Buddha Pesks

SPRING BREAK. Where to even begin. In order to keep you intrigued I have decided to write 4 posts, each one focusing on a different city I visited. This first one is all about good old Budapest. I will start: Carly, one of my best friends from Rochester who's studying abroad in Tel Aviv, Israel came up to Copenhagen Thursday, March 29 to stay with me and explore Cope before we departed with the one and only, Nicki, for Budapest on Sunday, April 1. We flew to Budapest and while Nicki and Carly slept on the plane I mentally readied myself for the trip (who am I kidding, I listened to my ipod and zoned out). We arrived in Hungary and met up with another friend, Michelle, who had taken a different flight from Cope before we set out on the train into the city center. We arrived at Carpe Noctem, the number one party hostel and our place of residence for the next three nights, and dropped off our bags before hitting the town. And by that I mean we got a lunch recommendation and then hit the town. We walked up all the stairs in St. Stephen's Basilica and saw the different parts of the city - Buda (the West) and Pest (the East).

this is what we climbed up

Me, Michelle, Nicki with Pest in the forgeround and Buda on the hill in the background

After having a mild asthma attack from climbing up all the stairs, we had the pleasure of climbing down all the stairs - which was equally as nerve-wracking as going up for someone with a slight fear of heights (aka me). The image of asian tourists and segwe tourists greeted us once we returned to flat land - rewarding, to say the least.

afternoon delight indeed

We passed the tourists and wandered over to the Danube river in the deceiving sunlight (it was freezing) and encountered a collection of adult and children shoes on the street facing the water. These shoes represented the many Jews that were brought to the river, stripped of all their valuables, and shot from behind by Nazis during the Holocaust. A heavy start to our spring break.

We visited Parliament and headed back towards the hostel, with a pit stop to pick up snacks, so we could prepare for the night - which we were told was jager train night. Didn't know what we were getting ourselves in to. We got a 500 jager bomb train.

Sunday night in Budapest

After the jager train, we all went down to the elusive "rave cave". Rave cave it was not and I was so disappointed that there was no rave that I sat in the corner sulking (exaggeration) but we left shortly after.

Yadda yadda we went home and woke up the next morning to continue exploring. In the morning we visited the Jewish synagogue and cemetery and learned that 800,000 Jews used to live in Budapest before World War II, then 600,000 of them were killed during the Holocaust and now only 5,000 Jews live there today (maybe my stats are wrong, it was difficult to understand our tour guide's thick accent). We saw a beautiful Holocaust memorial in the garden of the synagogue - a silver tree with a different name of a Hungarian Jew who had died during the war was etched onto each leaf.

hey this temple looks a lot like my temple

We walked around the Jewish Quarter and made our way over to the thermal baths for a quick dip. Since Carly and I forgot our bathing suits we tanned upstairs while Nicki and Michelle actually went into the baths.

i don't know who the freaks with their hands up are

We headed back to the city and I got a 14 dollar haircut and Carly fell down the stairs in a fur store. It was all good fun. After sitting in the park and watching/judging a young couple who were feeding pigeons we grabbed a quick dinner, and went out again to a karaoke place and really wowed the crowd with our good voices.

The next day we took the funicular up the hill to Buda and walked around the church and the palace up there - we sat around mostly and basked in the sun and it was really relaxing.

view from the funicular (Pest across the river)

Michelle left us to continue her spring break in Rome so when we dropped her off at the train station, we bought our train tickets to Vienna for the next morning and decided to walk around the nearby mall. We discovered a movie theater and decided we would see The Hunger Games in Hungary - The Hungary Games, if you will. Problem: Carly hadn't finished the first book yet. Solution: Nicki and I had a lovely dinner date while we forced Carly to finish the book. The movie was good but not great - I can analyze it with you in person if you wish to hear my thoughts.

Although we were only in Budapest for three nights, I definitely got a good feeling for the city and was really pleasantly surprised by how navigable it was and how much history there was. Positives: the Hungarian Forint is a much nicer currency than the Danish Krone aka really cheap. Negatives: the Danes are very fashionable and we are very spoiled living in Copenhagen - eastern europe ehhhh not the easiest on the eyes.

Tuesday, April 3 we headed off to VIENNA!! (see next post for more details)