Budapest
Coming into Hungary someone tried to steal our bags again. Its just routine in eastern Europe. Someone walks into your train car while you’re asleep and scans your stuff. Our stuff was all secured to us, so it wasn’t really an issue. You notice them and they leave. One guy lamely asked for a light as he left the compartment.
We had overheard numerous travelers raving about what a good time they had in Budapest. Thinking back, we never heard *specifically* what it was they liked about Buda or Pest. We could never figure it out.
Budapest sucked. Its a big sprawling modern dirty city with utilitarian cement boxes for buildings. Everyone in Budapest scowls. Goulash is very uninteresting. Magyar is an incomprehensible language from the Uro-Finnish branch, completely unrelated to Indo-European. All the women, young and old, dress like hookers. There are steep fines for screwing up on the public transit system, which we did repeatedly.
The only thing to do in Budapest is go caving and go to the Turkish baths. The baths were not the blue-white hot springs of Iceland filled with young social travelers. They were dodgy pools of tepid water for basking old Magyars with deep frowns and deeper speedo overhang. We didn’t go caving either.
We did meet a jolly giant German there. A liter of beer in his hand looked like a pint in mine. He seemed to be having a good time. Maybe we screwed up and did Hungary all wrong. Maybe its a wonderful place and we just couldn’t figure it out. I’ll never know. Hateful city.
We have no pictures for you from Budapest. Anyway, on to a better place…