Adventure in Budapest

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After a 7-1/2 hour ride in an 18-seater minibus, we made it to Budapest!  There were 16 passengers in the bus:  11 being Dianna, her parents, her brother, Asta, Natalee, Emily, Wesley (Emily's friend), Lana, Meghan, and me.  We went through Slovakia to get there.  I was asleep for most of the ride, but I remember mountains in Slovakia.

We had to stop twice to check passports.  When we were leaving Poland/entering Slovakia, a woman got on the bus to check passports.  She was very careful about it, pretty much questioning everyone.  She looked at me, then my passport, then back at me and said, "Katherine?" and then took my passport and went to the next person.  When she got off the bus with our passports, Asta said she seemed really suspicious about her and she took her passport (when they normally don't take up European passports).  Then, a guy made Asta get off and fill out paperwork questioning where she was from, etc.

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We got to Budapest around 10:30 pm and started our search for our hostels.  We got on the metro and found the first hostel pretty quickly.  It was one for three people so Natalee, Lana, and Asta stayed there while Emily, Wesley, Meghan, and I went looking for our hostel.  After asking many friendly Hungarians where the hostel was, we found some man that worked at a copy shop.  They made some calls and found the address but said it was kind of far away, but they could drive us.  We kindly declined, saying we needed to meet up with our friends and we'd come back if we needed a ride.

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We met up with the other girls and decided it wasn't that far so we started walking there.  Finally, after a lot of walking with what seemed to be an increasingly heavy backpack we found it.  We paged the buttom for the hostel and a guy got on and said he'd come down.  He met us at the door and told us we had to be like ninjas and be really quiet because the building echos a lot.  We followed him through an entry that opened to a courtyard.  We went up a flight of stairs to the hostel door.  He asked us if we were going back out and we told him we were really hungry so he said he'd show us a place cheap like McDonalds but better.  As he walked us through the streets of Budapest, we learned his name was Jim (Jimmy) and he was from Chicago.  He wanted to open a nice business in Budapest.  We ate gyros at the place he showed us then went to bed.

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The next morning we got up and Jimmy marked on a map routes we should take and what we should see/not see for the two days we'd be there.  He also told us we could have cereal or he could make eggs for us.  We had cereal, but then had to leave to meet up with the other girls.

We went to a museum (with free admission!), went to the marketplace, walked across a bridge to the hill with a statue on top and a cave church.  On the hike up we found a playground with a few fun big slides, so of course we stopped to play!  There was this little cute boy there that was trying to play with us.  He didn't speak English, but he'd run up to us and around us and was having a good time.  He was adorable.

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Then we walked back across the river on another bridge to go on the metro to go to the baths!  We went to the outdoor baths!  There were three pools (one hot, medium, and cool).  We were there for three hours and spent most of our time in the warm pool.  It was fun because it had a circular area in the middle of it with jets that pulled you along around and around.  I was cracking up for the first few minutes of it...it was so fun!

When we were in the hot pool, Lana and Asta saw a man massaging a woman.  Thinking the woman had hired him, they went up to them and Asta said that Lana wanted a massage and asked how much it was.  The guy and woman laughed because it was his wife.  Lana and Asta walked away, but the guy motioned for them to come back.  He was motioning that he'd massage them.  I guess it's important to say at this poin, the man is about 80 years old, no teeth, and we find out shortly after this point is also deaf or mute.

market
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Lana and Asta come back over to us and the guy swims over and motions that he wants to massage and won't charge but the people there will.  So finally Lana gives in and he gives her a massage.  Then he wanted to give everyone else a massage too.  He massaged my back, face, arms, and hands.

After the baths, we walked around the area for a little bit because it was so pretty there.  Then, we walked to Hero's Square.  At this point the sun had set so it was all lit up and pretty.  There were rollarbladers and then there were three people, one guy and two girls, with their bodies painted gold.  They were basically contortionists and there was a crew there filming them.  It was really cool to see.  Then, with a lot of difficulty, we found a place to eat and we back to our hostel.