Hungary

Budapest (Parliament)

BUDAPEST
I arrived to Budapest around 8:30 in the morning of Saturday March 15th after taking the overnight train in Krakow (Poland). Even though I was not meeting Mare and her troop (friends/co-workers) until noon I went straight to the hotel to see if they would store my bag until they arrived and got their rooms. But to my luck I was able to check in and thus take a shower and change clothes: something I was really looking forward to after having slept on a bunk bed dressed with jeans and a sweater. The Revolution of 1848 was being celebrated that day and the streets, as well as the "Chain" bridge, adjacent to the hotel were closed to the cars and instead there were bands playing Hungarian folk music and people dressed in traditional clothing who were re-enacting life in Hungary in the 19th century. I met Mare and her troop around noon and soon after that we were off to explore the city. The first order of business: Lunch (Hungarian Goulash).

Celebration of the 1848 Revolution - View of Pest in the background

Budapest is actually 2 cities separated by the Danube River: Buda and Pest (pronounced Pesh). We first visited Buda: the Buda castle, the Fisherman´s Bastion, and Mathias Church. Afterwards, but still in Buda, we went to the Labyrinth of Buda Castle: one of the highlights of the entire trip. Many many years ago (as far back as half a million years ago) a series of caves were formed under the location where Buda Castle was built. These caves were later connected with each other as well as with the cellars of the houses in the Castle´s district forming what is known today as the castle´s labyrinth and which was used as a shelter and as a secret military installation in the past. We walked into the darkness of the labyrinth and started to walk without a clue of where we were heading or what we were supposed to look for. The guy at the entrance told us there would be signs along our way which would tell us where we were. Given the fact that it was pitch black once you entered the labyrinth we were not really counting on those signs to guide us. At some point we had to each one take out our cell phones and used them as flashlights to help us guide ourselves. That is how we noticed there was something painted on the walls which we could not quiet identify. As resourceful as we engineers are ( I just had to throw that one in there) we started taking pictures of the walls. That is how, with the help of the flash and through the pictures themselves, we discovered that the walls were painted with animal figures such as deers and bulls.

Animal paintings on the walls of the labyrinth

We did not really see any signs posted on the walls but as we were looking for the exit we ran into a woman and her son. To our surprise, they were each carrying a lamp which helped them find their way around the labyrinth. They told us they had given the lamps to them at the entrance and they gave them to us. Now with the lamps in our hands it was a different story and a different experience. What we had walked up until that point was only an nth part of the labyrinth. We found a map on the wall and got a better vision of where we were and the path we wanted to follow. Suddenly, about halfway into our journey it started to smell like a cellar and wine, a light was coming out of a room and you could hear a stream of something coming out of that same room. As we walked towards the light the smell of wine became stronger and the sound of classical music emerged. The lit room had sort of a fountain from where red wine was pouring instead of water. I felt like when a character of a Nintento, X-Box or Play Station game defeats all the monsters and overcomes all the obstacles along his/her way and reaches the end of the game by entering a room where a reward awaits him/her. Of course I couldn´t contain myself and I had to taste the wine and drink from the fountain as if it were a water fountain. There were no glasses available!! But was it really wine?? It smelled like wine, it looked like wine and it tasted like wine so I´m telling myself it was wine.

Inside the labyrinth

The Wine Fountain

On Sunday it was off to the Pest side of the city: the pedestrian zone close to the hotel for breakfast, the synagogue and the cathedral. In the afternoon we submerged ourselves in a reinvigorating thermal bath and finished the night with a delicious dinner on a restaurant on the Danube River (the restaurant is actually on a boat).

Fisherman´s Bastion

View of Buda from the Chain Bridge - View of Chain Bridge and Pest from Buda

On Monday Mare and her troop were off to their meeting and I had a plan: wake up early to go to the train station and purchase the train tickets for my next trip (Bulgaria), visit 2 nearby towns in the morning and early afternoon and come back to Budapest around 7pm to meet up with them. But nothing came out as planned. I woke up late (I don´t know why but each time it is becoming more and more difficult for me to wake up early in the morning. I don´t know what I´m going to do whenever I have to go back to work) and made it to the station around noon. At the station I had to wait close to an hour to be helped by the "efficient" teller only to find out that the journey south to Sofia took 17 hours and costed about 180USD. See, the web site for the Hungarian Railways is not very user friendly, specially the sections in English. It would never give me the price of the journey and trying to figure out the schedules was also cumbersome. I thought the journey was shorted and cheaper and I left the station somewhat disappointed and not knowing exactly what to do next. If I were to go south to Bulgaria I was still in need of coming back north to Croatia to spend there a couple of days and still be on time to catch the once a week ferry from Dubrovnik (Croatia) to Bari (Italy) where I was visiting some friends. At the end it became too late to go anywhere outside Budapest and I just stayed walking around the city.


ESZTERGOM

Esztergom Basilica

View of Esztergom (Slovakia is on the other side of the bridge)

On Tuesday I headed to the town of Esztergom, located about an hour to an hour and a half northwest of Budapest by train. Esztergom has around 30,000 inhabitants and in the 10th-13th centuries it was the capital of Hungary. Today it is the seat of the archbishop of Hungary and its basilica is the largest church in the country. The town lies next to the Danube River and it is connected to Slovakia via a bridge that crosses the river. I spent the whole day exploring the streets of Esztergom, climbing up the hill leading to some ruins and to a tiny church with a striking sculpture of Jesus on the cross. I also went to the Basilica and the very nice park that surrounds it and walked around the old part of town as well. I got back to Budapest sometime around 8 o´clock and picked up my bag from the hotel. Since Mare and her troop had already left that morning I had left my bag at the front desk at the hotel and checked myself into a hostel that night, one very close to the main train station. By then I had already made my mind. I was going to visit another couple of spots in Budapest on Wednesday and take the overnight train to Slovenia .