Central / Eastern Europe Trip — Hungary

Hungary
Slovakia
Czech Republic
Estonia

Saturday, October 1st, I spent packing up my belongings for the trip. The day before I had bought another set of dress clothes and a duffel bag (a nice medium size between my backpack and huge suitcase) for the trip. We were leaving at 9pm, and besides a quick meeting in the morning to discuss expectations / etcetera, I had a lot of free time. I decided to pack light, and partially succeeded. A few changes of clothes, my camera, and some reading material.

The bus was a few minutes late, eschewing (stereo)typical German punctuality. A quick stop at the other student housing, and we were on the road.

For sixteen hours.

It was a decent-sized bus — nearly everyone got two seats to spread out upon — but there was a general funky smell that only got worse as the trip progressed. Also, someone was sick starting out, and all of us being in such close quarters, meant half of the group came down with it sometime during the trip (myself included).

Who was in this group? Roughly twenty students (all political science or international relations majors), an administator of the study abroad program, two professors, and two teacher’s assistants.

But so the ride was not all that bad, and we arrived in Budapest (Hungary) on schedule, in the early afternoon the next day. We checked into the hotel and had about two hours or so to relax. The hotel was centrally located and quite large. The room was small, but nicely furnished and clean. Every floor had a shoe waxing machine, which my roommate and I used at every available opportunity.

My roommate and I walked in a straight line from the hotel, and eventually found a decent little restaurant tucked in the back of a small alley. Supposedly goulash is the national soup / food / what the tourists are suppose to eat, so we had two bowls. It was good, although I had to fish large chunks of beef out of it. Forgot to specify which type of goulash on the menu. Doh.

After settling in and getting our bearings straight, the entire group headed out for a boat tour of Budapest on the Danube. For those who don’t know, Budapest was originally two cities — Buda and Pest. They sat on opposite sides of the Danube River. Eventually, the two cities grew and consolidated into one, split up the middle by the Danube.

So from the Danube, we could see many of the feature attractions of Budapest. Huge civil, religious, and governmental buildings dominated. The boat tour was alright — it was definitely the way to see many of the landmarks. However the weather at this point (Sunday evening, October 2nd) was getting chilly, compounded by the fact that we were on a boat in open water (windy). The pre-recorded tour in half a dozen different languages also wasn’t that memorable. But we got a free drink with our tickets, so who’s complaining?

After the boat ride ended, we were let loose. I split off from the group, and tried to find some food. Eventually found another lone student wandering around, and we settled on a shady-looking Chinese restaurant. This place was hilarious, because after a person picked out everything he wanted from the buffet sitting out, the hostess plopped the plate into a microwave to warm it up. Not that good. But it was cheap and edible. After eating, the two of us headed back to the hotel. I relaxed and watched a bit of TV for an hour, maybe two. Most of the programming was either in German or English, usually with Hungarian subtitles.

A couple people showed up, and we decided to wander about Budapest a bit. Had a drink at a sleepy bar, walked around some more. Afterwards headed back to the hotel and watched some TV, smoked our pipes, and drank a little. A quiet night.

Monday, October 3rd, (after an incredible continental breakfast) we had our first lectures. The first was alright but unmemorable — a general overview of the transformations that Hungary has gone through since 1989. The second talk was pretty sad. The speaker was not prepared at all, nor did he even seem to know what the general topic was (Hungarian civil society) until he showed up and was told. The only upshot of all of this was that they had free food, which I stocked up on.

By six o’clock, we were again free to do as we please. Which illustrates a major gripe I had with the entire trip. We were typically busy with seminars, mandatory tours, and the ilk, from morning to evening. This meant that we didn’t have time to do a lot of sightseeing. It basically limited us to seeing the cities through their respective bars. Case in point: there was in Budapest both a museum of torture and a famous statue park that half of us wanted to check out, but none of us were able to. Because they close at sunset, the same time we were just getting done. The statue park sounded especially great — after 1989, all of the Soviet-era communist statues scattered around Budapest were gathered up and relocated to this park. A missed opportunity. Maybe next time I’m in Budapest, eh? pff.

Anyways, our second night in Budapest we went to a cool little jazz bar, modelled after a 1920s speakeasy. There, we listened to jazz, and met a conservative American that we debated for a bit. Eventually, we ended up toasting “To America!” I shit you not. It was hilarious. At the end of the night, half of us ended up leaving huge tips, for two main reasons. First off, at the time of our trip, the exchange rate between the Hungarian currency (the Forint) and the euro was nearly 250 to 1. This made all of the prices laughably high, and made our perception of the cost of things.. change.

Secondly, the bartender in our section was this cute Hungarian redhead. Rawr.

Afterwards, a group of maybe six or seven of us went back and drank for a bit longer in our hotel room.

The next day, Tuesday, October 4th, we only stayed in Budapest for as long as it took us to attend one more lecture and a tour of the Hungarian National Parliament. It was a nice building, and the lecture wasn’t even that bad. At two in the afternoon, we left Budapest and headed towards Bratislava, by bus.