budapest – here we come!

first of all, here’s a little related mini-post that wasn’t really worth posting solely:

    28-01-2005 @ 19:00
    got the tickets! three railway tickets to budapest, gonna be fun!
    what’s strange is that the only song i wanted to listen after i paid was “dido – don’t leave home”.
    ironic?

now here’s the actual post:

14-02-2005 @ 14:21
what can i say – it *was* fun!
we left innsbruck thursday night around 02:30. maybe going there in a saloon coach wasn’t the best way to travel, but it was bearable. except for that scruffy old hungarian woman, who talked to herself in the pitch of a witch and her dog. :???:

so anyway – when we arrived in hungary we dropped out of the train one station early because we could see our hotel from there directly. leaving one station early turned out to be a natural instinct, by the way. i think we should call it “markus’ law”, abutting “murphy’s law”. for the following days, i ALWAYS wanted to get out one station early, thinking that was the proper bus stop/metro station.
at least now i have a little heads-up for fall 2005…

we …oh, i never mentioned who actually participated in this trip: stefan, clemens and i did.
we stayed at hotel wien, just 10 (bus-)minutes outside of town. our accommodation was nice. but they were just renovating parts of the hotel, and our somewhat unstable toilet seemed to shout “you better don’t sit down!” everytime one entered the bathroom. ;-)

on day one (friday afternoon) we visited the museum of ethnography (neprajzi muzeum), including a very intersting bagpipe-exhibition. [why didn’t anyone of us ask *what* the special exhibition was about, BTW?]
afterwards we explored parts of the city, enjoying the icy snowy weather (thank you, clemens!) outside.
we had a very late lunch / very early dinner at a small restaurant in a quiet side street. the waiter was really friendly, talked german fluently (like many other people we had contact with). if only our pizza didn’t have “hungarian toppings” like a whole frankfurter or eggs… :smile: although i was suprised by those ingredients, the pizza turned out to be quite good.

saturday, february 12th was a lot more organized and planned… we took the guided tour through the parliament (orszaghaz) [which was free, because hungary is now in the european union], saw the nearby kossuth lajos square, and then went up to castle-hill (varhegy), visiting the fisherman’s bastion (halaszbastya) [which for some reason strongly reminded us of minas tirith] and st. matthias church (matyas templom).
in the afternoon we went to “city center west end” – a huge mall which seemed more western/american than everything we know in tirol. (check out the cool fountain we saw there!)
hanging out in shopping centers seems to be one of the standards for my (yet few) city trips. as well as visiting the botanical gardens, which we skipped this time.
due to a joking comment of clemens (something like “why don’t you go with those two women for a while?”) and my response “clemens, i think they can understand us!”, we got to talk to verena and katharina, two girls from styria/austria and germany. we must have seemed like three totally disoriented and needy persons. well, at least the “disoriented”-part wasn’t that incorrect :mrgreen:

to enjoy the nightlife (yeah, it’s still me writing!) we went to fat mo’s music club – a very nice pub. unfortunately, shortly after midnight they became just a “usual bar” with dance music so loud, i could barely hear the voices in my head my thoughts (check out the “pet peeves” line in this post).

sunday turned out to be productive as well – we went to see budapest’s very own statue of liberty (?) on gellert-hill (gellert hegy), took pictures of 3 of budapest’s 7 bridges and had a walk on margaret island (margitsziget). there, we found the most hilarious bus plan i’ve ever seen!

so we finally headed for “keleti pu” train station and boarded the train at 17:00. the following 9 hours of travel were clearly among the funniest journeys i’ve ever enjoyed!
***edit*** oh, i almost forgot: guess who was sitting in the exact same saloon coach with us! that scruffy old hungarian lady!

thank you, lisa, for giving me a ride at 02:45 in the morning!
 

pictures will be uploaded tonight/tomorrow – stay tuned!
***edit*** photos are now up!

[view photos]

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