A Week in Budapest

Budapest is made up of two separate parts, Buda and Pest (pronounced “pesht” after all, as our tour guide pointed out, they don’t want it to be known as a pest. In Hungarian the “s” makes a “sh” sound anyway. “Sz” is pronounced like our “s” sound). The two sides are divided by the Danube river. Buda is the hilly side of the city known for its abundance of healing waters (the name buda actually comes from the Hungarian word for water). Buda is also home to the castle district which makes sense, you definitely want your castle to be on a hill as opposed to a valley. Pest is named after the ancient limestone burners who lived here before the Magyars came and established Hungary, it is much less hilly and while it does have some healing waters they are not as prolific as in Buda.

Budapest is known for its bath houses- one of several things they got from the Turks during their tenure here, the other well known Hungarian thing that came from the Turks is their paprika (oh- cool story about paprika and only a slight digression. A Hungarian scientist discovered vitamin C and he did it using their national spice- Paprika!). Budapest is also so full of interesting history- it has changed hands several times over thousands of years, and was a communist country up until 1989. They were in fact the 2nd communist country in the world. They had a brief 180ish day stint as a communist state in 1919 and then returned to communism after they were “liberated” by the soviet army. In WWII they welcomed Hitler with open arms- in fact one of tour guides told us a story about a reporter who was questioning a state official and the reporter asked how long it would take Hitler to conquer Hungary. The official answered it would take one day. The reporter then asked how long it would take it if the Hungarians fought- two days. Finally the reporter asked how long it would take if the Hungarians didn’t fight. The official answered that it would take three days- three days is how long all the welcoming speeches would take.

We have taken two of the free Budapest walking tours (Free tours are probably the best thing ever invented, we have learned so much and enjoyed every single one of them), one was a general introduction to the city. Along with getting to see the castle district, important historical sights and several parks, we learned a brief history of Hungary, a bit about the traditional food and wine (who knew that Hungry was an illustrious wine producer?!)  and a few Hungarian words (Our guide taught us the word for “cheers” in Hungarian but it is quite a mouthful and no one got it quite right, so she told us to go to the bars late when everyone is drunk and say the english phrase “I guess she can drive” which sounds remarkably like the Hungarian phrase for cheers and she assured us that after a few drinks no one would be able to tell the difference). We also saw tons of churches, including St. Stephens Basilica. Stephen was the king who converted Hungarians from pagans to christians and was canonized soon after his death. Our tour guide told us that after his death his body was exhumed where it was found that he had “made a miracle in his coffin” (a phrase that sent us into hysterics because we are immature children) and while the rest of him had decomposed his right hand had mummified. They still have his right hand in the church and bring it out on important days.

The second free tour we went on was a communism tour where we learned about the communist history from a guide who was 38 and had plenty of personal history with communism and interesting stories to tell. He told us the story of is family. His mothers parents were Hungarian diplomats and high ranking members of the communist party. His father was a writer and a religious man. During communism in Hungary religion was not forbidden, but it came with a price, you could be either religious or successful. Priests had to keep records of who went to church and if you went to church your entire family was ostracized, no one was allowed to go to university. Our guides father had been a writer, but his affiliation with the church left his entire family penniless and he was no longer allowed to publish his works. So, rich communist party mother meets poor religious father and they eloped and had a baby boy (our guide!). Mothers parents were furious and even more furious when the father declared he wanted to baptize his new son as a Lutheran. Father said he might reconsider if they got the family a better apartment, gave back his writing license and allowed him and his son passports so they could travel to the west, outside of communist countries. Our guide said all that was done with a matter of days and the father did not end up baptizing him. Our guide mentioned that we should not fear for his immortal soul though as he decided later to be baptized on his own. It was incredibly interesting to her about the communist times here in Hungary. It seems that many people are almost a little conflicted about life post-communism. We have heard many people bemoan the “Monopoly money” they have here that they consider worthless ($1=238HUF), the increasing number of homeless and other issues. They say that at least during communism everyone had a place to live and our guide told us that TV was better- they broadcast operas and symphonies and culture was not just for the elite, that everyone got to enjoy it.

Budapest is absolutely beautiful- sprawling sidewalk cafes, parks and wide, walkable sidewalks. Not to mention the amazing architecture (aside from the communist buildings which are pretty ugly). There are tons of fountains and they don’t circulate the water, it is always fresh clean water  which means that we can drink from any of the fountains, which is nice as we are often out for most of the day and that makes it easy to fill up our water bottle. Nick has also declared that he is never again drinking sink water, only fountain water, so its nice that there are so many fountains.

We went down to the goose liver festival yesterday and enjoyed some incredible, traditional Hungarian dishes and a very large piece of goose liver. While we waited in line cafeteria style to get the foie gras and then enjoyed it on plastic plates at a small, rustic, picnic table it was easily the most expensive lunch I have ever had and I am not even a huge fan of goose liver. Oh well, it was a cool experience- “Yes, of course I have had foie gras- my favorite foie gras was at a goose liver festival in Budapest Hungary because I am super fancy and well traveled” We also sampled some amazing cheeses, mustards, jams and wines at the festival. So even though it was an expensive day, it was a very cool experience. Fortunately, most things in Budapest are really quite cheap. We have enjoyed lunches out for around $6 for us both, our hostel is running about $20 per night and we finally did real laundry (not sink laundry) and it cost about $6.50 (not that you can put a price on clean clothes- there is just nothing in the world like freshly laundered and dried clothes- they smell nice and feel good on your skin. I miss laundry most of all, I will never again take it for granted!!).

Our hostel has been an interesting experience as well. The first 2 nights in Budapest we stayed at a really nice guest house within walking distance of the train station and not one but two donner stands. We had a private bathroom and access to a small kitchen. It was lovely, we planned to switch to a different hostel, one a little cheaper, for the remaining nights in Budapest. Nick found a hostel that was renting a private room for $10 a person per night- what a bargain! so we booked it. A few days later we got an email saying “sorry, that was a mistake fare, we would really appreciate it if you would pay more for the room- you don’t have to since we have already approved you at this rate but we would really like it if you would pay more”. Huh? Anyway, we opted to keep the rate we booked at. We went to check in and found that the hostel had triple booked the private room. And then the owner showed up and was very nice (although he did remind us several times what a great rate we were getting and there is no way anyone else in the city would give us such a good rate) and he apologized profusely for not having a room for us. He said he had an empty flat that he usually rented out but the previous tenant had just left and it was available and he would be happy to let us stay there. So, um, yah, here we are in a small studio flat in Budapest paying $20 a night, not a bad deal, but very weird circumstances that brought us here.