A three hour train ride brought us
from the Volt Festival to Hungary’s
capital: Budapest. Budapest is well
known for a couple of things: Sziget Festival, cheap beer and the worldwide known thermen. What’s even more is
that Budapest is the only city worldwide which is allowed to call itself
“Capital of the Spa’s and Thermen”.
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| View over the city from the top of the Castle |
As we knew that we were going to be
exhausted and, to downsize it, a bit dirty, we had decided to look for a cheap
place to stay which had a laundry included. We managed to book an apartment for
seven people, though there were only four of us. I must congratulate Heike for
finding this sweet spot as we ended up in an apartment for ten people with –and
hang on-: five double beds, two bathrooms, a kitchen and a large living room
with couches, a big ass tv and a hifi stereo to complete the picture. All this
luxury for only ten Euros a person per day. That was a good deal!
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| Heroes' Square |
After a long and calm night of sleep
we got up with an amazing brunch, prepared by Liesbeth, and headed out to
discover the city. I had done some research and found out the city was rather
too large to discover it by foot. I managed to book a Hop On/Hop Off Tour bus ticket for ten Euros per person instead of
fifteen and even managed to get a day extra on top of the forty eight hours
that were included in the ticket! So basically we took all afternoon of our
first full day hopping on and off the bus, (re-)discovering nice and nicer spots,
places and views of Budapest.
After our city-tour a couple of us
bought some cheap English-written books in a local book store and we headed
back to the apartment. We were going to get together with our new friends from
Belgium but that did not work out as one of them got sick. Luckily we had
another friend coming by! Jonas, a good friend and (also) co-volunteer at AFS
was in Budapest this week as well! After some chitchatting and thanks to the
inventive ideas of Liesbeth we ended up playing a drinking game based on the
popular card game Uno and the night ended how it had started: everybody slowing
getting into bed one by one.
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| Meet-up with a friend from home! |
The next day we decided to ‘do as
the locals do’: go chilling a whole day at the Thermen. We took a fancy taxi
and headed for the Lukacs thermen at
the other side of the river. Little did we know it was more a place for people
with health issues than a place where youngsters could go chilling. Let’s stat
it like the following: the moment the four of us, in our early twenties, went inside
the average age went from 85 to 75, at least… But we made the best of it and
for only eleven Euros per person we enjoyed the hot tubs, sauna, swimming
pools, Turkish steam baths etc. As we
were there anyway we decided to take a massage. Liesbeth and I decided (well
she decided, and I just followed) to take a foot reflex massage. Very nice
indeed! Relaxing a full day at the Thermen in Budapest? A must-see for all
visitors!
From the Thermen we walked over the
bridge back to the Pest-side of Budapest (the city is divided into two parts:
Buda on the left side of the river and Pest on the right) and passed by the
enormous Parliament. Unfortunately road constructions were taking place so we
couldn’t get a proper view. After having started the evening with a cocktail on
a nice square in the city centre, we had a nice dinner in the oldest restaurant of Pest. As if this
wasn’t good enough for our last evening in Hungary’s capital, we had the
opportunity to do a night tour by boat on the Danube thanks to our Hop On/Hop
Off ticket. Truly amazing the scenery of the both sides of the Danube with the
castle, parliament, bridges, etc. a must see (as well!). A long day of relaxing
and enjoying ended with meeting up with our new friends (we had met at the
festival) from Belgium at a park in the centre of Budapest where we had a
couple of beers together.
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| View from the bridge over the Danube |
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| Hungary's parliament at night |
The next day was all about getting
to our next destination. In the morning we packed and after having booked our
overnight train tickets at the Keletitrain station, Liesbeth and I headed for the Belgian Beer Café Mosselen in Budapest. In the afternoon she went
shopping along with Toon & Heike and I stayed at the BBC to organize the
next days of EEET2013. In the evening we all had dinner together at KFC (hell
yeah!) and then the four of us split it. Toon & Heike were going to head to
Vienna and Prague while Liesbeth and I headed south with the night train.
I must admit that in summer it might
be a bit too hot to visit (35°C), but Budapest is really a must-see city for travelers
in Middle- and Eastern Europe. This city really has a lot of interesting places
to offer and it is only two and a half hours from Vienna by train! Enjoy the Buda and pass on the Pest, next stop
Belgrade, Serbia!
peace out_
Toon&Heike, Liesbeth&Thibault
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