Budapest

Budapest was a fun city to visit. I went with some friends from church this last weekend. Darryl, who organized the trip to Milan, did this one too. Aside from him, there were three other people on the trip, Aaron, Troy, and Katie. We all met at the Geneva airport at 6pm Friday evening and got into Budapest a few hours later. Uneventful flight and when we got there we were picked up at the airport by a shuttle that took us to our hotel.

Before going any further, I should mention that this weekend in Budapest was the formula 1 race. We didn't plan to go to the race, and in fact, we didn't even know about it until after we had booked the flight and had a REALLY hard time finding a hotel room. When we finally found a hotel that was cheap, in the city center, and had rooms, we took it. As it turns out, none of us really looked that closely at the description of the hotel. The shuttle driver spoke English but with a very heavy accent (as did most people in Budapest). When he looked at the address for the hotel he started off and said something like: "your hotel is cheep?" None of us really understood the last word so we looked at him confusedly and he tried again. "your hotel is bought? Is sheep?" I think we responded with a "yes we paid for it already, is there a problem?" And obviously that was not the sort of answer he was looking for. He must have tried 6 or 7 times, realizing we were stuck on his saying "sheep" or "cheap" or "bought" or "bow-aught" or whatever this was. Then he started pantomiming water with his hands and saying again. "bow-aught, sheep. you're hotel is sheep" and it dawned on us. Our hotel was a boat, a ship. We pulled out the paper with the hotel reservation and what do you know, it was in a boat floating on the Danube river. We all had a laugh and he probably thought we were a bunch of dumb tourists not to realize that we were staying in a boat.

We got to our 'boatel' after driving down along the river, which was quite beautiful at night. The bridges and buildings up on the hill were all lit up and it was quite a sight. After dropping our bags off and asking the man at the desk where we could go eat at 9:45 at night we set off. Found this nice little place not too far away and ordered ourselves a BIG dinner. After living in Geneva, the food here was CHEAP (not ship) and lots of it. And it was good. I had deer with a rosemary, red wine, mushroom, and onion sauce. Oh and a cheese platter as a starter (which was really enough cheese for about 3-4 people). We took some pictures on the way home and fell asleep.

That morning we walked down the river to the city center. Our hotel was on the Pest side of the river, which is much more urban and city-like. Buses, and banks, and a underground metro. On the other side of the river was the Buda side, all built on a high hill that overlooked the river. Trees and forest, castles and monuments, lots of old buildings. We wandered around the Pest side, had a bite for lunch, and took a lot of pictures. The architecture here was very unique. There were old buildings, next to cathedrals, by square blocking Communist-ere ones, next to bright modern buildings. After lunch Darryl, Aaron and I went on a guided walking tour while Troy and Katie wandered around on their own and did a bit of shopping.

The tour was pretty cool, but a LOT of walking, 3 and a half hours worth at least. We hit Heroes Square first. This was where they had big statues for all of the famous people in early Hungarian history. The leaders of the first tribes who migrated from Siberia, the first kings and then the rulers of the country. We heard stories about several of them as our guide walked us by. Then we walked down to a spot where they had rebuilt several old buildings. One from each style of architecture as an example. Gothic to Baroque. Then onto the thermal baths. They had the hottest thermal bath in Europe (73 degrees C), but they let the water cool some before you swam in it obviously. We didn't go swimming unfortunately, but we took the metro back to the opera house, then walked to the second largest Jewish synagogue. Budapest also has the worlds second ever underground, second largest Parliament building, second ever cable car, and Europe's second largest river. The tour then went over to the Buda side and up the hill to the castle and ended on top.

We wandered around there for a while, met up with Troy and Katie, and headed off to dinner. Our guide recommended this little hole in the wall place on the other side of town and we decided to walk over there. 20 minutes of walking later we were all pretty tired but had another good dinner at a pretty local sort of place. Believe it or not, for less than $15 I had a meal that was great and that I couldn't finish. I think I could live in Budapest and be quite happy.

After dinner Darryl and I chose to walk the 30 or so minutes back over the river and up the hill to take some pictures of the city at night. The others headed back to the hotel as it was already quite late. Darryl and I managed to get back at about 1:30am and after a shower I was in bed at 2am. Well worth it though, to get to take some nice pictures.

The next day we got up and went out to 'Monument Park' which is where they put all of the communist statues. After the communists left, the Hungarians were pretty happy to be free of them, and ripped down most of the monuments they had put up. Instead of just destroying them, though, they put them out in a dusty little part way out on the outskirts of town so that people could still go there to see what it was like. The people at the park we saw were either tourists just like us, or local parents with kids who seemed to be explaining who all these statues were. The park defiantly had a bit of a feel of 'lets make fun of communism now because we can'. After that we had some food, wandered around a park, relaxed, and headed back to the boat to meet our shuttle driver back to the airport.

The airport was, however, a mess. The people who worked there thought (perhaps correctly) that the most effective day to strike would be Sunday evening after the formula 1 race. So they had a strike from 2pm till midnight. The security, fuel, and I think a few other staffs were all on strike. This of course left a HUGE crowd to be managed by a very few people. I think the director of the airport was personally frisking people as they went through security. Our plane was supposed to leave at 9pm and we got on it sometime around 11pm. At 12 we were still sitting there and the pilot made the announcement that the Geneva airport closed at 12:30 so we weren't allowed to land there so we were flying to Lyon. At 2am or so we landed in Lyon and were told we would be bussed back to Geneva. 45 minutes later some buses showed up and we all piled on. Sometime around 4:30am we made it back to the Geneva airport. Of course the buses don't run to a closed airport so I was walking. Sometime around 5am I was back at CERN (only 30 min or so before the buses actually start running again). I drove myself home, showered, and was asleep by 6am as the sun was coming up. Lucky for me CERN doesn't' care when I come and go to work.