My 7 hour train ride to Budapest was fairly uneventful aside from being sold a reservation for a seat that didn’t exist. At this point I always get a reservation even if I’m told I don’t need one. In at least one case (Budapest to Belgrade) I think the combination of Reservation + Eurail pass kept me from having to buy a ticket in a non-Eurail supported country.
I must have walked the length of the train three times – “408, 409, 410, 411, 413†– as if I’d just overlooked the 40ft steel box labeled “412†and it would be there on the third go-round. Anyway, I spoke to the conductor after looking fruitlessly for my missing train car, and was told that it was out of service and he unlocked a second class cabin that I could have all to myself, for a while…
I watched a man carrying a laptop head towards the bathroom at the end of my car. He shot a glance my direction as he passed. I waited my turn and, after what seemed like a very long time, he eventually exited and looked my way again. I took my opportunity and in what I felt was a short amount of time returned to my cabin to find the grumpy looking German all set up in the seat across from where I’d been sitting. I’d had little to no sleep the night before and wasn’t feeling social. The sum total of words exchanged in the 5 hours he sat across from me was a “hello†from each of us.
Upon arriving in Budapest-Keleti station I was set upon by several large matrons wondering if I needed a room for the night. They had their three ring binders ready and open to show me pictures of the rooms they had available. I declined, as I already had some portion of a room reserved somewhere at a hostel.
After Vienna, Budapest was certainly a different tempo. The blockish Soviet buldings and aged uncared-for paintwork let me know I’d entered “Eastern Europe.†I wandered around for a little while looking for an ATM as the currency had changed at the border and then found the signs to the subway for the train I needed to take. I walked out of the grey stone and dirty floors of the train station to find a shiny white new underground with fancy turnstiles and escalators. I was a little surprised but then decided it was probably a fairly recent addition. When the subway car arrived I realized they had only partially invested in new toys for the underground. It looked like an old over-ground tram retrofitted to operate on these new tracks.
I got to my hostel, was assigned a bed number in the 12 bunk dorm, and tossed my things into a locker. Surprisingly I felt like I had more privacy in this long large room than any other multi-bed dorm so far because there were curtains at the end of each set of bunks. You knew there were 11 other people sleeping in the room but you couldn’t see them.
Most of my stay in Budapest was to be in this bunk or in a coffee shop. I’d developed a fairly nasty head cold and couldn’t go too far from a tissue source. You see, my face was leaking and before I left I probably sawed off a good ¼ inch of nose using the single serving TP that was readily available.
I did get one good day of walking in and one good night of drinking before I decided I needed to just take it easy. In that day I saw most of the sights and learned a few things about Budapest. Like, did you know, Budapest is actually Buda and Pest? One on each side of the river Danube. There’s also o’Buda but nobody goes there so it was vetoed in the name combo. Plus how silly does O’BudaBudaPest sound? Or PestO’BudaBuda? I could go on. Thankfully at whatever committee meeting there was to name the place they erred on the side of brevity.
The Buda side seems far less cared for than the Pest side. Graffiti is on pretty much everything below 6ft. and many of the more interesting buildings are boarded up. The Pest side is where the wonderful Parliament building is along with most of the shopping and restaurants. I didn’t get to visit any of the famous bath houses, which apparently are quite wonderful, but I’m sure I’ll have time for that when I get to Turkey.
Next stop, Belgrade, Serbia.
