Rachel in England: A Tale of Two Cities: Buda and Pest (Known now as Budapest)

Budapest, Hungary

Hungary, also known as Magyar to the natives, is a country that has been around for over one thousand years. It was first settled in 896, a fact which is still celebrated today. Hungary was ruled by the Turks, the Austrians, the Nazis and the Soviets. Now they’re back to being ruled by themselves. (YAY!) It was a great place to visit and it was so lovely to be there.

Fun Hungarian facts:

Yoda’s script was written in English, translated to Hungarian, and then translated back into English. The reason he speaks so funny is because in Hungarian, you can say, I’m okay, Okay I am, it does not matter where you put things.

The Rubik cube was invented in Hungary.

The Biro pen was invented by a Hungarian.

The longest Hungarian word is Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért which means “for your [plural] continued behaviour as if you could not be desecrated".

The first Christian Hungarian King was St. Stephen or Istvan. The story goes that his son died before him so he offered up his country to the Virgin Mary so that she could be the ruler. She accepted and is everywhere in Hungary.

Tuesday

We arrived at our hotel around 9pm, so obviously, these pictures weren’t taken then but I wanted to show you how beautiful our hostel was for how much money we paid. I ended up paying £35 for the whole 4 nights! So cheap. Anyways, here’s the building, it’s a restored mansion.

The view from our stairwell. It was 5 stories. Of course, our hostel didn’t take up the whole building, just a rather large apartment on the third floor and a decent sized area on the ground floor.

The entrance way into the stair way. This was after going through the front door to the outside of the hostel. It was a really cool area.

They even had benches in this spot so that you could sit down and hang out without going outside. Not that I ever saw anyone doing that as it was pretty cold out.

Just a close up of the molding that was going on in the building foyer. It was so pretty.

This is me being rich. I got 30,000 HUF (About £100) out from an atm. Unfortunately, this is also when my card information was stolen. But HSBC was really good and called me when I was back in the country, cancelled my card and sent me a new one three days later. No money was stolen thankfully!

We went to these pubs that are known as Ruin Pubs or Ruin Bars which are pubs that look shifty inside and sometimes outside because they are in old warehouses. It was really cool. As you can see in the picture below, I am defacing part of the building inside. But from further inspection of the picture, you can see that no one really minded as there is graffiti everywhere. It’s almost expected that you are going to write on the walls. We went to two ruin pubs.

This was by far the weirdest! It was called Csendes. It had Barbie dolls hanging on a pink door and Ken dolls hanging on a blue door to show men’s and women’s bathrooms. Only slightly terrifying!

This stupid lampshade kept knocking into me all night!

Me and Kat at the ruins bar. It was so smoky in there!

The next one we went to was the creepiest looking out front! We walked by it the first time and Jon asked if we wanted to check it out, to which the girls responded that no one felt like being harmed that evening. We ended up going inside it after walking down the road and deciding that there was nowhere else to go. I’m very glad we did because it was a very cool place in the end!

I had to pee when we got there so I went to check out the bathrooms near our table. This is what I saw when I walked in….okay, weird, maybe they run out of tp a lot. I decided to walk further…

Went into a stall and saw this! Not sure what you are supposed to do exactly but Ew!

They did have one normal toilet but as there was pee in it and no way to flush, I decided to not include that picture here.

Outside, the pub looked really cool! This is a picture of me, with Jon in the background, on the second floor. The reason there is a fence is because there is wire netting on level with the floor and you can see beneath to the first floor.

This wall says, “Be kind whenever it is possible. It is always possible.” I’m making that face because this was the first and only time I thought of the classroom I am working in.

Sherlock fans!

We finally left the ruins pubs to go back to our hostel around 1:30, spent the night sleeping very poorly because we had no heat in our room!

Wednesday

We did a free walking tour that started at 10:30. After thinking it started at 10, we tried to get everyone out and ready to go by 9:30. At 9:45 with only a rough idea of where we were headed, we took off. Finally. Once we found out that it didn’t start till 10:30, we felt much better and went to have breakfast at a sit down cafe.

If you ever go to Budapest, make sure you do the free walking tour with Free Budapest Walking Tours. They are great! They even ended our tour in a restaurant, stayed and helped everyone translate their lunches and helped them order. The food was even delicious!

Our first stop was Kiskiralylany Szobor (Little Princess Statue). If you rub her knees, you get good luck.

This was a castle built during the Austro-Hungarian empire reign. It was intended for the Empress Maria Theresa but she never stayed there. Mainly cause she popped out 16 kids! Now it holds two museums and a library. It was huge! This picture was taken from across the river.

And of course, there was a British pub in Budapest; we popped in to warm up even though it wasn’t bad. Unfortunately, while we were in the pub, a huge snow storm started!

Kat, Steph and I chilling out and listening to some history.

History facts for you:

Hungary was founded in 896 by 7 Asian tribes. Conquered by the Huns, then the Turks, became the Austro-Hungarian Empire, then the Nazis took over then the Soviets. When the Soviets were just starting to assert their control in the 1950’s, Hungary revolted and failed. As a result of this revolution though, they got treated slightly better than the other places under Soviet control. They could watch MTV and drink Coca-Cola if they wanted to. Our tour guide said that although they are a democracy now, it is not true democracy because the ones in power grew up with the corrupt Soviet government. She thinks that Hungary will only be properly democratic when her children are in power because they will have grown up without the taint of Soviet Communism.

After we “warmed up” and got caught in a snow storm, we continued our walk and saw the sculpture with locks hooked on everywhere. It’s to assure that you have good luck in your relationship and to keep it long lasting. You lock your lock on and then throw the key in the Danube.

As we were walking down the road from the park to our next destination, I saw this on the side of a wall.

It was so pretty and yet seemed so out of place.

Me and my policeman friend.

This is the chain bridge, one of many that connects the Pest to the Buda side. It was apparently designed and built by a man who said that this was a flawless bridge. One little boy pointed out that the lion statues had no tongues; as a result, the builder threw himself off the bridge.

What a rough life.

The coolest thing about this bridge was seeing how fast the water was moving. There were huge chunks of ice flowing down the river; it was a bit dizzying to watch!

We hiked up a huge hill, we were told there was an elevator that would take us up for 1200 HUF, which was roughly £3 but since it was a free walking tour, it wasn’t allowed! It wasn’t a horrible walk so no one minded. This however, is a picture of the elevator; I wouldn’t have minded taking it because it looked so cool and went straight down the hillside.

This is outside the president’s house in Hungary. We only got to stand here for five minutes before we were asked to leave. Ooops!

The snow was so bad that I couldn’t see so I had to put my sunglasses on. I was also brushing myself off every five or ten minutes. It was crazy weather!

Building where the soldiers were kept in the past. However, the army and the government are in an argument over who has to pay for the upkeep so no one does. Oh, well.

We went to St. Mátyás church which was very pretty on the outside. Here is a model of the church. Or a church for ants, your pick.

From the outside.

My favorite thing about this church was the tiles on the roof. They were so pretty! It was built in 1255.

That was pretty much our last stop till lunch time. We had paprikash for lunch which is a kind of pasta with paprika sauce. It was very yummy!

After lunch, we went back to St. Mátyás church and wandered around. Since it was on top of the hill, it had some excellent views of Pest.

Here is a picture of the Hungarian Parliament building.

This structure is known as Fisherman’s Bastion. It has seven towers on it to represent the 7 tribes that settled Hungary.

Inside, it was being renovated so unfortunately, they aren’t the best pictures. However, the church was absolutely gorgeous and I would have loved to see it without construction.

Me and my new friend the lion.

Kat on the stairs

After we had walked back and chilled, Kat, Steph and I went to another church that was literally on the road. It did not look like a church at all!

This was a little chapel off the side of the main church. It was very pretty and obviously dedicated to the Virgin Mary with lots of flowers around the altar.

After, we went shopping and then made dinner for everyone. The hostel had a wine foccas (Wine and soda water) event for free so we all showed up and had some free drinks. Pictured: Me and Kat studying the strange clock on the wall.

Thursday

Thursday we went to the Terror House, the bath house and the opera house. It was a day of many houses.

This was a cool example of Hungarian art work.

This is the House of Terror. The building used to house the party head quarters of the Hungarian Nazis and then the AVO, which was a notorious communist terror organization in Hungary, made it their head quarters.

Pictures of the victims of terror lined the sides of the outside walls.

This commemorates the victims of terror from both the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party (The Nazis) and the communist terror organization.

We could take pictures inside but it was a lot of reading things on a sheet of paper that was in the beginning of each room. Needless to say, it was a very educational experience and disheartening to be reminded of how nasty humans can be to one another.

After we left, we headed down the road to Heroes Square which was built in 1900. Behind it is City Park.

On one side, there was a museum which looked really pretty.

And on the other side was another museum!

The top of the first museum.

There is a castle across the ice pond!

What’s that? Oh yeah, that’s me and my castle!

Front view of my castle. J

This is Széchenyi Medicinal Bath. It was built in 1913 in the Turkish style of bath houses. It was also huge. The next picture is of the whole complex from the air.

This is Széchenyi Bath house again. There are multiple baths inside the building itself and then there are three outside as you can see. We explored all the baths inside and then decided to freeze our butts off by going outside.

. We started out in the far right pool. Jon and Andrea decided to sit in the middle of the circle thing, and Kat and I were in the second part of the circle thing. This was cool because it was a whirl pool type thing, so you just kept going round and round in circles. You didn’t even have to swim because the jets propelled you around. When the jets turned off, we got out and were going to go to the middle pool but it was only for swimming laps and you had to have a cap on. Because we were already out of the water, we had to run as fast as we could to the far left side pool. That was a good choice because it was warmer than the other pool.

Then we went inside and got massages. It was £10! Cheapest massage ever! Mine was pretty good but the lady was digging into my back and it hurt at times. She also kept massaging my butt which was quite strange.

Here are some pictures from foyer where you paid to go in. I swear, there was a rule when these buildings were built that they had to be absolutely beautiful.

After the baths, we met up again with Steph who had gone to walk around and we had to hustle back to our hostel. We were going to go to the Opera! We saw Tosca. It was pretty good, even if for the first half we had no clue what was going on; I googled the second and third act so we finally got it. Again, the opera house was gorgeous!

Me being cultured. We couldn’t’ see much of the stage from our seats but we weren’t going to complain since we spent £1.60 on them!

Me and Steph, the lovely planner of the evening!

After the opera, we went out for drinks and pictures. I thought it was funny that this was how they changed street names in Budapest- a red line through the old name and the new one underneath. I saw it more than once.

Parliament building all lit up at night.

My camera does a cool thing where it can take pictures and turn them into sketches.

Friday

This is the 4 Seasons Hotel. It is supposed to be very nice inside.

Today we decided to visit Parliament! It was very exciting!

Again, all buildings in Budapest are beautiful! This one was no exception. It is HUGE! And gorgeous in every room.

This is just the entry hall.

Match stick model of Parliament.

Eager tourists!

This is a slightly poor picture of the Holy Crown that Hungarians hold a lot of reverence for. All the ministers have to swear in under the crown, even though there is no monarchy.

After Parliament, we went to the Synagogue. It was gigantic and domed; and strangely Moorish in appearance from the outside.

I’m going to my first synagogue!

The building was really huge inside! It was kind of surprising!

The altar part.

These color themes were everywhere. Blue is for the sky, white is for light, red is for blood and the fact that we come from God and only God can take us away, gold is for fire.

Stained glass mosaic to commemorate the Holocaust.

Silver tree that has a leaves and names of people who lived in the Jewish Ghetto in Budapest.

After we were starving so we asked our tour guide for a good place to go. She told us to go to Carmel. Goodness what a good suggestion! We had a three course meal with tea that filled us up for £15 each! We didn’t eat again till 9pm.

They were set up for some event.

Kat and Steph ordering.

Me and Andrea all ready to order.

After we got back, everyone else in our group decided to go caving. I wanted to go but I didn’t want to ruin my gloves so Steph and I stayed behind and explored. We ended up going to a cave church, or attempting to at least.

On our walk we saw some cool picture opportunities.

This is a path! Crazy!

It was about this point when we realized that we were up the wrong side of the hill. We took pictures anyways.

This is my, “Where the f are we?” picture.

Then we found it!

It started out as a normal cave but people excavated it to create a church. When the Soviets took over, the cemented it over. It was reopened in 1989. It was very cool. Here’s me in the entrance to the sanctuary part.

Hungarian flag with Mary and St. Stephen.

Jesus of the bleeding heart.

When the church reopened, a wood worker heard that things weren’t good there so we carved stuff for a whole room. It was amazing and he did it for free.

Four important dates for the Hungarians. St. Stephen’s reign starts, Nazis take over, Soviet revolution, and Independence.

Oh yeah, I kissed a penguin. It was outside an ice bar.

Steph hugging my new boyfriend.

Steph on a scooter.

Darling dog food.

The gang at dinner. Andrea, Jon, Keith.

Steph, Kat, Dave.

Me drinking a grasshopper.

Saturday

We found the market, which was in this huge building.

It was kinda busy! We walked past so many veggie stands, then meat stands, we even ventured downstairs to the fish market! Smelly!

Me at the market.

I ate this. It was interesting. It’s fried dough, sour cream and cheese.

Life is short, take big bites!

Traditional Hungarian clothes.

Steph in a Soviet hat!

Cool entrance way for a boring shop.

Wrong city! A Praha (Prague) mug in Budapest!

Kat and I scooting along with our new friend.

Yup, I’m bffs with Mozart now. There were these stores all over the city, apparently they’re quite big in Austria too.

Last but not least, me, Steph and Kat explored St. Stephen’s Basilica.

Work was started in 1851 and finished in 1905 on this building. It suffered a lot of damage during WW2. My first thought after stepping in the door was, “Wow, this quarter of the church takes my breath away. I wonder what the rest looks like.” I was simply in awe.

The picture above the main door to the Basilica.

Off in a side chapel, they have the right hand of Saint Stephen. It’s famous because three hundred years after he died, they opened his coffin and his entire right arm was mummified. Parts of it have been chopped up and sent around the world but his right hand stays in this case. For 200 HUF you can have the box illuminated. Steph and Kat paid for it so we got pictures.