Bumming Around Budapest

I've been here in Budapest for quite a while now and I just can't seem to get bored of it. Not yet at least. I thought that I would need to kill some time before the concert by going to another city for a while, but I seem pretty content to stay here until the show.

After I write the last post while I was exploring the city by myself for the day, I walked around the city for about an hour before I ran into a friend in front of the British embassy. Well, he recognized me because me had met a few days previously at a bar with Sofie. I managed to recall his name, Mark, and he invited me to come back to his apartment with some of his friends and to have a bite for dinner. Naturally I accepted. Some of his friends from Slovenia were visiting, and he himself is originally from Spain. They invited me to come with them to a small outdoor concert that night by the river, but I had to go back and meet Sofie first since she doesn't have a phone.

With Sofie in tow I made my way to the festival but we failed to find them since my phone ran out of credit and I couldn't send any texts. What a pain. We met up with her other friends Greg and Saci (Hungarian nickname pronounced shotsy). Hungary doesn't have any laws against drinking in public... even on public transit... and so its very popular to bring drinks and to hang out in a particular park in the middle of down town with a large pond, lots of cement steps to sit on, skate ramps nearby, and often live music playing for free. There's also good free bathrooms of course. Also there was her friend Mercy, who's an art student from Iran. He's a nice guy. After we ran out of beer we went back to the festival and managed to find our friends as well as some typically unhealthy fair food. It was a great night.

That night we had invited Greg and Saci to have dinner at Sofie's place the next day so we spent the better part of the day shopping at the market, cooking, and cleaning. After they got there we ate, talked, and played music for hours. Greg's a very talented musician and he taught me a new song on the ukulele (Silver and Gold by Joe Strummer). He's currently a student, though a pretty old one, and since he's been studying here for 6 years he is nearly fluent in Hungarian. That's a very difficult feat since it's one of the few non indo-european languages that aren't Asian. They say that it was carried here from Siberia a few thousand years ago. Sofie also demoed a song that she is writing for her violin and I played my normal set. I think that we also fit in a few games of Uno as well. That was pretty much all that happened that day.

The next morning we got a little bit more ambitious and walked to the Buda district on the other side of the river. Like I said earlier, Buda is the traditionally more expensive and at times regal part of the city. We walked up to the castle overlooking the river first. I don't know what i would call it a castle exactly since it's really a huge palace overlooking the city from a hill that happens to have some old castle parts scattered about, but it's a really really pretty place filled with great parks, elaborate fountains, and swarms of tourists. Today the palace is home to a museum that I haven't visited. Oddly I didn't take any pictures of the palace so here's something else.

My favorite building in the city is probably the Mathias Church which is a very short walk away from the palace. It's in an elaborate Hungarian Gothic style and has some smaller castle like structures shielding it from the rest of the city. I don't know who built the church but the smaller stuff was built by the fisherman's guild a long long time ago. I really need to get a guide book so that I can elaborate on the history a bit more.

Also on the way we got a lot of good views of the parliament building along side the river. It's design is based on the British Parliament building, but it's 1 meter larger. Take that original designer! I hear that it's possible to buy tickets for a tour of the building, but you have to be in line at 6 am. That's not going to happen. After the exhausting walk, we cooked some dinner, took in a movie, and called it a night.

Sofie's house mate is out of town, and that's why I can stay at their apartment, but I'm not to be there when she gets back. The trouble is, it's had to say when that's going to happen. So working on the best guess I checked out of the apartment and into a hostel. It's not as cheap (especially since all the prices are up for the music festival) but there's good company and fresh conversation to be had. I met a couple Australian girls and went out walking with them. It was their day to vote so we went to the embassy of Australia to fulfill their civic duty. Apparently in Australia it's mandatory to vote though they don't have to while on vacation. I was able to enter the embassy after they coached me in pretending to be Australian. You just need to say "no worries" with a certain drawl and then keep your mouth shut; it worked.

Later that night a Dutch girl at the hostel cooked dinner for the lot of us. The group of us also polished off a few bottles of wine (it's super cheap here) and then headed out to the park to continue socializing. Suffice to say it was an entertaining night.

The next morning I went out wth Tim and Josh, who I met in the park the night before. We did the traditional walk out to Buda; to the castle, fisherman's bastion, and then wandered around the town getting generally lost. Also we hit up Margerit Island, the place with the fountain that's timed to classical music. It's really cool. I got to try some of the 'sandwiches' they sell at the shops. All these shops make dozens of these sandwiches in the morning and then close as soon as they've sold most of them. They're small and open face, on a slice of whole grain bread, and have different toppings like roast beef with horseradish, curry egg salad, peppery pate, tuna salad with slices of lemon, and dozens of other flavors. They look pretty fancy and go for about $0.50 each.

Later that night we all cooked dinner back at the hostel and again had no small amount of wine and laughs. Three Spanish guys joined us after dinner and showed us how they do homemade tapas. It's a lot simpler than the stuff at the restaurants. I was up till 6 am that night... a personal best in a while.

Wow, I was tired this day. I wanted to keep it simple so Sofie came over to the hostel and we went out to a nearby park for a 'swim'. Actually it was a fountain where timed jets of water come out of the cement floor and it's mostly kids that play in it, but that doesn't bother me. I can join in too. After that we sunned on the grass and later that night met up with Saci, Greg, and some others at the park. At the park there was some live music and a woman coaching people on how to do a kind of circle dance. I went to bed early and that was that.