From Smiley Fritz to Santiago...: Still Hungary? Second course is served...

With our week in Greece now behind us, Eliza made her way back to the UK to face the reality of work (a foreign notion to me now), while Ros, Paul and I continued the fun and games in Hungary.

My second visit to Hungary for the year, the week was spent in the country’s capital, Budapest, a city formed in 1873 with the unification of three smaller cities; west-bank Buda and Óbuda, and east-bank Pest. With a population of over 1.7 million people, today Budapest is the largest city in Eastern Europe, and is ranked as ‘one of the most beautiful cities in the world’ by a number of sources (okay, so I Wikipedia’d it). With the beautiful Danube River dividing the city, the spectacular Buda Castle, wide tree-lined Andrassy Avenue, Heroes' Square and the second-oldest underground rail network in the world – it certainly lived up to our expectations!

Introducing Ros and Paul to the world of hostelworld.com, I had managed to book us a great, cheap apartment on the Pest side of the river, where we based ourselves for a week of exploring, eating and LOTS of walking.

With guide book and map in hand, we started our first day with a hop-on, hop-off bus tour of the city, admiring the stunning banks of the river, the impressive Buda Castle district, parliament and government buildings, Andrassy Avenue, Heroes’ Square and the many impressive and historical bridges the Danube has to offer. A walking tour of the castle district got us up to speed (well, Ros and Paul at least, I was still a bit lost!) on the history of Hungary, and a spectacular view of the city from the Dinsey-esque Fisherman’s Bastion. Of course, Gelati was required to boost the dwindling energy supplies, before we spent the afternoon watching the changing of the guards, exploring the still visibly battle-damaged buildings of the castle complex, and finishing the day off with an exceptional meal at my soon-to-be-favourite Hungarian eatery, Frici Papas.

The next day it was time to stretch our legs, and with much of the city left to explore, we set out on a ‘free walking tour’. It turns out the only thing ‘free’ about the tour was the advice on which shop to buy a souvenir to get the guide a commission, and we soon ditched our guide in favour of some exploring on our own. Climbing to the top of St. Stephen’s Cathedral, we found ourselves with yet another impressive view of the city, before wandering the pedestrian district of the old town to the riverfront, Parliament Building, and the somber Shoes on the Danube Promenade memorial – a modest, yet powerful reminder of the atrocities committed during WWII, when Jews were forced to remove their shoes on the riverbank, before they were shot – their bodies falling into the river below.

We finished our day off with a night bus tour of the city – a spectacular experience!

I have been fortunate enough to have spent a couple of weeks in ‘rural’ Hungary previously, however the next morning it was time to show Ros and Paul what they had missed out on, as we set out in search of adventure! With an outdated Lonely Planet guide, and some less-than-reassuring advice from the internet, we were up bright and early as we made our way to the train station, and toward a day of fun, freedom… and just a bit of confusion!

The day started as planned, with an early morning train out of Budapest in the direction of ‘Ezstergom’, a small city on the Hungary/Slovakia border. However, it wasn’t long before ‘confusion’ became the theme for the day, as the train came to an abrupt stop into a station still quite a distance from our intended destination – the railway tracks had been pulled up months earlier, and were yet to be replaced! With no Hungarian language skills on our side of the conversation, and no English language skills on the side of the conductor, we managed to act our way through a conversation, in which we hoped we worked out how to catch a bus to Esztergom, and we were soon squashed onto a small local bus, hurtling through the Hungarian countryside.

Ezstergom Basilica

Arriving on the outskirts of what we thankfully soon found out to be Ezstergom, we walked into the town centre in search of the friendly, English-speaking tourist information centre, where we planned to find all the information required for a day out in rural Hungary… wrong! Not only was there no tourist information centre, there was also very little else open, however with the help of some caffeine, and a friendly waiter, we set off on foot yet again along the river in search of the impressive Ezstergom Basilica – Europe’s third largest church (it’s somewhat of a surprise we even had to ask directions!!!).

Yet again braving the local public transport, our next stop was Visegrád, a small town on the somewhat overrated, yet still pleasant stretch of river called the ‘Danube Bend’. Exploring the town (this took all of three minutes), we jumped on the local car ferry, crossing the river to the only slightly more exciting town of Nagymaros on the opposite bank, where Ros was quick to point out our potentially dangerous omission of gelati or ice-cream from our day, and Paul and I were quick to rectify the situation.

Now stuck on the opposite side of the river to where we needed to be for our bus back to Budapest, our daily theme of ‘confusion’ continued, as we discovered in our haste to board the ferry, we had neglected to check return ferry times – which only ran two-hourly during the day! However, fortunately our research (or lack thereof) had not been all that thorough, and within minutes of realizing our predicament, we were relieved to hear the far-off sound of a train, and it turns out we had actually managed to unwittingly get ourselves back onto one of Hungary’s main train routes – and a comfortable, relatively fast ride back to the capital city!

After a night out on the town (well, we walked along the river at least!), and dinner at Frici Papas, our last day in Budapest was spent at the impressive Great Synagogue – the largest in Europe, and supposedly the second largest in the world. Booking a tour of the complex, and a rather fetching yarmulke for myself, Ros and I learnt about the Jewish history of Hungary, the Jewish faith, and the history of the Synagogue throughout the 20^th century. While the building sustained some damaged as a German communication centre through WWII, today the whole complex includes the Synagogue, Jewish Museum, Heroes’ Temple, and the beautiful Holocaust Memorial Park.

Heading back to the apartment for an early night, and to finally put my feet up, our time in Budapest was coming to an end. Ros and Paul were up early the next morning, as their holiday continued with a train to Croatia, while I enjoyed a lazy morning and one last lunch at Frici Papas, before making my own way to the airport – and on to Cairo!