Study Trip to Budapest, Hungary

Around the end of March, I started a really long break from classes that included going to Budapest and spending Easter in Warszawa. This will just be about Budapest, which was what I think people would picture Europe to be like. Of course, we got there by taking a sleeper train which was much nicer than the one we took to Prague. Before sleeping, I spent the evening on the train playing Uno, Bullshit, and a messed up game of Go Fish!. Sleeping on the train wasn't too bad, but it was difficult to stay asleep with all the stopping while they hooked up to new wagons.
We arrived nice and early in the morning and made our way to the hostel. It was on the fifth floor of the building, but super nice with wi-fi, a full kitchen, and doors that all locked with codes. Mine was 2347. The lady who owned the hostel was a little eccentric and made everyone give her their I.D.'s encase we stole stuff from the room. After getting the bill straightened out, the lady invited us for a traditional Hungarian welcome of taking shots of pálinka which is Hungarian liquor. It was pretty strange taking a shot of alcohol before 10 in the morning. 
We eventually made our way to touring the city. I noticed a few griffins as I was walking and I guess they are some what popular since there is one griffin on the Budapest seal. We had lunch at a somewhat grungy lunch place where they had pretty basic foods. I got a buttery vegetable soup and a chicken cordon bleu with these noodle that I guess are like the German spaetzle. It was good. After lunch, we made it to the Parliament building which had very pretty Gothic looking architecture. We wanted a tour, but we had to wait until the afternoon. Also, the freaking Hungarian guard made the non-EU citizens pay to take a tour. While we waited, we crossed one of the bridges into the Buda half of Budapest. I was shocked that the river was the Danube which we crossed because I didn't know where it was on the map. I guess there was a story about the architect of the bridge who killed himself because he thought he had build a perfect bridge but it in fact was no since the lion statues had no tongues. On the other side we climbed the big hill to get to the castle. Only me and the trip coordinator were brave enough to vertically climb the hill, and I did it wear sandals no less. The castle was pretty and all the pictures of it are on facebook. I tried to flatten a penny while I was there but the machine didn't work because somebody put the wrong coin in it and got it stuck. I didn't figure this out until I found all the correct change and tried pushing really hard to get the coin in.

Finally, we made it to the parliament building and had the tour. Highlights include a model of the parliament made out of matchsticks and seeing the royal crown. The little cross on the top of the crown was bent and the tour guide said there was no good reason why it was like that.
On the way back to the hostel, we walked through a park that I am going to call a hooligan park. It was full of skateboarders and student age people. I guess it would have been  good place to stop and hang out. There was also an exhibit on some stairs that had giant sculptures of womenly things like lipstick and vacuum cleaners. I think it was part of the festival that was going on there. We also looked for something to do at night and found a dance to go to later. The theater was called the palace of arts and we took the tram. I was so nervous the whole ride since we did not buy tram tickets and I did not want to get caught. Everything was fine and I never ended up buying a tram ticket for any other tram. The show was alright, but mostly boring to me. We bought cheap seats at the top of the theater where we could only see half of the program. I don't think I missed too much because it ended up being a modern dance about Abraham Lincoln and slavery. When we got back at night, we met up with one of the girls friends who lives in Budapest and he showed us a pretty good Italian restaurant. Everyone was really tired, so we all decided to be boring and go to sleep.

Saturday morning, we went and toured museums and such. The first thing to see was Hero's Square which was a big square with one monument in the center with a pillar and two wings of buildings with statues in the arches. The pillar had like seven horse men on the base symbolizing the original tribes of Hungary. The wings had Hungarian kings I think. The art museum was fine and had exhibits of Degas and Picasso. Then we checked out one of the baths, but didn't go swimming so that we could spend one whole day there later. Lunch was again interesting with the strong Hungarian woman who served us. I got Hungarian Goulash.

After returning to the hostel, we all planned to go out to see what I thought was going to be an opera called Anna Karenina. Once again we took the crappy, cheap seats at the top, but this time I was tricked because the show ended up being a ballet. It was alright, but the majority of us decided to leave early and go find eat kielbasa from the open market they had. At the market, the prices were ridiculous, so we ended up buying the same things at a grocery store and cooking for our selves. The home cooked kielbasa ended up being really good. Night time activities included going to a club called Kuplung which was down the street. It had an underground atmosphere with concrete floors, projector screens, and tons of smoke. The beer I got there was called Edelweiss and it was a good white beer. We all danced for a while and made it back to the hostel ready for a day full of learning about Jewish history in Hungary.

Sunday we saved to go to the largest synagogue in Europe. The largest one in the world is in New York City of course. There we had a tour guide from Brooklyn who gave us a pretty funny and interesting tour of the whole synagogue. I think the funniest thing he said was that the Jews invented Mickey Mouse, and then when people were confused he pointed to a section of the synagogue roof that was in the shape of a blue Micky Mouse head. After the synagogue, we made our way to the Holocaust Memorial Museum. It was a very comprehensive museum with tons of videos and exhibits. One of the most stirring exhibits was where they showed exactly what they had been doing to people in the camps, and especially talking about how they experimented on identical twins. The best part, though, was that we got in free since it was some special day of the month when students get free tickets.

Sunday night, we wet out to an Indian restaurant with was pretty good. I think I ordered chicken tikka masala, which wasn't spicy at all. I really liked the mango juice they offered as a drink. For the night time activity, we made our way to a club/bar called Instant. In the front entrance, they had a giant penguin light that was interesting to encounter. I would say that the place was like an abandoned apartment complex which had a big open courtyard filled with a school of fish hanging from the ceiling. Each room had a different theme, but the one we settled in was insect themed having big bug lights covering the walls.

Monday was a pretty fun day. We started off by meeting with the director of the Polish Institute in Budapest. It was a very welcoming meeting and he told us all about Polish-Hungarian relations. The director was expecting to give his presentation in Polish, but had to modify it since we all knew English better. Apparently, Poland has a really good relationship with Hungary and there is an old saying "Polak, Węgier, dwa bratanki, i do szabli, i do szklanki," which means the Poles and Hungarians are two brothers, both with sabers (fighting together), and with drinking glasses (friendship). The meeting got a little boring towards the end, especially since we were all ready to get to the Turkish bathes which were awesome. After we changed, we all made it outside to the three large pools (one long pool in the middle with two large, hot, semicircular pools on the ends). The weather was great and we spent the whole day there. One of the end pools had big jets that came out of the bottom of the pool floor, and also had circular walls in the center that would create a whirl pool with more water jets. The middle pool was somewhat cooler, but I liked swimming in it going between the two end pools. There were also tons of pools on the inside, but I did not swim in them much since they were stinky. The saunas were also nice. The two ones I went in were a dry menthol infused sauna and a really hot menthol steam sauna. There was so much steam that it hurt to take really big breaths. Immediately leaving the sauna, one of the girls and I ran into a cold pool that was 8 degrees C (47 degrees F). I don't know why, but I guess you are supposed to do that after the hot sauna. I could have stayed there all day, but by six o'clock we made our way back to the hostel. I ended up taking a nap there while they others once again tried to watch a show. It was supposed to be a talented Spanish guitarist, but good thing I didn't go because the whole thing ended up being sold out months ago. After dinner, we went out to a club behind the big opera house for an ERASMUS party. It was really crowded, but we ended up finding a pretty nice place to dance.

Tuesday was a pretty low key day and we used it to just tour the places we felt we missed. Back up at the castle, we went to a place called the Fisherman's Bastion. It totally looked like a fairytale castle with the cone shaped towers all over the bastion. We took pictures in the picturesque windows that looked out over Pest. We also made it to the island that is in the middle of the Danube river. I think it is kept a park mostly with a few sports fields. There we took naps and played Frisbee and tried to whistle at dogs or puppies so that they would come over to us. That was pretty much the end of that trip, and I am very glad that I was able to visit Budapest.