Täglich Wiederkehrendes Abenteuer

Yay, division of labor! I’m going to assume that Joni told you all about us getting to Budapest, Hungary in her last post. I’m writing this at the same time, so I have no idea what she wrote/is writing!

Our full day in Budapest started out normally enough with some breakfast at the hostel. They had some crunchy grain cereal stuff with milk and fresh waffles. The waffles were a little over done, but nothing to complain about. Once we had fed, we headed out to get a look at the city.

Budapest is an interesting town. It combines old and sketchy with new and shiny. On the way to the hostel the night before, we walked past the Best Western Hotel in all its fanciness, then passed a peep show, then went by a huge bank, then walked past a strip club. Huh? Yeah, they have sketchy stuff mixed right in with the new shiny stuff. It’s weird.

We walked for a bit and found the main shopping street and tourist trap. It was pretty neat. We did some window shopping and some real shopping as we walked along. Pretty soon we found ourselves in a little square next to a bridge over the river. We decided to cross it and see what was on the other side. Well, this was on the other side:

Oh, you’re not impressed? Well, how about when you see it from far away?

That’s right. That dang thing is at the top of a small mountain. Guess where we decided to head? First we needed to cross the bridge though. The river there is pretty wide, so we had plenty to time to see the large river boats

the Budapest castle

and just the city in general.

Once we got across the bridge, we found a pretty fancy looking building. At the time I thought it was a museum, but after reviewing the map, I’m thinking it might have been one of the many Budapest Bath Houses. Budapest is known for these bath houses apparently. They have several in the city and are quite the affair. Maybe I’ll talk about them later? *tease*

We began our climb to the top of the hill… mountain. The paths weren’t marked, so we started heading up and quickly found ourselves at some sort of museum/church build into the side of the mountain. We opted to not go in, but we did get a picture of a stone horse… just because.

We also got a picture of the bridge we had just crossed.

We backtracked a bit, then found a new path and started up. On the way we found a homeless guy sleeping, weird stone steps, and many impromptu trails. Oh, random note. I kept running into stones in Bratislava, Slovakia that were lose. Like, all over the place. Steps, the sidewalk, squares, everything had lose stones! It was annoying and a little scary. What would have happened if I hit a lose step and broke it? I’d fall down that stairs; that’s what!

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. We found a little clearing with some slides and took a minute to rest. By this point I was getting surprisingly tired. I was worn out the night before, but man was I feeling it during the mountain climb!

The slides were built onto the sides of the hills. I found it really funny that at the top of the hill, kids actually had to climb a ladder to get onto the slide. What, the HILL wasn’t tall enough?!

We did eventually make it to the top of the mountain, but by that point I was just fried. I still don’t know why it hit me so bad, but man I was just done. Joni took all the pictures from here on out! At least the giant statue thing was giant-i-er up close.

The statue was next to the Citadel, or fortress if you prefer. It was in a strategically sound location, as most fortresses are. This offered us a great view of the city.

We could even see the entire castle.

We headed down the hill taking frequent breaks. We took a different route down and actually ran across a guy doing the three shells thing. There were some people there playing, so we stopped a watched a bit. We continued down the mountain and popped out of the wooded area right at another bridge, so, we crossed it. On the way across, one of Joni’s students actually walked past and said hi! She was from a class that Joni had only been to once, but still… kinda weird.

Safely across the bridge (not sure why I used the word “safely” there), we continued back into the tourist part of the city in search of food. The person at the hostel had recommended a place not too far from the hostel, so we made our way there. We were hoping for a nice traditional place, but it was more of a modern tourist restaurant. I’m not complaining though! We had a big shared platter of potatoes, rice, little steaks, chicken skewers, Gorgonzola cheese sauce, and crazy stuffed cheese chicken things. We seriously have no idea what those last ones were, but they were tasty! The food was pretty dang cheap too!

After we had lunch, we went back to the hostel for a little rest. That’s when we made Our Decision. Want to know what The Decision was? Then watch this:

Being tired, but not wanting to appear lame, we decided to head out once more and see how expensive a car tour of the city would be and check out the market building we had seen at that square earlier in the day. We found that the car tour was 50 Euro, and that was a little too spendy, so we headed into the market building.

The building had produce and meat shops on the main floor. They had veggies, fruits, watermelons, steaks, sausages, and just everything. The upper level was more tourist junk. Nick knacks and paddy whacks and such. We walked around each level a bit, then Joni struck upon an idea. She suggested that we buy a watermelon! Well, maybe just part of one. We figured that an eight would do, but the lady selling them wouldn’t chop the 1/4 we had found in half. 🙁

We went outside to the square and sat down. Pretty soon Joni declared that she was just going to get a full 1/4 and we’d do what we could! She went back inside while I rested (I was super tired from that mountain after all!), and she returned with this:

What’s the best way to eat a 1/4 watermelon? Why, with a small plastic spoon saved from a pudding cup sample in Bratislava, of course!

Using our amazing spoon powers, we munched and drank heartily! Wait, “drank”? Yeah: drank.

After a bit we had pretty much eaten the whole thing.

A few notes. First, a plastic spoon does a good job with watermelon only if you stay away from the hard edges, otherwise you break you spoon. Second, pigeons are idiots. We gave a pigeon some watermelon and he completely ignored it. A while later, almost after we had eaten the whole thing, other pigeons found the watermelon on the ground and just freaked out. So, pigeons do like watermelon… we guess.

Also, dramatic watermelon video:

With our belly full of watermelon, we snapped a picture of the market hall and headed back to the hostel.

Back at the hostel we plopped down and watched Jumanji with a girl. About halfway through, one of the hostel guys asked if we’d be interested in a shot on the house. We said sure (as did everyone else) and so we all had a shot of Romanian Fire Water. Seriously. The stuff is clear, comes in a plastic bottle that looks just like bottled water, and is called “Romanian Fire Water”. I thought it smelled good and kind of went down like water. Everyone else thought I was crazy.

No contest.

We hit the hay early to prepare for our big morning adventure!