridiculously friendly Backpack Budapest hostel. It’s located a bit off the beaten path in the Buda half of the city (Budapest is actually separated into 2 halves, Buda to the East of the Danube contains the historic and mostly residential portion of the city and Pest to the west contains the downtown, (not so) central park and Parliament).



I suppose my visit here started in Prague when I met up with my college friend Alisa. We had a spectacular time tromping around the city Tuesday night, eating and drinking at the local/expat hangouts in the less touristy part of downtown Prague. I didn’t get a lot of sleep before we made our way out to the Museum of Contemporary art the next day. It’s a very well done museum and even cooler since it was free for the day as they were installing some type of Ikea looking art installation on the first floor. Pardon our dust but the Museum is free today. No Problemo.

I planned on catching up on sleep on the night train to Budapest but ended up drinking $1.50 beers with a guy from here for the first few hours of the trip. So much for sleep. By the end of my first evening here I’d come down with a savage cold from my lack of Z-s. The cold stayed with me for about 36 hours (and ended with what was probably the worst headache of my life) and eased up by Saturday morning, allowing me the chance to enjoy the Budapest Baths and see the (not-so) central park with Namon (??) my new friend from the Netherlands.

The Budapest baths are absolutely awesome! If you come to Budapest and don’t have a bath, you’ve missed out on the experience of a lifetime. Imagine lazily swimming laps in a heated pool complex that looks like this:



The locals play chess while relaxing in the 37C water, lazily soaking up the sun. Some stand under stone fountains and get massaged by the falling water. It was an amazing experience. Life is good here.

The rest of the day passed by lazily and then made way for Saturday night. I won’t go into details but the hostel made a pilgrimage to the city, bars were hit, strange Hungarian pop hippie bands were amusedly stared at and house music was danced to (The DJ played tracks I haven’t heard in about 8 years). Much of Eastern European art and culture carries a funny side of the 80’s close to its heart. It’s not strange to hear a guitar solo or see a guy rocking out to an electric flute. For this American it’s absolutely charming and silly all at once.

We found our way home around 5AM and many of us didn’t make it to bed until 9AM (Formula 1 was on). That’s just the way it seems to work at Backpack. Since they’re a 24 hour hostel, one of the 3 workers is always awake. This keeps everyone else up and going to the wee hours of the morning. It reminds me of college but without the whole study thing. I have no idea how they keep on going. The pace and intensity with which Jai talks makes me think he’s a speed freak but his behavior just doesn’t match up. I think after 5 years of working strange hours at the hostel he just doesn’t need a decent nights sleep anymore. He’s also a bit looney.

I can’t remember a single minute where music was not playing here.

To sum up Budapest, the reports are true: It’s an Eastern European city but with a Turkish twist. Many people are friendly (but not overly so) and have even gone out of their way to help me get on the correct bus or lend a hand in pointing me in the right direction.

As for the sights, they’re cool but not what you travel to Budapest for. Go and soak up the culture, the people and have a bath.