Budapest

So let’s talk travel: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

            I’ll start right off with the ugly. Turns out walking for 5-10 miles a day, especially in heat reaching the mid-90s, can take a physical toll. My price includes sunburn, prickly heat, blisters, and sundry scrapes and bruises, aches and pains.

            Speaking of ugly…

            We had a very early train to Budapest yesterday. For the first leg of the journey, we shared a cabin with a very quiet girl, and we were all dozing when we pulled into a station and gained two more cabin-mates. Later, I would talk about those two with Kyle. It went something like this:

Ann : This may sound really mean, but do you remember those people from the train today?
Kyle: Oh, you mean Pigface Man?
Ann: I was thinking more like Sloth from ‘The Goonies’, but yeah.
Kyle: Yeah, he hit every branch of the ugly tree on the way down. And then he landed on his face. He and his girlfriend were annoying.

            And while looks are one thing, I really mention him because he and his girlfriend literally did not stop talking (and loudly) the entire time, in total disregard of the three people who were sleeping in the car.

            So, we get to Budapest (and Budapest has an impressive train station. “That was…unexpected,” said Kyle later), which would start the ‘good’ section of this little story. Kyle changed his money (20 Euro got him 5600 Florins. When we got back to Bratislava he kept pulling it out saying, “5000 big ones!”).  Firstly, we headed to Heroes Square, passing the place where their statue of Stalin once stood, before they blew it up. After seeing Heroes Square and the two surrounding museums, we headed down Andrassy Ut (kind of a ritzy street), seeing the opera house, and exploring a little bit of central Pest (Budepest has 2 parts, Buda and Pest, which used to be separated by the Danube river). We reached St. Stephen’s, always amazingly beautiful, where I saw the mummified hand of St. Stephen. Then, we headed to the river to see parliament, which is the 2^nd largest in the world (after London), and arguably the more impressive-looking of the two. Crossing the Danube on the Chain Bridge, we went up to Castle Hill for a view of parliament across the river. Additionally, we saw Matthias Church and refilled our water bottles (Castle Hill is quite a climb).

            We crossed back over the Danube, and saw Gellert Hill by Elisabeth Bridge, with Gellert Statue, and Liberty Statue overlooking the city. We proceeded to our last few landmarks, which I had gotten a map from  a tour guide to find, as they weren’t on our original map. Using this, we saw St. Anna’s by the Danube, and then walked to the Hungarian National Museum and the Dohany Synagogue, the biggest synagogue in Europe with its silver weeping willow inscribed with the names of Holocaust victims.

            Budapest, as always, is incredible to see. While Vienna is very “light”, Budapest is a little darker, more diverse, and more eastern. I kept coming to the phrase, “it sits lower on its haunches.” Vienna is Mozart; Budapest is Bartok.

            Now we arrive at the ‘bad’ part or our tale. You see, a combination of a skipped meal, an early train, physical tiredness, and the heat had rendered Kyle into a silent partner. In 8 hours, I got about 30 words, not including grunts and hand gestures. Also feeling the heat, and with no one to talk to, I spent most of the day trailing a dozen or so steps behind, gradually wilting, despite drinking more and more water, as we walked miles of hilly terrain in the 93 degree heat. I kept suggesting places to stop and eat (including a Subway and convenience stores), but he rejected them all. When we finally got to the train station, we got ice cream from a vendor and stood to watch the arrivals board. It was at this point that a cold/nauseous feeling overcame me and the world became black around the edges. The next thing I know, I’m on the floor, and a random Hungarian woman is tutting over me. Kyle is still watching the arrivals. After assuring the nice lady that I was ok and drinking some water, I informed Kyle that I had passed out. He responded, “Oh. I thought you were sleeping on the floor. You should eat something.” [Edited to add: He claims that he said ‘sitting on the floor’, not sleeping. It doesn’t really matter.] Seeing as how I had suggested a dozen places to eat along the way, this is the comment that got us sitting in separate compartments on the train back to Bratislava.

            We made up during our walk to the hostel. Kyle said I have to be more obvious about my feelings. This is the comment that got Kyle asked if he was on the autism spectrum.

            We bought the ingredients for spaghetti, which we went back to the hostel and cooked. I actually really like cooking there, as it gets me doing something in the realm of normalcy (just maybe not that day when I had ended up on the train station floor). I can talk to with a couple of the other people, especially a big English ginger (who can really cook well), and a skinny Irishman who likes steak and potatoes.

            We went upstairs, I nursed my wounds, we went to bed. A few hours later, we awoke to a thunderous storm, pouring rain, and people shouting and dancing in the street, as the heat was finally breaking a little bit. Kyle and I scrambled to close the windows, as the sills were our storage space.

P.S. I lost my camera case somewhere in Budapest. Seems I’m always destined to lose something there…the last time, it was blood, so I'm okay with the camera case situation.