Budapest (March 17-19, 2007)

Complete Set of Photos

I arrived in Budapest around 2 o'clock on the 17th and promptly started looking for a hostel. Usually, I am organized to the extreme and would have had this all planned out, but I told myself that I would be relaxed on this trip, so I didn't reserve any rooms so I could be flexible. The first hostel I found, I said, is where I'll stay. Well, I found the Boomerang Hostel, which was run by Liam from New Jersey, and stayed there. It was nice and centrally located. Liam had some good tips for me and was very helpful. I even helped him out a little on his web site design!

The first thing I did in Budapest was the St. Stephen's basilica. This is famous church was only completed in 1906, so it's very new. The main attraction, aside from the paintings and such inside, is the mummified hand of said St. Stephen! It's in a little case off in a wing and is about 1000 years old.

By the time all this was done, I was just walking around and it was getting dark. I walked around Buda (west side of the Danube) where all the castles are, and took pictures of Pest (east side), which turned out really nice. Budapest is also known as the Paris of the east because of all the churches, palaces, monuments, squares, and castles. Here are some pictures of the main museum, Fisherman's Church, the Elisabeth and Chain bridges, and so on.


The next day, I went with John (from Iowa, showed up at the hostel the previous night), and we went to the House of Terror. This was a really cool museum about the communist regime of Hungary and how they would imprison, torture, and execute political dissidents. The museum is in the former secret police headquarters, so we got to see the prison cells and stuff too. It was very interesting - I never realized that much happened there in Hungary at that time!

After the museum was a walk to Hero Square (where the Hungarian Unknown Soldier is, along with statues of prominent figures in Hungarian history are). In the park that surrounds the square was the Szechenyi Baths. I found out why you don't see many fat people in Europe - they're all here at these baths! It was pretty cool though - there's a huge pool outside (in addition to pools inside and saunas and such) that's around 100F. It was very relaxing to just chill in a huge hot tub!

Walking along the Danube, we saw a bunch of brass shoes along the edge of the river. Upon inquiry, we found out it was where people where executed in WWII - they took their shoes off and where shot right there, so their bodies fell into the Danube.

After some more walking around and looking at the cool buildings all lit up, we went to a bar to play some pool. I hadn't played pool for so long, and it was so cheap here! We figured 8 EUR for an hour of table rental and four beers! In Germany, the beers alone would cost about 12 EUR!

The next afternoon, we were both going to be leaving (John for Vienna), so we did one last thing in Budapest - the Buda Labyrinth. This is a network of caves/cellars under the city that were used as storage and shelters during WWII. It was interesting, but a bit cheesy because they "tourist-ized" it. Then, I worked my way to the train station to get the night train to Brasov!