Arriving in Budapest after a rather pleasant eight hour train journey I look at the weather and my map thinking that its a lovely day so I'll walk the 20 minutes to the hostel. Turns out George W Bush is in town so the Metro is closed anyway, stupid Americans. So about an hour later I'm sweating like a bastard as I buzz the door to what looks like an absolute shit-hole of a building. Nothing happens. I re-buzz. Again nothing happens. Giving up I take off my pack and sit down on the footpath exhausted. I'm thinking, not only have I booked the shittiest hostel in the world but they won't even open the door.
Moments later a woman pokes her head out of the door and says "Hello, come in" to me in English. I'm thinking eh what the hell it looks like a shit-hole but its probably cooler inside than out. After taking the worlds worst elevator one floor as its quite clear that I can hardly walk, I ignore the shittiness of the hallways and suddenly find myself in this beautiful apartment come hostel. Its practically a B&B!
I get offered a customary welcome drink, visions of iced fruit cocktails run through my head until I snap out of it when she, whose name turns out to be Silvia, comes back with a bottle of spirits and a couple of shot glasses. Explaining to me that its customary to have a drink with someone and I'm travelling alone she decides to have a drink with me. The drink itself scorches my already parched throat and my eyes water like a little girl, Silvia assures me that after a lie-down I'll feel great in 5 minutes.
True to her word in five minutes I'm feeling like a million dollars.
The evening is spent with some Americans, Theo and Morgan. We catch some dinner and I try the local goulash and fresh water trout, a local delicacy I'm assured. As I begin to eat I begin to realise that every city in Eastern Europe along the Danube claims that the goulash and fresh water trout is their own. Still, I'm not complaining as the meal is nice.
Wanting a taste of the Budapest night life we find a couple of young Scottish gals who are up for a good time. We hit the "beach party" clubs along the Danube where we all partake in dancing, drinking, sitting in huts, and general good times.
The morning is spent nursing a hangover, so with the women of Scotland in tow I check out the famous Hungarian Turkish style baths. Warning to all: In Europe fat ugly people exist too, and insist on exposing all that is fat and ugly about themselves, shudders and general feelings of fear will follow.
I have a night out with Bianca the Aussie and we eat at a fancy restaurant. Fancy because it just turned out that the only one we could find that served a main lacking meat was rather fancy, those vegetarians, tut tut tut. Still after downing the odd bottle or two of fine Hungarian red I wasn't complaining. A very civilised evening if I do say so myself, which of course I do.
As I am experiencing the phenomenon known as "travellers feet", whereby after a month or two of travelling your feet cease to function as normal due to the inordinate amount of blisters and general "walking my ass off every day", I decide to partake in a city bike tour.
The tour takes in all the major historical monuments and our friendly tour guide, in between dinging his bike bell at all the attractive women, explains the sobering fact that in Hungary's entire history it has never been on the winning side of a war.
Not really believing that our guide is telling the truth concerning the Hungarian custom of dinging ones bell at attractive women I can't argue with the fact that my dings are eliciting waves and smiles from women too. At this point another sobering thought wanders through my head, perhaps they are not waving at me but at my exorbitant amounts of foreign currency?
Back at the hostel I'm drinking with Bianca and Nick the Brit. Nick has an awesome public school boy accent and apparently speaks fluent Portuguese. Our friendly host Silvia directs us to the clubs worth visiting on a week night and I again find myself out with some Scottish birds, although different than the previous ones. We find a cool bar with table football and many awesome games are played. Hilariously because of the Hungarian currency being generally great the table football games cost approximately 4 cents NZ and beers about $1.50, oh and the girls got balloons too.
What a great city...
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