Buda vs Pest

As the title of this blog suggests, Budapest is actually a two-part city. Two ancient individual locations that were eventually joined by the bridging of the great Danube river that separated them.

It is safe to say Budapest is not the number 1 tourist destination spot in Europe but it is fast becoming a popular place to go. We were pleasantly surprised by Budapest. It is an outstandingly beautiful city with some amazing history and architecture. It was really nice to be in a place where we could watch the 'real' happenings of a city rather than be part of the usual tourist crowds.

Becs and I decided to go to Budapest after our friend Jason put out an open invite to all us foreigners in the UK. Jason is a workmate of Duncans and we had already been to the Isle of Wight festival with him earlier in the year. There ended up being a group of 7 of us there with Jason and 2 of his mates as well as us and our mates Mike and Paddy. Becs was a little outnumbered in the girl department but she didnt let this get to her and was right at home with the boys.

Our first experience in Budapest was our taxi ride from the airport. We had pre-booked a cab ride to our apartment and we met our driver at the airport who was holding a sign that said 'CHIZEM'. He spoke no English whatsoever and all our communication was done via actions and pointing to maps. There was Becs, Mike, Duncan and a very strange cab driver speeding along at about 150km/hr towards Budapest. We tried to explain to the driver that we needed to stop for some money and he must have got the picture, stopping for us at a bank situated between a flash hotel and a strip club. Mike and Duncan hopped out to get some cash and left Becs in the cab with the strange driver in a very strange part of a strange city - probably not the best start to the holiday. But, after withdrawing about 100,000 Hungarian Forints (had no idea how much this was at this stage), we were off again to our apartment. Our apartment was nice but we had to go through 3 or four steel doors to get to it. We asked meekly whether this was a 'safe' part of town to which the owner said "Oh Yes of course. Just dont leave any valuables in the apartment". Hmmm.

Anyway, Mike left us to join Paddy at their backpackers and we all got ready and went out to meet up with the gang at a local underground pub. The pub was pretty cool and had a real sort of cellar feel to it with some fake cobwebs hanging around and some strange looking locals. We had a beer and retired for the night as we had plans to walk some miles around the city the next day.

In the morning we had some breakfast and set off to meet the others. We headed for the great castle on the Buda side of the city. Our walk took us across one of the most spectacular bridges in Budapest, the Chain Bridge. This was one of several bridges that spanned the Danube. It was a great day for walking with the weather being pretty mild for this time of year. Once on the Buda side of town, we headed up to the castle grounds. The castle grounds were huge and pretty much took up most of the great hillside above this side of the city. Once inside the grounds, it was like being in another town with cathedrals, villages, guard towers, markets and entertainers. We all meandered around soaking up the atmosphere. We climbed all sorts of staircases leading to all sorts of turrets and lookouts. It all felt very Labyrinth like.

Coming down from the castle we made our way back across another bridge to the Pest side of town and headed to one of the cities huge market halls for some lunch. We just made it to the markets before they closed at 2pm and bought ourselves some fresh breads, dried sausage and cheese. We sat outside and ate while listening to of all things, a group of American Indian singers dressed in their full Indian war outfits. They were quite obviously a long way from home and looked rather out of place. After our lunch, we headed back across another bridge to catch a lift on one of the Danube water cruises. We all sat up on the main deck and listened to the half pie English tour guide CD that occasionally skipped at the pivotal moment of describing what we were all looking at. It was a nice cruise, the banks and buildings of Budapest were brilliant. Our boat journey took us around an island and back again, with the return journey being just on dusk so all the buildings and bridges were now spectacularly lit up with flood lights.

Once back ashore we headed home to freshen up before returning to town for some dinner. Jason had been recommended a place all the locals went to across town. The restaurant was indeed very nice but it was run by men only and very menacing looking men at that. There was also out of bounds tables in rooms overlooking the restaurant - very Mafia like. In fact, this whole city felt like it was run by the Mafia. We had a great time at the restaurant and finished up at a couple of local bars where we boogied the night away and enjoyed the cheapest beer we had ever had at about £1 a pint. We walked what seemed like miles home and slept well after being on our feet all day and night.

The next day was our last and all we wanted to do today was to get to one of the many hot baths that were scattered around the city. There were Turkish baths, family baths and some rather dodgy looking mens baths. We chose well and ended up at one of the largest outdoor baths in the city. Once we had paid our way in and collected our towels, Becs was ushered to the female side of the building while us gents were directed to our end of the changing areas. We reconvened outside and entered the pools for a relaxing soak. The pools were fairly busy and a glance around looked once again like we had entered another Mafia hang out. There were old guys with big bellies, hairy chests, heavily tanned and caked in gold jewellery. They were talking in groups around tables, in groups on the pool steps and walking in groups around the outside of the pools. All of them wearing tiny pairs of speedos. We were sure there was always a gun near by, perhaps in a pot plant or under one of their medallions. We didnt look them in the eye just in case. Paddy nearly got us killed however when he put his head under a fountain which splashed us a little in the face. He sat there grinning and asked us whether it was annoying us, all the while not realising that 90% of the water was being splashed onto the Godfather's face behind him. We told him to turn around and the smile dropped from his face when he saw an angry growling gold toothed Tony Soprano looking back at him. Paddy decided to move away to another part of the pool and kept his back to the wall.

Needless to say we had had enough baths for one day and headed home via the underground tube. It was a funny tube with a stationmaster at every stop. The doors opened to the sound of an 80's video game which sounded a lot like Super Mario Brothers. Another tune played as we approached the stations which was equally as silly sounding as the door opening one. We felt like we were progressing up the video game stages at every stop as we went along and were thoroughly entertained, well, for an underground tube ride anyway.

Budapest was the first European city we had visited where we really had felt like we were the first outsiders there. We knew there were probably plenty of other tourists around, but it was not overwhelming like Paris or London and it felt a lot more adventurous, especially with the language barrier making things just a little more foreign. We had lots of fun travelling with a bunch of fellow kiwis and all in all had a great weekend away.