Wednesday morning we got the kids up early and to the train station by 7:00am. The train ride went smoothly but was long (9 hours). Taking the train is great for the kids though and we were able to secure seats with a table for most of the ride.
We arrived in Budapest at around 4:30 and then navigated our way through the city by metro to our apartment. I got another incredible deal on this place, which was in a perfect location, but had some drawbacks (nasty shower curtain, extremely hard beds, questionable sheets). We didn’t wake up with any bites or rashes so it turned out to be fine. That night we found the local market and bought some supplies and ate some gyro and falafel from a nearby take away restaurant.
The next morning we got up and took the metro to Vorosmarty square to meet our guides for a free tour of Budapest. The tour didn’t start until 10:30 so we wandered a bit and got some breakfast at a coffee shop. Our tour guides, Sylvia and Susan, were both from Budapest and gave us a great tour. We started looking out over the Donau (Danube) on the Pest side (Budapest is actually two cities, Buda and Pest, divided by the river) while Sylvia gave us a little Hungarian history lesson. Some basic facts that I can remember: it was founded about 1100 years ago, was converted from paganism to Christianity in 1000 ad by their 1st King (Istvan (Stephen) who they later turned into a Catholic saint, it’s surrounded by mountains and has few natural resources of it’s own, and was on the wrong side of both world wars. The Hungarian language is kind of on an island of it’s own with basically no relation to any other language which makes it very difficult to learn. Also, according to Sylvia, although it was kind of on the fringe of the Soviet bloc, had a lot of Western influences, and has been free since the fall of the Wall, the Hungarian government still has a lot of work to do to turn completely over to a democratic government. She gave us a description of a typical work day for one of the major government buildings, relating that the employees work maybe 3 hours out of a 9 hour work day. As a result, she said tax evasion is sort of a national sport. After the talk we walked over to St. Istvan Church and then across the Chain Bridge to the Buda side. As opposed to the Pest side which is very flat, the Buda side is built on a hill. We climbed the hill to the President's mansion and then walked through the medieval streets over to Matthias Church. Haaken was a bit of a handful, so we missed a lot of a the information, but it was a gorgeous day and a great walk.
After the tour we hopped on a tram to the Great Market, a huge indoor market on the south side of Pest. By now it was 2pm and we hadn’t eaten anything. We picked up some fresh fruit on the ground floor and then got our Thanksgiving Dinner at a food stand on the second level. Carissa and Elise got huge rolled up pancakes filled with Nutella and Banana (Elise) and vegetables (Carissa). Lydia, Haaken and I had Lepkoko, a traditional Hungarian fried bread with toppings – the traditional sour cream, shredded cheese and ham for me, and ham, salami and cheese for the Lydia and Haaken. This took quite a long time as there was a long line and only one griddle for the pancakes.
Goofing around at the bottom of the Fisherman's Bastion
We decided that everyone needed a little downtime at the apartment so we went back there and never made it back out. We could tell the kids were worn out so we ended up staying in the rest of the night and went to bed early. Supper ended up being salami sandwiches and some weird Hungarian potato chips.
Friday morning we got up and hit a restaurant that we had read about for breakfast to at least partially make up for our Thanksgiving meal. The restaurant was in a cool little hotel and we ate well – scrambled eggs, omelets, juice and coffee. Afterwards we walked over to St. Istvan Church to check out the interior. Another massive, beautiful church. As an added bonus, in a small chapel behind the main altar is the mummified hand of St. Istvan, set in a gilded cage. It has a light on a 2 minute timer so you can see it even better, for the bargain price of 200 forint (1 euro). We couldn’t come up with the correct change but lucked out when a tour group came in. Even with the light it was difficult to make out as anything other than a brown lump.
After the church we jumped on a tram over to Parliament. We were only able to get tickets to an abbreviated tour due to the fact that the speaker of the British Parliament was there for a visit. At one point during the tour we had to step to the side and let him pass, with his Hungarian host and their entourage.
The Christmas Market had opened they day we arrived so we decided to head back over to Vorosmarty square to check it out. We had a kurtoskalac (hollow, cylinder shaped pastry with different coatings – cinnamon sugar, caramel, cocoa) as we browsed the stalls and then walked down the tourist Vaci utca before taking the tram back to the apartment.
That night we went out to eat on Raday utca and had a good meal at a Hungarian / Italian place. I had traditional paprika chicken and dumplings which was great.
Saturday morning we woke up to find that it had snowed the night before. When we went out for breakfast we came upon probably 15 city workers trying to clear the sidewalk in front of the Opera House with what looked like tools they had saved from the Communist Era. They were using the smallest most pitiful shovels I have ever seen, rickety old wheelbarrows, and brooms that were literally made from bundles of sticks. With a regular shovel it probably would’ve been a two man job. Breakfast was chocolate croissants and cinnamon rolls at another cool little coffee shop.
The weather forecast wasn’t that great for the morning so we flipped our plans for the day and went to the Szechenyi Baths for what is apparently a truly Hungarian experience. The baths are on the north side of Pest and are fed by thermal springs. It’s a huge complex with baths inside and out. We spent most of our time outside, away from the seemingly stale and smelly indoor baths. Outside there are three large areas, the hottest one (105 F) for relaxing, the center one for lap swimming, and the last for kids. The kid pool had all kinds of jets from the floor of the pools and spouts all around, and in the middle were circular tiled walls. The center ring had an underwater bench you could sit on and the outer ring had an incredibly strong current that would whip you around and around. Probably the highlight of the trip for the kids. On the way out Haaken and I decided to try one of the saunas inside – easily the hottest sauna I have ever been in. After about 1 minute I told Haaken that he could tell me when he was ready to go to which he stated “I’m ready to go Dad.” Probably a good idea – Haaken was taking really big exaggerated breaths and the tips of my ears were already starting to sting from the heat.
We took a short break at the apartment and then walked up and down Andrassy utca very near to our apartment. We window shopped the ritzy street with all kinds of fashion designers and high end retailers. It was dark and a little early for dinner so we took the metro to Votosmarty square, listened to some live Christmas music and then took in the Donau at night. We followed this up with dinner at an Indian restaurant at the other end of town and then hot chocolate and fresh kurtoskalac from the Christmas market for dessert.
The trip home went well until we were just about home (after about 10 hours of travelling.) From Nuremberg we took a commuter train to our neck of the woods. A few minutes from the time we were supposed to arrive in Freihung I noticed that the next stop was Amberg which is about 40 minutes by car from Grafenwoehr. We started asking people around us if the train would eventually go to Freihung and a German woman who spoke some broken English said no, it won’t. We showed her our ticket and she confirmed that we were on the right train and then started discussing our situation with another woman on the train. This woman then told us to get off the train in Amberg because we were going to have to head back to a town a couple stops back (Neukirchen) and transfer. Apparently as the train approached Neukirchen the conductor told the passengers over the loudspeaker that at the next stop the train was going to split in half and go different directions (one to Freihung, one to Amberg). Since we don’t speak German we didn’t understand it and happened to be on the wrong side of the train. This little experience added 2 hours to our trip. It never occurred to me that a train could split in half midway through a trip. Chalk it up to another experience on our European adventure I guess.
Sounds like a great trip. That sidewalk looks very clean - so the broom worked as it was intended. I'll show Matthias his church tonight. Nice turn around on the blog for this trip by the way.
ReplyDeleteA beautiful city; the thermal baths look and sound wonderfully relaxing! I learned something basic from this blog. I didn't know you could click on the pictures to enlarge the view!
ReplyDeleteLooks like a great city! The architecture looks beautiful and very clean. I guess with such nice brooms, the city workers are able to keep things clean. Shouldn't that pig in the market need refrigeration?
ReplyDeleteNow that you've been to Budapest, do you now pronounce it Budapesht?
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