Seven Days of Budapest.

I'm on top of Budapest, Ma!

Day one.

We had arrived in Budapest late the previous night. We were both exhausted from the long journey and instead of having a brief look around the city that was new to us, we went straight to our hostel, purchased some food and beer and then collapsed on the lounge to watch Christopher Guest films. We awoke finding two new bodies in the dorm room and another sleeping on the lounge in the common room. They had been on their regular night shift at bars across Budapest, a fact supported by their chorus of snoring. When we had breakfasted, showered and were ready to meet the day, it was 11am. For us that was a late start, but our associates would not arise for another few hours at least, at which point it would be already getting dark. More than once I questioned why these people travelled at all if they never bothered to see a city while the sun shines on it. Leaving the pack of diseased livers to snore to their hearts' content, Anouska and I did what we always did when we got to a new place: we walked. Before I am capable of doing anything during the day, especially human interaction, I need caffeine. So, we stopped in a small cafe near the hostel. Like most cafes with character in Europe, it also came with its fair share of second hand smoke. I pray for the day when my clothes no longer smell like a chain smoker. After the kind, elderly lady made us a cappuccino (which conveniently means the same thing in every language), we hit the streets like a proverbial something or another! After a while we found ourselves along the river Danube where a stand was selling goods of a sugary nature. So we treated ourselves to a handful each and then quickly devoured them for the energy that we planned to utilise walking. As shown by the photograph, the Danube has a spectacular view. The part of the river that runs through the city is wide and flanked by some remarkable buildings along its banks. One that caught my eye was the Hungarian Parliament, which is an example of kick-ass architecture, derived from the Latin kickastudite. The style is more commonly known as Gothic-Revival. If you think that the building looks familiar, it is actually modelled on the Westminster Palace, made famous, of course, by a number of English films starring Hugh Grant. The depiction below does not convey the vastness of the building. It is the largest building in Hungary and the second largest Parliament in Europe (after Bucharest, Romania). After a suitable amount of time admiring this building, we walked aimlessly for a few more hours until I was met with the uneasy feeling that I wasn't sure where I was. This often happens when you choose to look at a place instead of having your face stuck in that horrific guide book reading about it. After a few minutes trying to decipher between ads and street names on our Spy Map, I found my bearing and made my way back to the hostel. That night Anouska and I accompanied employees of the hostel and some travellers to a dingy bar where we had to listen to the innate opinions of young Australians and Americans. A lot of the group thought Anouska and I were just friends, because I got hit on by this airhead named Michael (you heard me!), who had clearly not washed during this lunar cycle and Anouska, by a young American with a head shaped like the actor, Ron Pearlman. We made a feeble excuse about feeling tired and made a quick exodus.

kickastudite.

Day two.
Maps can be deceiving, even though they represent the actual space by scale. I looked at our map of Budapest and thought walking up one of the main roads in the city, Andrassy Avenue, and seeing some of the city's cultural achievement including the Opera house (pictured) and Hero's Square, finally ending up in Varosliget, the city's park, might be a good idea. The distance between the hostel and the park is roughly 6km and took us quite a while. Not that I was bothered by the distance. It wasn't raining and the long boulevard sustained my interest with a lot of interesting buildings. I had always thought of walking as a bit of a chore, a thing to do when you don't have any real transport to get you from one point to the next. Something that middle age women do out of denial about getting old and putting on weight because of their slowing metabolism. On this trip, I found out that walking is quite relaxing. It clears the mind of all its white noise and makes the body feel youthful and awake. My mind wanders freely like a breeze and I find discovering more about myself and my life. It also might have to do with being in a foreign environment, making me be more aware of myself and the world I inhabit. Philosophising aside, I love walking and having such a visually stimulating street to walk down as the Andrassy was a pleasure. After a discernible amount of time had passed, we found ourselves at Hero's Square, which has surrounded by Art's hall, the Museum of Fine arts and Varosliget Park. You see the Millennium Memorial in the photograph at the end of the paragraph. On the centre column, the Archangel Gabriel stands above the seven tribal lords who led their people to modern day Hungary in 896AD. If front of the memorial is the tomb of the Unknown Solider. This place left a very strong impression on me. Judging from the people in the photo, you can tell that the square itself is very large and that the magnitude of the monument would strike a person with awe. It did with me. It made me feel that history is an expanse so enormous, it is beyond my understanding. After that, we had toured around the park's grounds. They had cleared some of the lakes that for a small market and a ice rink. There was also a small pond that was heated, steam billowing off its surface on this cold day. There was a gaggle of ducks there, swimming happily in their artificially heated environment. That evening in the hostel, Michael and the American with the Pearlman head started having a discussion about Nietzsche which immediately gained my attention. However, I was soon disappointed when they started to quote the author out of context from a portable reader and stating that his ideas are new and innovative. John, another traveller from Australia and I, rebutted their stupidity, which led into a full scale and heated debate. When the bad head, who calls himself a doctor, even though he is 19 years old, began saying Existentialism was the newest thing on campus, I knew I had to find the nearest blunt object and beat him to death. When asked, he couldn't even clearly define existentialism. John and I were accused of being moulded by our tertiary education into thinking in specific terms. I was even called elitist, which is the first time anyone who graduated from Pinjarra Senior High School has been called that. So, in defence, we opened up a can of obnoxious, which is the only way to deal with idiotic punks who misquote great writers.

Pearlman's head is all kinds of wrong.

http://www.liljas-library.com/2004/

Day 3.
Recommended by a staff member from the hostel, we decided to hike up to the top of Cellert Hill. It is named after a bishop St. Gerald who was martyred by being put inside a barrel during the pagan rebellion of 1046 and rolled down the hill (you're not alone if you think that's hilarious). I think they should rename it. The hill gives a fantastic panorama view of the city and on a clear day like the one we were blessed with, you can see for miles in every direction. At the west end of the hill, near the citadel, is a parapet that has a statue perched a top a tall column in the middle, with four others on each corner of the parapet. The statues are mythological themed ( i.e Hercules killing the Hydra, which is a popular motif throughout Europe). The statues overlook the city's landscape like silent guardians, forever watching the events in Budapest unfolding. It is a lovely place, well worth the long haul up and the illiterate and senseless graffiti you see on the way. After a wonderful lunch of ... we decided to relax for the rest of the day and get a early night because we were leaving for Slovakia the following day. That was until later that evening, when we were told by other travellers that there was a train strike that had brought the Hungarian railway system to a halt. If we wanted to leave, it was not going to be by train. Realising we had two train tickets, we caught two metro trains to the International Train Station only to be told our tickets would be refunded for the day that they were valid, which meant tomorrow. Annoyed, we caught two more trains to the bus station for another option. It was not open. We discovered that there was a bus leaving for Bratislava the next morning and that the ticket office was open at 6am, half an hour before departure. The plan was to catch trains to the International Train Station and get a refund, before going to the bus station and hopefully getting tickets. It was going to be an early start, so we went back to the hostel, set our alarm and settled in to sleep. If things were not stressful enough for us, our problems were further compounded by Spaniards staying in the hostel. The Spanish have a special relationship to the night. This meant that after they had made dinner at midnight and watched television at a high volume for a couple of hours they decided to go to sleep. We still hadn't slept much at this point, but things were about to get worse. From as far as we could discern, the three Spaniards who were in our dorm room had dropped a few mind altering substances and were acting strangely. What do I mean by strangely? What do you think of someone who opens their metal and therefore noisy locker every 30 min until 4am, searching for who knows what! Or what about talking and laughing while everyone was asleep? How would you feel about someone who shone their flashlight in your face repeatedly and had sex in a dorm room of eight people? I let them know how I felt about it when I loudly exclaimed to Anouska at 3am, "I am going to sleep on the couch. These f*%kheads won't shut the f&%k up!" Having a great command of the English tongue as ever, I stormed off into the common room, where I found a number of possessions belonging to the Spaniards, carelessly left there from a few hours again. Being alone in the room, I decided to take my revenge and hid several said possessions, including a pair of prescription glasses, in the exchange bookshelf, where they would not find them. The lesson they would learn upon waking was NOT to mess with me, for I am the king of petty revenge!

About as eloquent as my tirade towards the Spaniards.

Day Four.

Our alarm went off at 4am. We had roughly one hour's sleep. I made a lot of noise leaving the dorm to repay our Spanish roomies and made our way to the common room for a quick breakfast and a cup of tea. At this point, I discovered that Anouska was throwing up and had been for the last couple of hours, which suggested a virus or stomach bug. Anouska would not hear that she was unfit for travel that day and we both headed off to get our refund. That done, we commuted back to the bus station and arrived to a horde of stranded travellers like us all trying to leave Budapest. We waited in line for twenty minutes only to find that the bus had just departed and we would have to come back tomorrow. We had planned to go to Zedir, a small town in Slovakia to ski and snowboard and play with the hostel dog that appears on their leaflets, but we had to cancel due to the circumstances. Hoping to get there following day, we made the most of another day in Budapest. Anouska slept and I walked around aimlessly for a few hours before succumbing to the lack of sleep myself. Anouska accompanied me to dinner that night, although she didn't feel up to eating yet. I ordered a meal called, "Gypsy Roast" I was not sure what that meant, so I checked to see if the 'meat' had any complimentary extras like fingers. Assured I was not eating a real gypsy, I quickly downed a most delicious roast pork dinner, while Anouska had some soup. Shortly after leaving the restaurant Anouska vomited alongside an expensive looking and more importantly, clean car. Later that evening, after gorging myself on a block of chocolate, I discovered, much to my horror, that I did not feel so crash hot myself. Twenty minutes later, my head was in the toilet bowl removing the contents of my stomach: chocolate and Gypsy roast

Gypsy: the other white meat. Image courtesy of:
http://lesliebradshaw.com/?cat=86

Day Five.

Of intervals ranging between 30 min and an hour I went to visit my good friend Mr. Towel Bowl and showed him how much I liked him, which was rather a lot. When I wasn't visiting my friend I was sleeping and trying to keep liquids from magically reappearing out of my mouth. This went on until around 10am in the morning, ending 12 hours of vomiting. Now I simply felt awful and decided to take my mind off it by watching six episodes of 'House' in a row. You know what I learnt? Under that hard, sarcastic exterior, House has real emotions and a need to connect with other people. It's about all I got out of that day sadly, as I spent the remainder resting and trying not to think about food and the fun I would miss in the snow of Slovakia.

.

House cares.

http://iamatvjunkie.typepad.com/i_am_a_tv_junkie_a_blog_f/2007/10/house-blows-up-.html

Day Six.

Not much to report, except to say "Thank you for Smoking", is a great film, with a stellar performance from Aaron Eckhart. Anouska and I also occupied our time with playing the hostel's X-BOX. Later in the day I felt like eating and had some take away Chinese, which in hindsight, was not a very good idea.

Day Seven.

An early start of 4am to give us ample time to make the 6:30am bus out of Nepliget Bus Station. Today we were finally going to leave Budapest. It was a triumphant feeling to know that despite our misfortunes in this city we were going to be free from the unlucky hold it had on us. It wasn't long before we were fully dressed and ready to depart. We took one last look around the hostel that had been our prison for the last few days and quietly closed the door behind us. In the elevator smiles broke across our faces as we realised that by the end of the day our feet would be walking on a different patch of land, in another country. That was until that two-faced bitch, fate, intervened again. On the second floor, the elevator abruptly stopped. I pressed the button for the ground floor and nothing happened. I pressed it again, but to no avail. I changed tactic: I yelled at it, but for some reason it failed to respond to my angry demands. We had to face a very inconvenient truth. Were stuck in an elevator on our way to the bus station, which was going to take us out of Budapest and Hungary. I had a sudden sense of dread that perhaps I was doomed never to leave this place. That I would grow old and die here. But before Budapest could rob me of my will to leave, I was going to give it on last shot to escape. We hit the Alarm and screamed for assistance. Anouska commented that she would hate to be murdered in this building as our energetic cries for help were not heard. Perhaps if I had not obnoxiously called out, "comprehendo, fuckito!" someone may have assisted us. After half an hour of presuming someone would hear either us or the alarm, we tried the emergency button, which dialed a phone number. A woman responded to the call in Hungarian and we told her we were stuck in the elevator and could she please help us. She replied, "No english", and hung up. By this time it was 5:45am. We had been in the elevator for over an hour and it looked like we were likely to be in it for quite some time, thus missing our bus once again. When all hope was lost we started to hear voices in the stair well. Some drunken travellers were on the way back from a big night and stumbled upon two people with two large backpacks stuck in a lift. One of them asked, "What should I do?" which was perhaps the most moronic question to ask someone trapped in a lift. I had to bite my tongue from saying, "do a little dance while singing the Star Spangled Banner". However "Call someone for help", seemed to register to him. He disappeared up the stairs and did not return. Ten minutes later a man came down and called the emergency number for the elevator and twenty minutes later, we were free. It was close to 6am and we were anxious about missing our bus, so we woke up a staff member from the hostel and asked her to call a taxi, explaining we had been stuck in a lift for an hour and a half. This did not exlicit any sympathy from her. Actually, she was rather annoyed at being woke up. The taxi came and we made it to the bus station just in time for the bus. When the bus pulled out of station and headed out of Budapest, smiles crept across our faces. We had escaped Budapest.

One of the many things about Budapest that confused me.