Last Sightseeing: Budapest

Budapest is very nice, actually we should say that both Buda and Pest are nice since they are 2 cities on opposite sides of the Danube.

Alas, we’ve sort of run out of steam. Usually when we take a trip we plan for some “downtime” about once a week. We’d sort of planned that for Bratislava but that didn’t happen (which was fine), and it caught up to us in Budapest.

We once again did a Hop on Hop off tour so got a nice flavor of things. Unlike Prague, Budapest does refer to the Soviet era, even mentioning “Goulash Communism” which apparently wasn’t nearly as oppressive as other places behind the iron curtain (unless of course that’s propaganda). Things like rivers, castles, architecture, viewpoints and everything else are looking very familiar even if it’s the first time we’re seeing this particular item, though it’s the 3rd country in which we were on a boat on the Danube. Budapest looks an awful lot like a “European city” along a river to us right now, and apparently has been filmed in various movies to make it look like Paris and other cities. Since Austria-Hungary was an empire it’s not a coincidence that Budapest and Vienna have some similarities. Interestingly, the buildings near the river are all painted in neutral colors. No bright, cheery colors like Amsterdam or Copenhagen.

The Parliament building is impressive — mostly gothic style and the 2nd largest parliament building in the world. We stopped at an impressive synagogue. We didn’t quite understand why all of the stars were 8-sided instead of the traditional 6-sided, or whether the building had been built as something else. It was interesting to seek the Hungarian transliteration of the fall holidays as they looked quite different from the English versions (for example the first word in Rosh Hashanah was Rasj) and we took a picture. Truth be told, that was a wee bit useful for attempting to pronounce Hungarian which is not related to either the Romance or Germanic languages but is related to Estonian and Finnish (two other languages that, for some reason, are not especially familiar to us).

Fortunately, every interaction occurred in English, although some started with a sentence in Hungarian followed immediately by what we assumed was the English equivalent. Reading Hungarian is interesting — the letter s is pronounced sh, and the sequence sz (and maybe also sh) is pronounced s. This meant that we ordered shasimi which caused some double-takes and questioning whether we had acquired dyslexia. The careful observer will note that we’ve added Hungary to our list of countries where we’ve eaten Japanese flood.

By this point in the trip we were done with Central European food. It’s hearty, full of potatoes, short on fruits and vegetables unless they’re pickled, and the meat is boiled or in other preparations that barely require chewing. So our 3 nights here included 2 nights of Japanese and one of Italian, much to the chagrin of the nice man who staffed the hotel desk.

At the beginning of the trip we consistency ordered (and paid for) “still water” with our meals, by the middle we were increasingly asking for lemonade for Fanta which are cheaper and taste much better (we are so spoiled at home and I’m looking forward to drinking Porltand water!). In Hungary I’ve discovered Cappy which is juice….bottled by Coca Cola. The strawberry Cappy I had with dinner last night was excellent — a strong strawberry taste but somehow not too sweet. Another big dietary difference here is pork — I eat more pork (mostly bacon and salami) in 2 weeks in Europe than I do in 2 years at home!

As for the hotel desk….we were in a hotel that’s traditional enough to use actual keys, and to have the expectation that one leaves the key behind when exiting the building. The man at the desk knew us quickly and would have the key to room 8 — the one with Greta Garbo on the door — ready for us as soon as we entered the revolving door. Our lodging has been a nice mix. We were in the Jewish quarter in Krakow, in a windmill in the suburbs in Prague, in a nice Old Town room in Cesky Krumlov, at Ibis hotels (a European chain that ranges from Motel 6 to Comfort Suites) in Vienna and Bratislava, and in a jazz age American-themed hotel in Budapest. A bit of quirky and unique, a bit of predictable. Tonight we will be in the on-site Vienna airport hotel which we selected to minimize stress the morning of our (original) 7am flight that should do nicely now that our new flight is at 7:50am.