2006-10-04 - 6:00 p.m.
Y'know what I love? I love good hostels. They make the whole traveling experience so much better. I especially like good hostels with lots of free amenities. As far as that goes, I think this is one of the best we've seen.
The hostel is called "The Aboriginal" which is a bit of an odd name for a Hungarian hostel. Nevertheless, it's great. It is a smaller hostel, with only three rooms, with eight people in each. It's actually set up more as a large apartment than a regular hostel. There's a kitchen, and a living room, instead of a common room. The living room has cable TV, as well as a great selection of DVDs. Last night we watched the third Austin Powers movie, which is probably Jesse and I's most quoted movie on this trip, right up there will "Grosse Pointe Blanke".
There is free internet as well, with (and this is the amazing part) two reasonably fast computers. The beds are comfortable, the lockouts and curfews are non existent, and they do your laundry for you. Oh, that's right. They do it for you. I've never met anyone (except my wonderful mother) who would do my laundry, especially for free. Today I just bagged it all up, dropped it off, and they took care of the rest. They actually fine you if you try to do it yourself. It's a nice perk, and makes a difference in a guy's estimation of a place.
Hostel aside, Budapest is cool. It is filled with people trying to hand you fliers, and people trying to talk you into things, but we are getting good at ignoring people. A little too good, actually. Today we were sitting on a bench eating lunch (bread cheese and pate)and a guy comes up and asks us if we speak English. Without even stopping to think, I say "no".
The guy just gives us this weird look, and I realize that not only were we loudly fighting in English, but I was wearing an English football shirt. I had the grace to look ashamed and told him I spoke a little English. Turns out, he wasn't trying to sell us anything, he just wanted to know where a hostel was. Jesse directed him to our hostel, while I tried not to look him in the eye. It was pretty embarrassing. I hope he managed to get a room here, so I can explain that I had assumed that he was selling something.
We've not done too much exciting other than walk around so far. We spent the first day getting the feel for the city, looking through the tourist shops, and seeing the different bridges over the Danube.
Our second day we were determined to see some of the sights. We had heard about this statue park. When communism fell, they didn't destroy all the statues. They took about thirty of them, and put them in this park where they charge you six hundred forints to get in. This works out to about two fifty euro. Anyway, it looked interesting, so we decided to go for it.
We had to take the metro, then a tram, and then a bus. We had a bit of trouble finding the bus, as the instructions were "get on the yellow bus" and we couldn't see any yellow buses. we figured it out, and got on the bus.
There were signs saying to watch for the stop for the statue park, and we were watching. Trouble was that the only way it was marked was with a very small faded sign on the lamp pole. We noticed it as the bus was pulling away. By this point, we were well outside Budapest, getting into the country. We figured that we could get out at the next stop and just walk back. With rapidly falling spirits we realized that the bus stops were few and far between this far out. When the bus finally stopped it took us twenty minutes to walk back to the statue park.
Despite all this effort, the statue park was pretty dull. There were only maybe twenty statues, and a few plaques, much less than we had been led to believe. We got some great pictures so the trip wasn't a total waste, but it was a very long trip for very disappointing results.
We spent the rest of the day doing what we do best, which is nothing. We went to a Hungarian restaurant near the hostel for supper, and I had what I think was deep fried bread with turkey and bacon and mushrooms. It was pretty good.
Today we climbed castle hill. The castle is, as you can guess, on a big hill. There are paths and stairs all the way to the top. We did it slowly, stopping frequently at benches (Budapest is very well kitted out in the bench department) and enjoying the magnificent view. It was a good afternoon.
