Budapest

Two weekends ago, I took a little trip to Budapest. My friend, who's studying in Copenhagen this semester, was visiting Budapest, which is only about two hours and 40 minutes away from Vienna by train. I took the "Railjet" train, which was very quick and nice. I got into Budapest at around 5 PM on Saturday, and my friend was waiting for me outside the station. We took the subway to get back to her hotel, which was an interesting experience. To my surprise, Hungary isn't on the Euro, but rather the "forint" (abbreviation "ft"). The exchange rate is about 200 ft to 1 dollar, so it was weird to see my friend paying for things that cost thousands of ft, which amounted to almost nothing really. But thankfully, they accepted Euros in some places.. maybe they're in the process of trying to phase the Euro in, which would make sense considering that Hungary is a fairly recent addition to the European Union. Speaking of money, Budapest is extremely cheap. My friend and her friend from the program in Copenhagen were staying in this very nice hotel that would definitely have been pretty expensive in any other city, with very nice new rooms and a buffet breakfast every morning, and it only cost them about 30 dollars each per night. But back to the subways. They were pretty strange. First of all, the escalators were extremely steep and fast-moving. And they went really deep into the ground, kind of like the escalators for the Metro in Washington, DC. But really, they moved so fast that it almost brought back my childhood fear of escalators, and I really had to concentrate to get my step-timing right.

Then there were the subway trains themselves. On the outside, they looked super old and kind of run-down and shabby. They were pretty small with curved roofs, and brightly colored. On the inside, it almost looked like a movie set. The seats were only along the edge of the car facing inward; the cars were brightly lit, with lots of lights, and the silver shone very brightly. It's hard to explain, but I felt like I was in some old-fashioned movie on those trains.

Right away, Budapest felt very different to me, far more different from home than any city I've visited. That may seem strange, but maybe it had a lot to do with the language. All the signs in the subways and on the streets were in Hungarian, and I don't have the slightest clue how the Hungarian language works. Even with Italian, we're familiar in the United States with some key phrases and, of course, names of dishes, but Hungarian was something utterly foreign to me. Also, I guess that in Vienna and other European cities I've visited, the countries have fairly similar standards of living and are similarly technologized (if that's a word) to the United States. But Budapest is a noticably less affluent and less advanced (technology-wise) city, which sometimes made it feel like I had gone back in time. The city is absolutely beautiful. Apparently, it is sometimes referred to as the "Paris of Central Europe." I've never been to Paris, but I could believe it. My friend that I was visiting has been to Paris, and she said that the only thing that made Budapest not quite as stunning was that many of the buildings are just a lot dirtier. With most of them, you could tell that they're very pretty buildings, but they just aren't taken care of too well. Actually, the architecture in Budapest reminded me a lot of Vienna, mainly the apartment buildings in uniform (height-wise) rows of about 5 or 6 stories, but with varying colors, usually lighter (like the yellow, cream, and white that you can see in the picture below).

At the end of this street is the Parliament building, which was very impressive and unique, but you'll see more of that a little later. I only stayed in Budapest for one night, so I really didn't get to learn much in-depth information about the city, but I was able to walk around and explore on my own for a while, which was cool. On Saturday night, my friend had booked a river cruise on the Danube, with a company called Legenda. This was our boat:

We were pretty late getting onto the boat, so there weren't really any seats left. There was an audio guide, with headphones for every seat, but some of them weren't working (and the audio guide was pretty weird) so we ended up just going out on the deck and taking in the scenery. We saw some pretty cool things from the river.

The Chain Bridge.

The Royal Palace.

The Parliament.

It was interesting to see the way that Budapest is arranged along the Danube River. The river is a very central landmark in the city, dividing Buda on one side from Pest (pronounced "Pesht") on the other. So Budapest is the combination of two areas on separates sides of the river called Buda and Pest. Most of the sights and main buildings are on the Pest side. But taking the cruise along the river, you really see how the city is somewhat centered around the river, with all the big monuments and buildings prominently visible over the water. In Vienna, which also lies on the Danube, this is not the case. The Danube (in German, "der Donau") does not occupy a central location in the layout of the city, and it's definitely not a place to go to "see the sights." There is a canal that branches off of the Danube, but that also is pretty minor and un-noteworthy. It's just an interesting difference to me, and makes me wonder why Vienna isn't laid out along the Danube like Budapest is. I suppose it could be because of flooding. But anyway, after the river cruise, we had dinner at an Italian restaurant.. in other words, I did not try any traditional Hungarian cuisine, although certain traditional Hungarian dishes like Paprika Chicken and Goulasch are supposed to be very good. The next day, we got up early because my friend had to catch an early flight back to Copenhagen, and so I wandered around Budapest by myself until I took the train back to Vienna at around 11. I walked along the river, walked back and forth on the Chain Bridge, and then walked down to the Parliament building. Here's some of what I saw:

The Chain Bridge.

The Parliament.

All around the city, there are these metal statues. I would try to describe them, but they are seemingly very random, often depicting commonplace people (many of them old-fashioned as well) partaking in pretty ordinary activities. I must have seen at least 10 of them in various locations scattered around the city, and I didn't even see too much of Budapest. Apparently, this policeman statue is pretty famous. And I liked this statue of the boy sitting on the railing. I tried to do some research to get more information about these statues, but I was unsuccessful.