Wednesday August 4th Budapest
We had an uneventful train ride yesterday leaving Vienna at 11:50 and arriving here in Budapest at about 3 pm. It’s flat farmland most of the way. The only notable things were, once again, hundreds of giant wind turbines. Hmm, maybe these people who have had high electricity prices for years know something we don’t.
The moment you step off the train at the Budapest Keleti main station, there are people in your face with taxis and rooms to rent. The old train station is kind of neat but right out the front door there is a massive subway or underground structure of some kind under construction so it’s quite chaotic. Plus this seems to be a little bit seedy part of town so there’s lots of people (some with teeth and some without) hanging around. Everything by the train station is also sooty and dirty so it doesn’t give a very good first impression of the city, especially after coming from Vienna where it’s so clean.
We could see the sign for our hotel from the front of the station so it was no problem getting here. Our hotel has 51 rooms on the 5th and 6th floors of this 6 story building. It’s common for these small hotels to be just a couple of floors of a building. Some of the pensions we stayed in just own flats in a few buildings in an area and might have 3 or 4 rooms in each flat.
Anyway, we’re on the 6th floor and have 2 roof windows, luckily, because the AC makes noise but doesn’t cool the room fast enough on a warm day. We had to keep the windows open last night and got a few mosquito bites again. They don’t bother me at all but the last couple of years Anita really reacts to them. So just like in Venice, she now has 4 or 5 big bites on her back and legs. Having the windows open also means a slight sewer smell, probably from the roof plumbing vents, plus some street noise. That’s the downside. Other than that, the room is actually pretty nice. There’s also a glass walled elevator that goes down through a corner of the courtyard to the ground floor.
Anyway we had a great dinner at a traditional Hungarian restaurant recommended by the hotel staff. We had one plate of chicken paprika with dumplings and another plate of goulash with dumplings plus cucumber salad, beer and wine for 5,300 Hungarian Forints including tip (equal to about 20 Euros). Hungary wants to adopt the Euro but still has some hoops to jump through to satisfy their partners in the EU. No doubt they’re being extra cautious considering the financial stability problems they’re having with Greece and others. One of our guidebooks refers to Hungarian restaurants as having “superb food at laughably low prices”. We have to agree.
This morning we had the buffet breakfast included here and then set off to see the sights. We walked up to the Danube and across one of the bridges. Then we took a funicular (cable car) up the hill to the Castle Hill area. We toured the Hungarian state art gallery and walked through the old area of Buda (Budapest is actually an amalgamation of 3 towns - Buda, Obuda and Pest). After that we wandered down through the old town toward another bridge. On the way we had a nice lunch of potato pancakes with paprika chicken (paprika is the traditional Hungarian spice) and cream of potato soup. We walked across the bridge, stopping at Margitsziget Island, a big park. Then we wandered past the Parliament Buildings (very impressive right on the shore of the Danube) to St Stephen’s Cathedral. The cathedral is magnificent. In a smaller chapel behind the altar they have St Stephen’s actual right hand (the chapel is called the “Chapel of the Right Hand“) in a glass case. If you put 200 Forints into a slot right below it, the case lights up for 2 minutes so you can get a better look at the hand. Having this “relic” displayed like this doesn’t bother Anita as much as it does me but I find it downright creepy that people worship some dead guy’s hand. I’m not sure this is what Jesus had in mind.
By the time we had wandered home, buying some buns for the train trip tomorrow on the way, we were pretty tired. It was 7 ½ hours of touring and a lot of walking. Luckily it was a beautiful day and not too hot.
Budapest has some areas that need upgrading and some other areas that are really nice. There are some big infrastructure construction projects ongoing and it’s clear that there have already been big things done to beautify the city. However, on some streets there are still individual buildings that are decaying. It actually reminds me a bit of Moscow. Maybe I’m reading too much into this but I think it takes cities and countries a long time to recover from the stagnation of communist rule. However, there are lots of beautiful pedestrian areas and parks. There are also lots of cultural events going on all the time, from rock concerts to opera. Budapest seems to be a city that will get even better over the next decade.
After a cool down, we’ll go back to the same restaurant for dinner. It was just too good to pass up again. Tomorrow we’ll get to the train station and take the 9:10 train to Vienna, change stations by subway and catch another train for Prague. We’ll spend about 13 hours in transit but then we’ll be in Prague for 4 nights. We’ll likely post this there since we don’t have WIFI here.
August 5th - On the train
We had a better night last night after another good meal (complete with Hungarian music). We had left our air conditioning on all day and it wasn’t that hot so we were able to leave the windows closed and get a better night’s sleep. After breakfast we went to the train station, spent our last 950 Forints on M&Ms and gum and caught the Rail Jet train to Vienna. The best scam in the station this morning was a reasonably well dressed woman with a clipboard and well organized looking form who was signing people up (with no addresses of course) and collecting 10 or 20 euros per person for leukemia treatments for a little girl who was nowhere in sight. Nice try. It's getting easier and easier to reject every beggar because it truly is just another acting job. I'm sure that most of them take the subway to work and do their begging just like every other worker and then go home, out to a restaurant for the evening and plan their weekend.
We were entertained on the way by an extended family of 5 Brits who were not very competent travellers but seemed quite cheerful about it. Some people get caught in scams getting their luggage carried, can never find their train seat and generally don’t know what’s going on. However, they told us about some of their travels and they’ve managed to muddle their way through a lot of places. Apparently, anybody can do this.
The train from Budapest stopped at the Vienna Miedling Station before the Vienna Hauptbahnhof station, which put us in the right place for our connection to Prague after all. We had 2 ½ hours until our train left for Prague so we walked up out of the station into a little park and had our usual picnic lunch.
Back in the train station we bought some more buns in a little bakery/deli there so now we’re prepared with buns, liver pate, juice, water and M&Ms. It’s a 5 hour trip and train food is expensive so it pays to pack your own.
We’re on a “Eurocity” train which isn’t quite as nice and spacious as the Rail Jet trains but it’s still a lot better than economy on Air Canada or any other airline. We’ll use some of the time to research Prague. In the end, they actually served us a free sort of airplane meal on the train. It's always different on different countries' trains.
Later that same day - Arrival in Prague
Our travel from Vienna went sort of north-east about halfway up the Czech Republic and then straight west to Prague. On the eastern end of our journey the landscape reminded us of the Wilno hills. Very picturesque. As we got closer to Prague, the land got flatter with huge fields all looking well farmed. Nice.
We made it to our hotel in Prague at about 8 pm (an hour ago). It was quite an arrival. The train station is quite nice but we had a few minor glitches getting subway tickets. We used an ATM to get 3,000 Czech krone (about 150 euros). It came out as one 2,000 krone note and one 1,000 krone note. Unfortunately the subway ticket machine only accepts coins near the right amount (26 krone). So we went into the Relay store and bought some water. The woman wouldn't accept such a large bill so we didn't end up buying it. Then we went to another store where the cashier accepted a 10 euro note for 2 cans of beer and a bottle of water and gave us krone in exchange (we got hosed a bit on the exchange but didn't really care). Then we went to the machine and got one ticket before we ran out of change. Back to the store for more change. Then the machine wouldn't accept 2 20 krone coins as often as we tried (3 different machines). We found a young woman who tried for us, couldn't understand why it didn't work but gave us 2 10 krone coins for a 20. Finally we had two tickets. We got down to the platform, the crowded subway arrived and I got on. If the crowd hadn't pushed Anita on, that might have been the last I would have seen of her. We got off at the next stop and switched trains, went one more stop and were near our hotel. When we got off it took us about 20 minutes of wrong directions, wrong advice and searching before we finally found our hotel. We're glad to be here. It's plain but fine. We were hoping for something a little nicer for our anniversary on Saturday but we're here now. Tomorrow we start wandering around Prague.
No comments:
Post a Comment