Budapest: A tale of two cities

After the thin veneer of happiness that I was skating on through most of this year cracked and then completely smashed, the end of 2018 really provided the terrible icing on the end of the worst cake in existence. I mean the cake was probably rectangular because otherwise how would there be an end? However, now thinking of a rectangular cake, it somehow doesn’t sound as tasty (but I guess that’s the point). So how do you get over the chronic feeling that your life is a pile of bricks that you’re calling a house? Well, the answer my friends is a complete mystery to me but I thought while I figure it out, why not drown my sorrows in the Danube?

As I stepped off the plane and onto (frozen) Hungarian soil for the first time, I didn’t know what to expect from the city. It was my first solo trip in a few years so I was hopeful that the hostel would be lively and I could will myself into being less misanthropic than usual. After grabbing some essentials from the shop in the terminal, I caught the 100E bus into town. It was all suspiciously quick and easy. The bus dropped me slap bang into the centre of the city and according to my maps only 50m from my hostel (Hostel one basilica). After walking past the large wooden door a few times, I found my way in, up the ridiculously spaced stairs which wrapped themselves around a rickety old lift, and into the hostel.

Welcome to the house of fun 

I was quickly greeted by the warning from reception that this was a party hostel and every night they did drinking games and went out. Was this to be Naked Tiger’s European cousin? I picked out my bunk and quickly got talking to a few people. One of my main afflictions in life, which is made more prominent by travelling, is forgetting people’s names immediately after they have said them. The name plays once in my head and then is lost forever. When you’re meeting lots of people and they all remember your name, you have to play it cool and wait patiently for their name to come up again organically. Many mental notes were made and on the most part I think I avoided looking like an amnesiac. Always a plus.

After a little wander to get my bearings, I got talking to Albert (I think) who had been in Budapest for a week and wanted to go to a bar to find live music. Neither of us had a clue where we were going and ended up in some poorly-lit back street, where an alleyway with what looked to be a bar at the end enticed us. We walked in and found it was completely empty. Eventually someone waltzed in behind the bar, unfortunately he couldn’t pour a pint to save his life. Nevertheless, we took our froth to the strangely decorated subterranean seating area. We had a good chat in that bar with a few pints and headed back to the hostel just in time for dinner. 

A free dinner! Free food will always endear me to a place. You could be leading me to my meticulously described tortuous death but the promise of a lovely meal would automatically retrofit me with rose-tinted glasses. The world is beautiful as long as food is there. This free dinner was also the perfect way of getting to know people, Albert got talking to some Australian girls who would soon become part of the squad. And I wrangled myself a Brazilian fella who was fun and impressionable enough to split a bottle of vodka with me later at the shop, only to leave the hostel before having any. Shame. 

That night, I learnt lots of new drinking games and got to know everyone much better. In fact, I thank this night for honing my skills at rage cage, which later allowed me to sink any notion of Sydney, the unaptly named American, having a sober night. The drinking games every night went on for two hours until 11:30 when we went out to the ruin bars or a club. The best night for me was when a big group of us had a lunch together and then, after parting ways during the day, smashed the night out. I’m talking Prema, Sakhi, Rita (the Australian squad), Sydney not of Sydney, the Canadian Kristinas, Anthony/Jake Peralta, and German Jonas. There were more in our cohort but their names, thanks in equal parts to alcohol and my terrible name forgetting affliction, have been forgotten. 

The Sights

Despite the first few days suggesting otherwise, I did actually want to see some of the city while I was there. Upon my arrival to the hostel and in fact before that, I did notice one unremitting constant. Everyone was wearing boots. Snow, it seems, requires boots. I had leather shoes and flip flops. Once again, the inadequate footwear saga continues. If you want to read more about terrible choices in the footwear-related areas of my life, please delve into my adventures in Montenegro and Tobago. Despite my disadvantages I did manage to walk around. On these slippery wanderings, my extremities became a battleground where the warm festive embrace of Christmas cheer fought tooth and nail with the probing barrages of biting cold. The bitter cold assaulted my feet through the medium of snow and attacked my hands by virtue of the fact I didn’t bring intact gloves. The always eloquent and succinct advice of my parents, in the form of the famed “7 Ps”, came to the forefront of my mind:

Prior Preparation and Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance

Buda

One of the first places I walked to was the Széchenyi Chain Bridge which spans the Danube, connecting the two ancient cities and allowing me to cross into the hillier Buda side. This bridge was the first permanent crossing over the Danube and this encouraged the amalgamation of 3 cities in 1873, into the metropolis seen today. Not really sure where I was going, I just wandered around finding some nice viewpoints but they were all full of tourists. This was especially true at Fisherman’s Bastion, which while impressive was only fully appreciated at night when I went up there with Sydney. Down from the Bastion is a nice little park, which was much more scenic and quiet than the packed steps on which the tourist masses clambered around.

On my final full day in the city, I still hadn’t been to the parliament building. It is such an iconic symbol of the country and admittedly something that drew me to the city. The building, built in Gothic revival style, has incredible symmetry and detail. On that hazy -9°C day, I wanted to see it from across the river. Up close it was impressive, but I had seen amazing photos from the Buda side. The walk there was beautiful. The path along the Danube encouraged me to stare through the lightly golden mist to silhouetted spires on the other bank and as the sun threatened to dip below the hills, the Danube reflected the last shimmering sunlight below the chain bridge. 

I walked quickly to get to the view I wanted, half because I wanted to get a photo before the light was too low and half because I wanted to maintain some semblance of feeling in my body. Moving meant warmth. The speed was worth it and the view was spectacular despite the busy road in front of me. It’s a shame the architect went blind before its completion in 1904.

Walking back was a little more relaxed. I took in the facades of the quieter neighbourhoods that I didn’t have time to explore and worked up an appetite which was quickly satiated upon my return. 

Pest 

One of the most visible and striking landmarks of the Pest side of the river is St Stephen’s Basilica. The first two times I went to the Basilica it was for the Christmas market, which wrapped around the west side of the building facing the two bell towers. The Australian girls and I headed there one evening to get unhealthy food and some mulled wine. The market was in full swing. It was packed and a choir was singing. Then all of a sudden the whole of the Basilica burst into colour and movement. It was a projected animation show that lasted a fair few minutes and it was genuinely incredible. The food and mulled wine were disappointing and as for unhealthy, well the goulash I had here did make me violently sick later that night. I was looking for sugar-related health problems not food poisoning. 

Proper hungarian goulash is better than this, nowhere near the Czech versions I had in Prague, but warming all the same.

On one day after exploring a photography museum with Sydney, we went inside the Basilica. It was above and beyond anything I expected. The interior was dimly lit by stain glass windows and flickering candles, the light from which was absorbed by the deep red walls of polished stone. As I looked up though, the light caught the huge archways and domes adorned in gold leaf, all of which radiated a level of decadence of which you rarely see in England. On my last day in the city, before catching my bus back to the airport, Anthony and I went to the balcony which runs around the dome. From there we could see the whole city blanketed in snow.

Finally, a trip to Budapest wouldn’t be complete without the obligatory trip to the baths. The city sits on a whole network of thermal springs which bring super-heated water full of medicinal minerals up from within the crust. Pretty much everyone goes to Széchenyi, which is the biggest, most famous bath house. I got an invite to join my favourite Aussies for a bathe and at lunch Canadian Kristina no.1 decided to come along too. We got the metro there, which was pretty easy, got changed and emerged into the huge bath complex. 

We quickly made our way to the iconic central bath area in the large courtyard. It was just approaching dusk as we dived from the subzero air into the 27 °C waters. We stayed in this pool as dusk crept by into night, with the sky transitioning from the cerulean of a crisp winter day into the inky blue and blackness of night. All the while the moon shone silvery light down from behind a tower and into the dense steam at pool level. This steam dissipated into constantly shifting fronts of vapour thinning out into the sky.

During our time there, some massages were had and other pools were tried, but the warmest and overall nicest place we found was the big pool in the centre. 

Food

Well, I didn’t think that my food experience of a city would come this close to the end but here we are. While I did eat at the hostel a few times, I did have to eat out too. I went to the restaurant Meatology, which is as much of a vegan’s nightmare as it sounds and therefore it brought me all the joy in the world. Turns out you can forget the horror of foie gras if its cooked extremely well. The other lovely place I found was actually a Vietnamese place called Quan Non. It had simple but really tasty food and at a really decent price. On a less positive note, the strudel in Budapest has nothing on strudel in Prague, which did make me very sad. 

Final thoughts

Budapest, with its constant sirens and wide avenues felt like a big bustling city. I thought before I arrived that it would be very similar to Prague, and it was in terms of main tourist attractions, but the feel of the city was very different. Prague felt like a quaint, walkable and pristine capital, whereas Budapest felt like the grittier, grungier cousin. The centre felt lived in rather than for show, the buildings in places looked neglected but the beauty of the city was undeniable. But it wasn’t the buildings, the expansive Danube or the food that made me love this week, it was the people. Hanging out with interesting people from all over the world was the perfect way to distract me from 2018’s constant barrage of mean spirited jabs at my life. My advice is, if your life feels a little sub par, go travelling. Buy a cheap flight, stay in a hostel and let your troubles melt away. 

* * *

If you like this post why not have a gander at a few more? Click on destinations at the top to choose somewhere specific or just choose a random post from the home page. If you’re convinced my travels are worth reading about again, enter your email below to subscribe!