Day 6 – Budapest

From listening to all my friends and other stories about Budapest, I was expecting great things. None of which delivered. We had planned to stay 2 nights but soon cancelled that after spending a few hours in the city itself. The sites were boring, the people were boring and it made us boring. It was just a bad day for us – little sleep, people taking our seats on the train, rude Russians, an unsatisfying lunch and the whole city itself seemed empty and ‘missing something’. Nothing grabbed our attention. I’ll admit that I prefer classical and jazz music genres and my girlfriend prefers her 90’s disco crap…we were never going to get the same experience at night anyway as all those fun and adventurous singles.

It all started with us arriving at out hostel, having to wait for a few hours to check in. To pass the time, we took the map and walked into town, except 40mins into the walk, we had gone the wrong way. Although we had seen most of the sites, it was in the direction of the bath spas, where we wanted to go later and didn’t want to do the same walk twice. Most of the streets were closed due to some important Prime Minister visiting a monument, and all the street stalls were either vacant or half-decorated. Due to this, we got the subway back into the town. We were not walking back all that way again, and then some! If you read my earlier blogs, you would remember how all these countries basically rely on you buying tickets. Budapest was the same but this time we got a ticket, just because the machine was there. For the first time, inspectors came on our train and checked all the tickets. Thank god we got them this time!

In town we wanted lunch, all the options didn’t appeal to me and although I said before we left I wouldn’t, I really wanted a McDonald’s. It seemed like the best option. We went to a healthy juice bar place and got some drinks and chicken salad thing. Could have been better Regardless, we walked about, saw the famous bridge between the Buda and Pest sides, not really wanting to cross it, and headed back to the hostel to check in and get our swimming gear and towels for the bath.

We had bought our tickets in the hostel so when we arrived, we walked right in without queueing, got changed and stepped out into the courtyard. Packed. There were literally so many people and I didn’t know how I felt about that. I wanted just a nice relaxing day at the baths. It turned out not so bad, as there hardly any children there and adults seemed to be getting on and doing things like adults do. Whilst outside, I noticed a lot of people going in and out of a building. I thought that there has to be extra pools inside because surely the place had more than just these two outdoor pools? My girlfriend disagreed and insisted that they were just changing rooms as well. I knew I was right and went to check. There is always something special about proving someone you care about wrong, and being smug about it for as long as you can. There were indeed more inside, and we went into each one, ranging for 10 degrees to 40 degrees. Quite fun actually.

After having a splash, things kept getting worse. The restaurant we visited basically gave us pasta instead of ‘homemade’ noodles we were both craving, and upon deciding to chill and have a couple of drinks, it seemed all the waiters had gone home to watch the Champions League final, as we were without service for at least a half of it. As everyone knows, yet totally advices against it, we turned to alcohol as a solution to our problems. A bottle of wine, or two, or three… suddenly Budapest didn’t seem so bad at all, contemplating staying another night and giving it a chance.

We went to one last place for a bottle of wine and met two lovely chaps from Cambridge. They sat beside us and one of the boys (who had just broken up with his girlfriend) had said to the waiter “Give me your biggest bottle of wine”. “Are you sure sir?” he replied back. Sure how big could it be? When the waiter reappeared with a 3 litre bottle of rosé, it was his brother (who was celebrating his end of year exams) that couldn’t believe what his sibling had just done. Either could my girlfriend. With constant mutterings of “Jesus!” and “God!”, they asked if we would like some? Of course we said yes and although I prefer white wine, this was actually pretty nice.

Other people in the restaurant saw the bottle too, and the recently single brother saw them looking. He got up and walked over to ask if they wanted some, and the next table, and the next. He essentially turned into a waiter for the whole restaurant, but returned to his seat with hardly a third out of the bottle. It took us a long time for all of us to finish it, and the waiter had to tell us to hurry up as they were closing. He also brought the bill which tagged the bottle of wine at €90…

We chatted and got to know everyone until the wine had finished, where they then insisted we go with them to the Jewish Quarter to some club/bar…I think? My memory was a bit fuzzy from then on in. I do remember the sensible brother carried the bottle of his shoulder. His thinking was that if he spent that much money on a bottle of wine, and indeed it looked massive, he was going to bring it home to his dad. Unfortunately, we lost them in the club and headed back to the hostel. It was pretty cool there as the bunk bed’s all had curtains to slide closed. Although a good night, I was still glad to be leaving the next day.