For our Semana Santa week-long break, which is the week leading up to Easter in Spain, we are going on a mega tour of Central Europe. We’re starting with Budapest, then taking a train north to Vienna, then Prague, and finally Berlin. Because I wanted to get back to Spain to witness the Semana Santa processions and over-the-top celebration, I will only be in Berlin for about 6 hours before I have to go home, but I looking to doing some intense exploring and having great things to write about for the next week.
As I write this, I am on my way to Vienna, sitting backwards in a train car that resembles the one on the Hogwarts Express. The process of getting on this train was unexpectedly easy compared to even figuring out Atocha in Madrid where I actually speak the language.
This in contrast to the rough start to this trip. The day before departure, I checked my ticket and realized that I was booked at 6am, while they weren’t leaving until noon. This meant that I had to get up at 3am and take a taxi to the airport, because the metro wasn’t running yet. I nearly missed my connection in Brussels, because of a delay in Madrid, and when I got to Budapest I had to figure out how to get to the Kálvin Tér metro stop by myself.
Like most things that I think are going to be impossible, it wasn’t and I figured it out with some trial and error, but for anyone traveling to Hungary keep in mind that English is not nearly as widely spoken. Most people could only speak a few words, so any directions I received were given in gestures.
Once my friends had arrived, we settled into the hostel, which was the strangest hostel I’ve ever stayed in. It was more like an AirBNB, and the manager informed us that it used to be a children’s mental hospital, which is why the doors were padded. This coupled with the fact that we didn’t see anyone there the entire time and were mostly left to come and go as we pleased made the experience a little eerie. But there were two bathrooms and kitchen and breakfast provided all for 27 euros per person for three nights, so we were cool with it.
The Perplexing Hungarian Forints
The first thing I noticed about Hungary is that their money is difficult to conceptualize. 1 USD is the equivalent of roughly 250 Hungarian Forints. This means that everything seems inflated. Dinner the first night was 12,000 Forints! If you’re a millionaire in Hungary, you only have 3,600 dollars! The jokes about this were endless, but actually the joke was kind of on us when the check came around and we took twenty minutes to figure it out. Because we’re not used to dealing with numbers that big, we kept miscalculating and either severely overpaying or underpaying.
Being in Budapest reminding me how much I love the aesthetic of Central/Eastern Europe with the reddish brick buildings and green-tinged copper roofs. Hungary reminds me of Poland, because you can see the communist influences from when it was a Soviet satellite state. The city seems frozen in the late 80s circa the fall of the wall.
Fisherman’s Bastion
The first full day we had there, we crossed the Danube to the part of Budapest that was originally “Buda.” It’s where the Buda Castle, and St. Matyias’s Cathedral is as well as Fisherman’s Bastion, which is a collection of rounded turrets overlooking the river and “Pest.” This is definitively my favorite area in Budapest, and I would highly recommend anyone visiting to spend much of their time here. The view across the river is the best in the city, especially at night since Parliament is all light up. I’m unsure if Budapest as a city is windy or just when we were there, but maybe to be safe bring a hairtie, because you’ll leave with dreadlocks otherwise.
As for Hungarian food, the only thing I knew going into this trip was goulash, and even then I wasn’t sure what it was. Well, goulash is pretty much on every menu, which is probably because it’s a deliciously tangy meat and vegetable stew flavored with paprika (Hungary’s signature spice). Another big part of the cuisine is paprika chicken over buttered dumplings (if you’ve had German spaetzle, it’s basically like that). I was surprised with just how much I liked Hungarian food. When I get back to Chicago, I’ll definitely be seeking out the Hungarian neighborhood.
On our second full day, we had plans to go to the Szechenyi Baths. It’s the most famous one in Budapest, and it not only has several indoor and outdoor thermal baths but spa services as well. We arrived early, because it gets crowded later in the day, and when we first walked in we were hit with a wall of sulfuric smell. I think that’s part of the “thermal” part, but it smelled like the geysers in Yellowstone, and if you’ve smelled those before you know that’s not a good smell.
Szechenyi Baths
We had to rent a towel and locker, and if we wanted to go in certain pools we would have had to rent a swim cap as well. Almost no one there spoke English, and I don’t mean to be so Anglo-Saxon-centric, but I was surprised since it’s a huge tourist destination that they didn’t have any staff that spoke English. I’m willing to struggle through an interaction in broken English, but that staff weren’t willing to even meet me halfway.
The process of figuring out the lockers and changing rooms was a long one, because it’s a labyrinth in there. We tried to sign-up for massages, but the man literally laughed at us and told us it was all-full. Then we went to another massage area and were told it was completely open. We had so many questions…how did we open the lockers? What is bath etiquette? Do I get my hair wet? I don’t know if we did the baths “right,” but after a 30-minute massage and soaking in 80+ degree baths for a couple hours I did feel pampered. My skin was smooth and slick.
With wet heads, we took the metro and then walked to street food market near the Deák Ferenc metro stop, where we had some chicken and vegetable pita, which was the messiest but most perfectly flavored meal. I topped it off with a sour cherry and cheese tart.
I think we needed at least one more day in Budapest truly. Two and a half wasn’t enough, because I still wished I had done a formal tour and seen some of the museums and memorials dedicated to persecuted Hungarian Jews. I would have also liked to have gone out more at night to the “ruin bars,” which are bars housed in the destroyed buildings of the Jewish quarter. But I’m excited to head on to Vienna where I am a little more familiar with the culture and language, and where we’re going to see classical concert Mozart style.