I took a train directly from Vienna to Budapest with another
person in my program named David. We took
a later train so we could make it to German class in the morning on Friday so we
didn’t arrive in Budapest until around 9pm.
The first thing I noticed is that Hungarian is so much different than
German. I could barely pronounce any of
the street names! And while it was
snowing in Vienna, it was raining in Budapest and slush covered all of the
sidewalks. It was not the most pleasant
journey but we eventually did manage to make it to our hostel. This was actually
my first time spending the night in a hostel.
It was the cheapest one we could find so I didn’t expect much from it,
but it ended up not being too bad! For
those of you who have never spent the night in a hostel, there are two things
that hostels are not known for: privacy and cleanliness. I was in a room that could fit 12 people and
got to listen to my roommates snore and talk loudly throughout the night! Luckily for us though, our hostel was pretty
empty because not many people travel in winter.
On Saturday David and I had planned to explore as much of
the city as possible. Our day started
out horribly. It was raining again, we
couldn’t find any working subway ticket machines, I forgot my umbrella and cut
my hand on a new one I bought...everything was just miserable. We did manage to find our way to a museum
called the House of Terror though. This
museum is devoted to showing the terrors that Hungary went through while it was
occupied by the Germans and Soviets.
Most of it was in Hungarian, but I could understand some of the
exhibits. It was more interesting to
watch the other people in the museum.
Many of them had been alive during this time so they were very touched
by this museum. I definitely noticed the
effects of living on the other side of the iron curtain throughout the city as
well. Many of the buildings (especially
on the Pest side of Budapest) were falling apart and there were not many modern
ones as well. The subway was also very
beaten up and in need of an update. There are still many beautiful things in
the city too though.
After the museum, we walked around the city park and made
our way to the Parliament Building. Things
were starting to look up too! A man in the subway noticed us struggling to get
a ticket from an automatic machine so he gave us two short trip passes so we
could go to an actual ticket stand a couple stops down. We could now use the subway which made
everything much easier. When we got to
the Parliament Building, we ended up waiting for over an hour in the cold and
rain for a ticket but it was totally worth it.
This is one of the most beautiful and famous Parliament Buildings in
Europe. There were beautiful paintings,
gold, and statues everywhere. I also got to see the Crown of Hungary which was
amazing. Here’s just a small sample of
how beautiful it is:
After the Parliament building, David and I got dinner and
decided to walk around the city in the evening.
Budapest is 10x’s more beautiful at night when all of the buildings are
lit up. We went all over, seeing things like Fisherman’s Bastion and the St.
Stephen’s Basilica and even walked across one of the bridges over the
Danube. We sadly had to leave early the
next day, but I’m really happy I got to see most of the city. Budapest really is amazing!
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