Day 64: Budapest => Bled

9:10am train out. I managed to spend our last 175 forints, on a pastry that was supposed to cost 195 forints ^-^


I saw this our first day but I didn't get a good picture of it back then. It's a metro map, with all the McDonalds marked out!

On the train, we sat across from a Hungarian software architect working on railway automation software and an elderly couple from Texas. The Hungarian got off at an earlier stop and actually gave us and the couple his business card with email address before leaving the train. The couple started by sitting in different rows, the lady sitting with the Hungarian, and her husband sitting in the next row.

My ears perked when she said to the Hungarian "we're senior citizen backpackers" as she joined him in the seats. I looked up and saw two huge suitcases. Curious. They weren't backpackers. Far from it. (Well, we don't really consider ourselves to be backpackers either.) They're staying in timeshares for a week at a time and renting cars for some of it. Plus, they have four (!) large suitcases, one of which containing food apparently, things like soup packets, etc. since their timeshares had kitchens. I almost wanted to ask if it was hard to buy groceries while traveling but kept my mouth shut. It's a different mentality. One of the joys for me is exploring the local supermarkets, groceries, produce shops, and markets, and visiting the butcher the locals buy their meat from (if we had a kitchen). Both were retired, one a high school science teacher, the other an engineer (30 yrs at NASA), and on their second marriage (they just got married in '03!). It's a different travel style, but at least they're out exploring the world.

They mentioned Delphi during our conversation. It seems I really missed out. I'll have to visit there whenever we visit Greece again. But if I had to pick all over again, I'd pick visiting E again, of course. Maybe I would have tried to add another day to our Athens stay though ^-^'

One of the remarkable things about traveling through Europe is all the different cultures within a comparatively small land area. We met some people from Holland who talked of driving back from Austria, a 10-hour drive. That's nearly how much D had to drive from his college in Virginia back home to NJ!

Our train arrived late at our connecting station, a little worrisome because we only had 30 minutes to connect and we still had to buy our tickets for the connection. It ended up ok, even though K had to run to the main station office all the way past the other end of the platform.

After all our train journeys so far on this trip, I think the Austrian countryside and suburbs are the prettiest.

Getting to Bled required *another* train transfer (and then also a local bus). At the transfer at Villach (still Austria), we went from a nice, comfy train with plugs in the compartments to a stuffy, crowded train with broken a/c. Thankfully, this last leg was only less than an hour of our 8.5-hour train journey. We sat in a six-seat compartment with four other people, an American currently living in Prague, a German currently living in Prague dating the American, an Australian, and a Slovene, all on their way to Ljubljana. All the cars were just as full as ours from what we saw.

To our surprise, the Slovene spoke English really well. He said it was actually pretty common for Slovenes, especially the younger generation, to be able to speak English fluently. After months of not being able to acquire a job overseas, the American had decided to move Prague on a whim and then found a job in her field, journalism, and had been there now for nearly two years. She said she had vowed never to date a German after her sister got married to a German, but here she was, with a German. When we got to talking about places in Europe, she said she hated Berlin the first time she went but it was ok after the second time (why do so many people not 'get' Berlin?). Also contrasting our own opinions, she called Rome her 'boyfriend', loving the dirt and grime, and men. The Australian was probably in her forties or so and traveling alone. With company and interesting conversation, the hour of intense heat passed quickly.

The local bus from Lesce Bled to Bled runs nearly every half-hour, except, of course, for the half hour that we wanted. We had just missed the previous bus and it was another hour until the next one >_< Everything seemed to be closed except for the two cafes near the small train station. We plopped down at one of the cafes and ordered a sandwich. And it turns out the cafe has free wifi ^-^

8:30pm. Our nearly 10-hour journey complete, we arrived at our pension. We were greeted by the mother of the owner. She handed us a sheet that told us all the basics of when breakfast was available, internet availability, etc. The sheet also said she didn't speak English but to try German or Italian if we wanted to communicate with her.

It was good we ate the sandwich at the cafe because the closest food places are all closed. We could go down closer to the lake, but we decided to just eat some of our emergency stash of fruit and nut bars instead.

Day 63: Budapest

K went out to buy our train tickets for tomorrow while I worked on trying to get a place for Oslo and Copenhagen. Scandinavia is expensive! K came back with tickets from Budapest to Vienna, well, one stop before Westbahnhof. Apparently it's cheaper to buy the tickets to Slovenia from Austria, rather than from Hungary (one border crossing vs two border crossings, or something). We're still taking the same route we wanted to take, but during our 30-minute connection in Austria, we'll have to buy tickets for our leg into Slovenia.

Budapest is a city that's so westernized and modernized and yet, still retains some of it's old-world elements. For example, our train tickets for tomorrow weren't printed -- the fields were instead hand-written. At the station, K passed by the people playing chess again. He said it seemed like they were betting people to play; you win, you get your money plus some, they win, they keep your money. One guy was free and seemed to be trying to get someone to play him.

After some time, we head out to the Szechenyi Baths. According to D, it was his one regret about Budapest -- not visiting the baths that all his friends raved about. They sure do know how to do their public swimming pools here! My leg wound from Krakow is still healing though, so we decided it was probably better that I don't go soak in the water. So sad. Aside from just the atmosphere and all, the water was quite warm. One pool at 30 deg C (~86 F) and another at 37 deg C (~98 F)!

When we first lined up to buy our tickets, we were in the wrong line. Apparently we had used the entrance for people with doctor's notes! Doctors prescribing the baths for people -- the baths were, after all, originally for healing purposes.

Chess, again. Apparently there's a regular bunch of locals who play chess at the baths. K tried to get in on the action but gestures didn't get our message across. After unsuccessfully approaching quite a few people and asking if they spoke English, we finally found someone who could translate for us. It turns out the guys were on their last games for the day though >_<

Leaving the baths, we accidentally got on the tram going in the wrong direction, towards the mall rather than towards our pension. Oops. So we ended up at the mall again. Bought juice, some dinner, and a pencil for K ^-^

Overall, Budapest has been disappointing in some ways. I remember leaving Vienna thinking "yay, we'll be back in the East soon!". The city has turned out to be a lot more Westernized than I expected it to be. It just means I wasn't letting the information sink in beforehand -- after all, it was *the* place to go for 'Western things' for the Eastern bloc. That *should* have made connections in my head, but it didn't. There are still many things that make it feel more Eastern, but just not as much as I had expected. It probably also didn't help that we lived near Oktogon, with McDonalds, Burger King, Subway, Pizza Hut, all the big fast food chains nearby. Expectations sure can be a bother sometimes.

Day 62: Budapest

Heroes Square. Columns. Statues. Lots of empty space.

A replica of a Transylvania castle in the city park area. Not just any castle, but Dracula's castle. Unexpected, but pretty cool. We couldn't go inside though -_-


This one human statue in the park totally freaked me out. I kept wondering if she was real or fake, and then all of a sudden she moved! It reminded me of those scary films where dolls become real (and try to do evil things). I don't know why she reminded me of that, maybe because the way she looked was a lot like a porcelain doll?

House of Terror. A museum about the repressive communist regime instilled in Hungary that followed "liberation" from the Nazis. D warned there would be a lot of reading here and indeed there was! Just about every exhibit room had a sheet with several paragraphs to read. The museum as a whole had rooms thought-provokingly laid out. However, there could definitely be improvements. For one, places to sit! Having to stand while reading these long descriptions was not fun. We saw a few people try to sit on the floor, but then the museum guards would come around every once in a while and tell them they weren't allowed to sit on the floor. The more major improvement would be English subtitles on all the videos, currently only in Hungarian. A couple of videos did have English subs, but very few. I think being able to understand the videos would have resulted in much more moving exhibits.


The communist-era ads are always so full of happy people.

I don't actually remember how we ended up at the mall. I think because the baths and Gellert Hill were the only items left on our sightseeing agenda and we were going to do them tomorrow. In any case, K said he wanted to look for some socks to replace the ones that developed holes. So, like regular Budapesters, we walked around the mall.


The entrance to the mall had a 'not-permitted' sign containing the most items I've ever seen on one of these signs.

It felt like any other mall in the States with a few exceptions -- the mall had a supermarket in it, and the food court. The supermarket was near the food court area. The food court contained some different food than what we'd find in a U.S. mall food court. But aside from that, while we were eating, we noticed that some people were just hanging out in the food court, just like people hang out in cafes -- chatting, drinking coffee, flirting, browsing the internet (free wifi in 15 minute increments). Interesting.

We did procure some socks for K. We also did some grocery shopping and bought a few other goodies -- notebook (K wanted one), pens (lost mine earlier in the trip), toothpaste (running out), and shoe spray (K's shoes were getting icky). Bizarre. It could have been like any other day in the States, except we don't really go shopping at the mall back home. And the things we bought we wouldn't have gone to a mall to buy back home.


We ate fruit soup at the food court, a cold soup that they eat just like any other soup here, but which we felt was more like dessert. We also ate a cold fruit rice pudding. All so yummy!

Day 61: Budapest

A stroll starting at Vorosmarty ter, along Vaci Utca, and ending at the Great Market Hall. Back in the day, Vaci Utca was the place to get "close" to the West (the first McDonald's in the formerly Soviet-occupied regions was opened along it), but for us now, it's mostly touristy. We appreciated the little tidbits we read from RS though.

The Great Market Hall contains a pretty impressive entirely indoor market that runs every day. Fruits and veges, meat, fish, paprika, pickles, crafts (touristy portion?), a few stands to eat upstairs (seemingly frequented by both locals and tourists), and even a full-fledged supermarket downstairs.


I was a bit disappointed in the produce; a lot of it wasn't as up to the quality I was expecting. In terms of markets, the overall best quality produce so far on this trip has to be from the market in Bruges, but that only sets up for a few hours two days a week.

We picked up goulash and stuffed cabbage at one of the stalls in the top floor. The stuffed cabbage was ok, but I much prefer the Polish stuffed cabbage we had in Krakow. The goulash was yummy for me; K didn't like it. It's a soup here, rather than a stew, spicy (but bearable for me today) and extra yummy when you dip bread into the soup. I like both the Czech and Hungarian goulash.

I left the market with cherries, watermelon, bananas, and tomatoes. I was quite peeved about some of the stands -- they wouldn't let me pick my fruit! Strictly a hands-off policy. Of course, I only bought from those who let me pick my own fruit ^-^

Random: Some of the metro stops go quite deep below ground, to doubly serve as bomb shelters back in the day!

Day 60: Budapest

Three-hour train from Vienna to Budapest. When we got off the train, we were greeted by several women advertising accommodations as we walked along the platform. When I said we didn't need any, one of them even offered her card with information in case we had friends in the future who might need a place to stay in Budapest.

A little back-story... when we got off the train at Bratislava a few days ago, I realized that I'd over-dressed for the weather in Bratislava. It was quite warm and I was wearing my inner layer pants. So, after checking the board that the train at our platform wasn't going anywhere any time soon, I got back on the train and changed out of those pants. Since I was in the bathroom, I also decided I'd pee, which it turns out is probably not polite -- it empties out to the tracks. I thought only the trains in Italy did that! Oops.

So, here we are on the train platform in Budapest. K said he really needed to pee. He said he was going to hop back on the train for a bit. We put all our luggage down on the bench. He gets on the train and a couple minutes later, it starts leaving, with him still on the train!! I can't believe my eyes! One of the accommodations ladies notices my shock and asks if something's wrong. My husband's on that train! She's says it's ok, he can get off at the next stop and come back. But then this other accommodations lady says the next stop is really far. Hmmm.

It all turns out ok though. The train doesn't end up leaving the station immediately. It stops at the end of the station for a while where K hops off onto the tracks and comes back. Phew!

At the train station, a bunch of people were lined up playing chess!


Even though it's nearly 6pm after we get settled in our room here, it's still light out, so we decide to go up to Castle Hill. During the day it's supposedly crowded with tourists, so we are, in fact, visiting it at the perfect time, with very few other visitors ^-^ It's nice, seeing the Chain Bridge and Danube in the evening light.

Random note 1: The metro trains play this catchy, melodic tune when a stop is reached.

Random note 2: There's quite a lot of PDA here! The amount of PDA maybe rivals what we saw in Paris two years ago. The difference is that in Paris the PDA is by the many tourist couples whereas here it's by the local young couples!