Hungary: Oct. 21 - 24

Budapest: Saturday Oct. 22, 2005

Yesterday was cloudy with light showers. Today started off gray and gloomy and never really improved. On the positive side, it never got really cold or poured. Oh well we knew that we were pushing our “weather luck” coming into Eastern Europe in October.

Today turned out to be a big walking day. I’d like to say how many kilometers exactly but I accidentally washed Brian’s pedometer in the laundry. Oops! Our apartment was located on the Pest side of the city, about a block away from the Danube River and near the Parliament buildings. Our first destination was the Chain Bridge, the first permanent bridge linking the two halves of the city, Buda and Pest. It was opened in 1849 but unfortunately was almost completely destroyed in WW II and was rebuilt in 1949. It was an impressive crossing and made even more so by the dozens of national flags waving off both sides of the bridge. It was all decked out for the National Holiday on Oct. 23.

After crossing the river, our next stop was the Castle District which was the dominant feature in the landscape of the hilly picturesque Buda side. An UNESCO World Heritage site, Castle Hill was home to many interesting buildings. But first we had to get up the hill! Of course the kids and I were all for taking the funicular and Brian had “the hill is there we must climb it” mentality. He eventually won out as the long line for tickets did not seem to be moving. Thankfully it wasn’t too long a climb up the series of stairs and paths. On the positive side, we got some great vistas of the Danube, Chain Bridge and Parliament buildings on the Pest side. Unfortunately it was a grey day so picture taking wasn’t at its best. At the top we headed to Buda Castle, started after the Mongol invasions in the 13 th century by the popular king Bela IV. Home to Hungarian kings for centuries, it was partially destroyed by the Turks and then during WW II. So the current structure looks quite modern but underneath it, there are caves, tunnels, old foundations etc. We didn’t find this out until later however, because then we had to go halfway across the top of the hill to get Budapest Cards at the information centre. The Budapest cards could be purchased for 48 or 72 hours. They were well worth the cost for us because the kids were on our cards. We were able to get into most of the museums and use all the city transit for free. As well many other attractions were discounted. It was hard to choose where to go because Budapest has hundreds of museums and attractions.

After picking up the cards we were near St. Matthias church. Its interior layout was first shaped 700 years ago but the exterior was redone in a neo-gothic style. It was stunning. The roof was covered in green, brown, gold, white, light blue and black tiles done in geometric or flower designs. Inside every surface except the floor was painted; the walls had delicate colourful stained glass windows and impressive arches and buttresses near the ceiling. It was in this church that Hungarian royalty used to be crowned.

Outside of the church was the Fishermen’s Bastion so named because the fishermen’s guild guarded this part of the fortification in the middle ages. In my opinion, it was just too delicate a castle wall built to keep out invaders. The wall was full of arches, swoops and swirly decorations, turrets that looked like they were built for Rapunzel and spiraling staircases. It never had to be used militarily. Brennan joked that it was because the invaders all thought the walls were “too pretty to break down”.

Our next quest was to find the castle caves but we were thwarted. After wandering over the rest of Castle Hill, we discovered that the caves were closed for renovations. What they were changing in a cave, I don’t know…… It would have been fascinating to see as I have read that it was a very large labyrinth of caves; big enough to serve as a military station for 20,000 German soldiers during WW II. Oh well, on to Buda castle and its museums. We explored this for awhile and then we were “museumed out”.

After a delicious and warming, lunch of Hungarian soups, we were off again. We hiked along the bank of the Danube, eventually making it to the Central Market. Unfortunately we spent too much time at Castle Hill and by 3 o’clock, all the shops were closed. We keep forgetting that stores close early in Europe, especially on a Saturday.

The public transit system in Budapest has been very efficient. There are subways, trams, buses and trains to get people around the city. It took us a while to figure out the system; the hardest part was telling where the metro stations were located. They were marked by a small red M and usually involved finding a tunnel to access the station. A bonus for Brian was that they were very punctual.

Our reason for this extensive trip on the metro was to get back to the train station (Keleti Palyaudvar) and get tickets for our trip to Romania. Upon arriving in the station, we found signs indicating that international information and tickets was located on the main floor, up from the metro level. The overhead signs pointed us to the left towards platform 6. Off we went to the far end of the station (a long way), only to discover that the office wasn’t there and had been relocated to the opposite side of the station at the end of that platform. Now this train station was not the most comfortable place to be. It was gray and grimy with many stinky homeless men and gypsies wandering around. So we hustled over to the other side and stood in a long line at the ticket counter, only to be told by the clerk that we had to go to information first, get the trip details and then we could book our tickets. Brian was getting extremely exasperated by this point. We then had to go farther down platform 9 to figure out which trip times we wanted. With information in hand, we got back in line to book our tickets. However we were foiled again! The credit card system was temporarily out of order and we had to pay in Hungarian cash. Of course we didn’t have enough to cover four tickets. So we had to go back to platform 6 where the ATM was and pull out a wad of cash, in front of all the scary gypsies. Finally we got back into the ticket line, which by this time was mercifully short, and got our tickets. All of this effort for two ten hour train trips to see Transylvannia and Dracula’s castle.

With tickets in hand, we once again descended into the depths of the subway system. This was an extremely traumatic event for Sierra each time we did it. The escalator steps moved VERY quickly and they were EXTREMELY steep. With her short legs, it was always a big jump and then a quick balance adjustment to keep from tumbling forward. We discovered that there was a metro station near our apartment; this would make our departure to Romania in a few days much easier and cheaper than a taxi.

We decided to cook in tonight and do some internet stuff. Well unfortunately we were disappointed with both. We attempted a stirfry because the kids haven’t been getting enough vegetables lately. Well this was tough to do without a frying pan. Also we discovered why Hungarians use pork mostly in stews etc. It wasn’t very flavourful. Our biggest disappointment was that the wireless internet connection from the day before was gone. Brian thought we lost it because of the rain.

We called it an early night, still not sure what the next day would bring. We were waiting on the weather.( NEXT PAGE )