Budapest

Budapest
Monday, August 10, 2009
3:00 PM

We got in at about 5AM and Tijana's friend from school in Germany, Edena, picked us up. We went to her apartment and crashed out as we were still pretty spent. When we woke up we had a little breakfast then headed down to our hostel. Budapest has a great bus and subway system that although a little antiquated, gets you around the city comfortably.

Budapest is actually a combination of the two cities, Buda and Pest, on each side of the Danube. They were combined after the bridge was built but distinct differences still exist between the two. Pest, where the train station was, is considered to be the poorer, newer side, and the side where people actually live. Buda, where our hostel was, is where all the old things are like the castle and citadel, and where the rich old people live.

Regardless, both halves of the city are absolutely gorgeous, and we all agreed on that. The architecture is classic, there are landmarks everywhere, and the streets are wider than any European capital any of us had ever been in. Considering Hungary was under Soviet control for so long it was a pleasure to see that the town was not overrun with ugly soulless concrete buildings, but I'm guessing we just didn't run into them. Once we were situated in our hostel we went in search of food. After about an hour of walking down the streets near the Danube we had passed a total of 3, all sit down, restaurants.

This would come to be Budapest's great failure, simple quick service street food is few and far between. We ended up heading to a kebab place near our hostel which was delicious but still fairly pricey for the portions. As we were all used to Serbian portions $4 in Budapest bought a wrap that was half the size of anything we were used to eating in Serbia. After that excursion we headed back to Pest to meet up with Tijiana and Edena and had some wine with coca-cola on the lawn near a jazz club called Gora. The atmosphere there was great as the whole area was packed and everyone was having a good time.