Oh yes, friends, this one is in parts.

Night shots. Chain Bridge

Budapest, pronounced Budapesht, has been one of our favorite cities. I really did not know what to expect on arrival. I guess I was expecting something like Prague, but maybe a little smaller, with a little more European influence since it is, “The Paris of the East.” I was not ready for what I saw. It was absolutely gorgeous! The city is actually bigger than Prague, and

The Synagogue apartment

much more modern. The two are nothing alike. Javier found us a place to stay in the Jewish quarter, which has been our best accommodation so far. The apartment was so authentic. It had so much family memorabilia, from journals, to pictures, to decorative items, that were all placed in such a way that it didn’t seem like clutter, but more like a museum. I know that sounds weird, but it was really amazing. On top of this, the place was in a great location, perfectly clean, large, and had balconies in both rooms that faced the Grand Synagogue. I was sad to leave such a great place.

The view from our balcony. The Great Synagogue.

We arrived in late afternoon, so after we were settled, we set out to explore the city. The views were absolutely gorgeous while the sun was going down, so the happy photographers were snapping away. We ate some Hungarian Mexican food (not recommended) and found a pub to watch some soccer. Our train ride from Prague to

Communist walk tour

Budapest was around 8 hours, so we were all a little tired, and it was early to bed. The next morning, we took a communist tour of Budapest. It gave us a good history of Budapest from their Nazi association, to being “freed” and subsequently occupied, by Soviet Russia. One of the more interesting things about this walk was a monument that was erected earlier this year, I believe, which depicts

The memorial

Germany as an evil eagle who is about to attack Hungary, shown as a peaceful Garbriel, the archangel. Now, our tour guide told us that this monument has caused quite a bit of outrage. Hungarian Jews were systematically sent to Nazi death camps towards the end of the war. They were essentially given up by the Hungarian government who were in cahoots with the Nazis. SO, many in the community

old school TV station

have great distain for this monument since it portrays Hungary as being innocent and the Germans as evil, when in fact, Hungary played an active role in the fate of the Hungarian Jews. Basically, the people want Hungary to take responsibility for their role, and would rather have a memorial for those who were murdered rather than to shunt the blame on the Nazis. As a result, the people have set up protests in front of the monument: letters, posters, pictures, and momentos all describing the pain and anger of the people who’s family and friends were victims. Frankly, I don’t blame them one bit. On a lighter note, we walked by the old communist TV station. During the communist years, there were two channels available. One channel was dedicated to communism, while the other had everything else. In

Parliament

the 70’s there was a game show, where people could vote for their favorite performer- very ahead of the times. Now obviously this was before smart phones and texting, and even before everyone had a landline. So, how did they vote? This is brilliant… When it was time to vote for the person you wanted to win, the household would turn on every light, plug in every appliance, and basically use as much electricity as possible. When a contestant came on that you didn’t like, you would turn off every light, maybe unplug the fridge and even turn off the TV if you were really serious. At the end of the show, the electric company would call and give the results. The contestant who had the most electricity usage won! I just love that. There was a whole lot of information given and they had actual objects from that time such as money, passports, communist meeting stamp cards, and communist children’s books. It was all really cool, plus we ended in a ruin bar, which was a first for us, and I’ll explain more about that later.

Cheers at the crawl

The company we did our communist tour with also did a few other tours, all free by the way- a general tour, and Jewish quarter tour, and last but definitely not least, a pub tour. Since there just happened to be a pub tour later that same night, we decided to go for it. The tour met at 8:30pm, and there were already quite a few people there by the time we arrived. Our tour guide, Norbert, had a scratched up face and an

hula

arm in a sling, and turned out to be a really cool guy who happened to get in a slight bike accident a couple weeks earlier. I mean, you really have to be easy going if your going to take a bunch of 20-30 somethings on a pub “tour” where they provide free shots. So, Norbert took all 30 or so of us to different pubs. We tried the local Pálinka (Hungarian fruit brandy-gross) at the oldest bar in

Pubcrawling

Hungary, which happened after communism, and is therefore only about 30 years old. During this tour we made some friends, which isn’t too surprising. Give a group of people a bunch of alcohol and there’s bound to be a happily ever after. Our two favorites were a couple girls from Canada, Alex and Alicia, although I should mention that Alicia now lives in San Francisco, where we’re apparently going to go to yoga together. There is Michael who lives

goofy

in the bay area, but originally from Canada, and Milan, from Barcelona. With the conclusion of the pub tour, and all of us very happily buzzing, we buzzed right over to the oldest, and coolest ruin bar in Budapest, Szimple. Now, the long and short of a ruin bar. Basically, they are old apartment buildings. These apartment buildings are maybe three floors high, most of the walls that

silly

separate the rooms have been removed, as have the doors. The center of the apartment is an open courtyard, with all of the rooms along the perimeter and doors opening toward the courtyard. Some of the walls between the doorways have also been removed and the whole place has been decorated with the most unusual, unlikely decorations you could think of. For example, in Szimple, there is a car in the courtyard that has been sawn in half, music instruments all over, a screen in one of the “rooms” that projects movies, old school hair dryers from the beauty salon, a dentist’s chair, and a huge green kangaroo with a white and neon pink face. We drank, ate carrots, yes someone came around selling fresh, peeled carrots, and hula hooped. At around 2:30am, we left the bar,

That bar is amazing. Szimple

grabbed a durum- thank God for all night kebab shops, pointed our new friends in the direction of their hotel, which we found out the next day, they still managed to get lost, and took ourselves home.

PART 2 of Budapest will be published on the next post. 🙂

To see more pictures of Budapest, click HERE.