After our disaster of a day in Brasov, we caught the night train to Budapest. We met a nice Australian couple in our sleeper car and chatted with them for a bit. It's always nice to have fun, friendly people sleeping beside you. When we arrived to Budapest, we'd had a decent night sleep. Fortunately, the passport officials got on the train instead of making us line up outside at 4 am like we did leaving Turkey. We got off the train, got ourselves a map and some transport tickets, and headed off to meet our newest couchsurfing hosts. They lived over on the Buda side of town.
Budapest gets its name from the two parts of the city divided by the river. Buda is on the left and Pest is on the right. The locals also pronounce the city as Budapesht. The area was originally settled by Celts until the Magyars arrived from Mongolia in the 9the century. They settled in, christianized themselves, and are still going strong as the modern nation of Hungary. It's quite amazing when you look at Hungary's neighbors because they have no linguistic association with Indo-European languages at all.
This didn't stop the city from becoming the second capital to one of the strongest empires Europe has seen; the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The city took on a Renaissance of building in the late 19th century with its status as a capital. The buildings throughout the city are beautiful and have a touch of Eastern Europe that just isn't in the Western architecture. Unfortunately, the Hungarians were on the wrong side of both World Wars and the city suffered. Various important and incredible buildings around the city have been destroyed over the years. We started our walk in the middle of the Pest side of the city after a much needed haircut. It always makes me a little nervous having someone cut my hair and we don't speak each other's languages. It turned out to be alright though.
The Great Market in Pest is one of the famous buildings along the river. It was built as a way of providing the rapidly expanding city a stable marketplace. The outdoor markets couldn't keep up with the demand of food and goods so the new market was built. It houses hundreds of stalls that sell any kind of spice, food, vegetable, or other food product you could want or need. The market is conveniently located next to the Liberty Bridge. It was built at the end of the 19th century to connect Buda and Pest. The architect thought the design provided a pleasing aesthetic. Emperor Franz Joseph was present for its inauguration and placed the last silver rivet in the Pest side of the abutment.
Across the river is the famous Gellért Hotel and Thermal Baths. It's one of the many thermal baths available to use around the city. The Gellért Baths were built in 1918 on a site formerly used by the Ottomans when they inhabited the area. It's believed that the Romans colonized the area in order to use the natural hot springs. Many people make a day of the baths now and some go because the doctors order the medicinal baths as a prescription for certain ailments.
Budapest's most famous bridge is the Chain Bridge. It was designed by William Clark, the same man who designed a similar bridge over the Thames River. It was built in the mid 19th century and was the first large scale bridge to connect to the two sides of Budapest. There are two lions, one on each side, at the entrance to each side of the bridge. After our long walk around lower Pest and lower Buda, we headed back to our host's house and hung out with them for the evening. We cooked some dinner and went to a local wine bar to drink cheap Hungarian wine. We had some entertaining fellows there. One was too drunk to sit up straight and the other insisted on speaking to us in drunk, broken English all night.
The next morning, the dreary and cold weather put us in the mood to go visit Memento Park. It's a park 6 km south of the city where all of the old communist relics are housed. It's an open air museum and the weather set a certain mood that seemed appropriate. Below is the entrance with the two godfathers of communism, Engels and Marx.
Our hosts had a guidebook that helped explain the various statues. Since creativity was non existent back then, most of the statues have emotionless people in them. I tried to imitate one of them but its hard to be that cold.
The guidebook called this statue of Lenin his "hailing a cab" pose. Seems appropriate.
Here the Hungarian leader is overseeing the crowd that changes from bourgeois on the left to fighting soldiers of communism on the right. Let's go comrade!
Here a soviet worker is charging energetically into the future. Apparently, he's as excited as someone who works at Target. Hungarians joke he's a guy in charge of towels at a bath house and is chasing a customer who didn't pay.
We had to catch a bus to and from the park. While we waited for the bus back to the city, some Spanish guys were there and one of them felt he could freely talk about some of my leg tattoos. I embarrassed him a bit when I gave my opinion on the matter. When we got back to the city, we had some lunch and headed to the park at the north end of town. Our goal was to spend some time at the Szczesny Baths but we wanted to walk around and see some of the sites first. Below is hero's square, a who's who of the Hungarian past. On each side of the square, there are art galleries that show case Hungarian artists as well as others from around Europe. Down one of the streets with the crazy ING building, there's a monument dedicated to the uprising against communism in 1958. There were so swift and painful deaths that occurred after it.
In the park, there is a complex of buildings that are all really nice. They are centered around the Vajdahunyad Castle. It was originally built as a replica of a castle in Transylvania for the millennial exhibition in 1896. This celebration was to commemorate 1,000 years of Magyars in Hungary. The people liked the castle so much that they had it built out of stone and brick to become a permanent feature. There is also a large museum there and a gothic style church. The façade out front is more famous than the church itself. There is a lake outside of the castle with tons of random objects floating around. You can rent a boat and row out to them.
This statue is also part of the castle complex and is called Anonymous. This writer wrote stories about Hungarian history and it's noble families but never identified himself.
After our long wander through the park, we finally made it to the Szczesny Baths. For about $20, we got ourselves a private cabin and 3 hours in this thermal bath spa. The hot springs that supply this bath have a temperature range of 165 F to 171 F(74 C - 77 C). We started off with a swim in the pool. The water was warm and the pool is lined with various jets and streams that you can position on an aching muscle. We both used a strong jet coming out of fixture along the side of the pool to massage our necks. There's a circular pool in the center with jets that send you round and round the circle.
Inside the buildings, there is a large network of small pools with temperature ranges of 60 F - 104 F(18 C - 40C). There are several sauna rooms and steam rooms. We spent a few hours trying out each pool and the various saunas and steam rooms. It was a great way to spend a cold afternoon. Most of the pools inside have bicarbonate and magnesium added to them. Many doctors prescribe these soaks as therapy for joint problems and other orthopedic inflammations. You can even rent a towel and swimsuit there.
After our long soak, we headed home and had some dinner. Later that night, we met up with Australian couple we met on the train and had some drinks at a really fun bar near the Astoria neighborhood. It was a fun and full two days in Budapest.
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