I say Buda, you say PEST!

Now for those of you have never experienced an overnight train and might have to some day, I encourage that you DO NOT take any option other than a sleeper car. Bring some food because they sure as heck don’t offer any despite the Harry Potter implications. And if you do get stuck in such a situation where you are in a tiny room for 8 hours, bring along a bottle of wine and some music to seat-dance the hours away!

We took the couchette car to Budapest. Imagine a cabin the size of a small bathroom with six seats that fold down into two triple bunk beds side by side with enough room for the six sleeper bodies and a space to fall off when in need of the toilet. Good thing we are not claustrophobic. They give you one sheet and one “pillow” each, which are hospital style white sheets that have undoubtedly been starched to the max, and the pillow is like taking a small chunk of the back seat of a car that broke down in 1979 (Styrofoam) and shoving it into another starched sheet. At about 4:30 in the morning, the other boy in our couchette (luckily there was only three of us) got off in Bratislava. That kind of woke us from our not so deep slumber, and we decided to chat.

too hot of a pepper for me!

Me: “Whatcha doin Jaym?”

Jaym: “Lookin’ out the window. I’ve never been to Slovakia before.”

Me: “Me either, is it cool?!”

Jaym: “It’s alright.”

And then we continued to sleep on our hammock of a bed (I decided to forfeit the sheets), finally able to put the window down and not suffocate. (Slovakia boy decided that he was going to sleep the ONE WAY that you do NOT sleep in a couchette, on the one bunk where the wind blows directly at you with his head on the window side! And we even offered him chocolate. Punk.)

Finally at about 8 in the morning we arrived at our destination…starving. I’ve never wanted to eat so badly at 8 in the morning, that is for sure. We trekked our mile backpacker style to a hostel that our guide book recommended. It was a nice looking place, so we reserved a room, tossed our bags down, and headed straight for the sausage, bacon and eggs. We found a cute café and ate away. I think we ordered enough food for a pack of sailors…two ham, mushroom, cheese and eggs, two Vienna sausage links (long hotdogs, let’s me honest), two teas with REAL honey (so good!), and a loaf of bread with pepperocinis in it. Oh man. Damn good.

Alright, on with the show…Budapest in all its glory. Of the three days that we were in the city, it rained for two of them! A new city is never fun in the rain, but we managed to figure it out, broken umbrellas and all. We trekked out to find a good place to eat some delectable food and listen to some good pub music, but the place we had in mind didn’t open until later. We went to a bar called Paul’s Pub where James and I had yet another local beer, Zlaty Bazant. This pub had seats outside under umbrellas, which we took advantage of, and the coolest thing yet, it had fleece blankets on the back of the seats to keep people like me warm! I thought that was pretty nice of them.

Eventually we made our way to Fat Mo’s. The story behind Fat Mo is he was an undercover official during the American Prohibition era, and he would go around catching everyone with alcohol and fine them. Eventually it became so tough and obviously pointless that he gave up and started drinking right along with the criminals. This is when he coined the term “If you can’t beat em, join em!” Out of an entire page of a menu dedicated to his story, that’s all I can remember, sorry guys. However, Fat Mo’s is one of Budapest’s many cellar bars. Apparently it gets bumping on the weekends, but we managed to visit on a Wednesday night, which was relaxing. It was funny, however, because there was one table taken in the whole place, yet when the host sat us, we were made to decide between three tables. And they were all four-tops! I mean I would understand if we were going to be taking up needed seats if it were to get more crowded later, but it was a table in the front, a table in the back, or a table smack in the middle. So odd. And only one party came in after us.

For dinner, the highlight of the day, James got steak of sorts and I got a Mexican chicken tortilla. The food there was American influenced with Magyar (Hungarian) tinges.  Damn good…until one dreadful moment...

I was eating my fantastic dish in the wonderful mood lighting (not much), sipping my Midori Margarita when all of a sudden I took a bite of what I thought to be a normal everyday pepper which turned out to be the hottest gosh darn awful pepper I have ever put into my mouth! With one bite into the bad boy, my mouth was watering all sorts of new brands of saliva, my eyes were tearing up, and in an instant I spit that damn thing out! I gulped down my all too overpriced Margarita, some of Jaym’s beer, shoved down some lettuce, tried to munch into some mashed potatoes…nothing was working! I don’t know how you brave souls who eat hot peppers stand it, it was aweful! Finally my mouth restored normalcy after about half an hour. But please, if anyone ever sees me go near a hot pepper again, STOP ME!

The next day we decided to do a day trip outside of Budapest, see if we could escape the rain (which we did fairly well, surprisingly). We took a 45 minute train to Szentendre, the land of a million souvenirs. It’s a very cute little town with typical Hungarian food and people. There are lots of windy cobblestone roads lined with souvenir shop after souvenir shop, selling paprika and salami to ceramic and wooden toys. It was not as crowded as the city was, and I don’t think we saw a single car once into the town. And my favorite souvenir: a wooden duck butt wine bottle stopper. It looks like a duck got stuck in our wine trying to drink it and his butt is poppin out! It’s cute.

While in Szentendre we stopped at a crazy little restaurant covered in antiques and other trinkets. On the wall were drying chili peppers (no thank you!), horse hyde around the pole, old armor and carriages, crazy old style instruments, steel tools, name an antique and it might have been there. On the menu there was nothing but meat… or meat. The menu had pictures of each dish, and all of them looked like typical meat and mashed potato dinner with a veggie, except they forgot the veggies. James and I got Hungarian mushroom soup to start and paprika chicken (we had to be true to our tourist side). To be honest, it wasn’t that good. But the ornamentation of that tiny little place off the beaten path outside of Budapest was definitely something to write home about (obviously).

The sun finally came out on the last day in Budapest! Even though we had to catch another overnight train at 3pm, we managed to get a full day of Buda in! So for a bit of history of the land, there are two sides of the Danube River in Budapest. The west side is Buda, and the east side is Pest. Yes, this is true. During the war, Pest got bombed, and Buda managed to weasel out of the deal scarless.

Meandering around Buda you will find lots of old style buildings. We wandered around castle hill, and then hiked up another gigantic hill trying to find one of the many baths (we never managed to make it) but found the citadella and some sculptures which were cool. We tried to find the quickest way down the hill, but they always manage to be smart in protecting their land because it was another hour trek back and forth and back and forth down windy sets of stairs and pathways. We would come to a split in the path and think ‘Lets go this way!’ thinking we found the quicker route, but no, just another just-as-long path where you can see the bottom the entire time but just cant get there! I guess if I was running from the enemy all these decisions of direction along the way would be helpful, but when we have until 2 pm to get our butts to the other side of the city, just get me down!

Finally we made it down, meandered around the sites some more, spotted the  parliament, and then checked out some billboard showcase. It was some sort of contest where creative souls could be witty in their native tongue and display any message via words or pictures that they wished. There were also photography displays and decorated phone booths, some like a graffitied disco booth and others like a front door step. One looked like a shadow of a couple kissing from the outside. Yet another had yellow sticky notes covering it, meant for viewers to leave messages….Of course we did! Ill leave you to go find out what we wrote =)

One thing I will say is Hungarians claim that Magyar is an extremely colorful language. Apparently there are so many words that differ ever so slightly in meaning that some things cannot even be translated into the English language (according to the English billboard guide I grabbed). Let’s just think for a minute…how many words do we have that slightly differ around the word beautiful? Good-looking, gorgeous, stunning, striking, attractive, pretty, handsome, cute, adorable, sexy, attractive, elegant, dazzling, astounding, astonishing, glorious, immaculate, spectacular…the list goes on! And they all differ ever so slightly. You wouldn’t watch your lady friend walk down the stairs ready for prom and call her handsome or cute now would you? No, you tell her she looks dazzling, gorgeous, or stunning. So I just cant imagine that list going even further! I wonder if they have a word for extremely too hot of a pepper for me!?

What I do NOT understand, is why every S in the language has to be accompanied by a Z or two...it just makes no sense.  Maybe the S has no sound in their language without the Z?  Anyone with some insight on this would be greatly appreciated...

So that’s all she wrote after three days in Buda…PEST!!!