Budapest, Hungary

Meghan:
alright- to pick up from where we left off last...(passed out on the train riding into Hungary)

We find ourselves in the intricate city of Budapest which is split right down the middle by the Danube river (all of these places we vaguely remember learning about in like 6th grade...but now wish we had paid more attention in class rather than who was going to be on our dodgeball team during recess). The hungarians, who we have found suprisingly chill, creatively named one side of the river Buda and the other side...(go ahead, take a guess...)- Pest. Laura and i have found ourselves suprisingly enamored with this strange city and people despite the lack of starbucks (which they easily make up for with lots of hippie coffee/tea shops) and intimidating old women who keep trying to talk to us in hungarian. Budapest has an earthy, free spirited vibe that Laura and I have been basking in (our "traveler" look...which is actually more on the homeless looking side...kind of makes us blend in here...sweet).

Our first day we spent walking around, per the usual. We just wander and wander, looking at all the old buildings surrounding us. Our attempts to absorb the scenes of the city around us tends to be accompanied by endless tripping on the cobblestone (we swear they made it uneven just so they would be entertained by the tourists). It is suprisingly hard to walk, talk and look around here...rough life. Anyways, gorgeous city.

The next day, after finding an amazing coffee shop called "California Coffee Company" which we have proceeded to go to at least once a day, Laura and I decided to completely give ourselves over to the the hungarian culture and embrace all that is budapest by going to the hungarian bath house. It is this huge, old communist building where most hungarians are members, but you can get a day pass to use the baths. Once you go in, you change into your swimsuit (apparently, up until recently, it was a nude thing) and then they show you to the thermal baths. The place is like a maze, with pools of different temperatures in every direction. Some are hot, others are lukewarm; some have medicine in them to heal different parts of your body, some just had a lot of old people sitting in them; some are outside and some are inside...it was crazy-but it was the most relaxing day we have had in a long time. Amongst the baths are steam rooms and suanas. Basically, we spent the entire day being stared down by old hungarian men and women while we ran from pool to pool. The best was when we got into an empty pool that has some caution sign in front of it in hungarian which we of course couldnt understand. We were suprisde when we walked on the weird ramp into the water to find that it was a giant whirlpool pool with jets that shoot you in a circle! it was like a ride at a water park! Some of the best things were the sauana and steam rooms because we finally could sweat all we wanted and it didnt matter...the hungarian baths were absolutely awesome. This culture knows whats up. We are thinking we should try and get one started back in California.

The next day we decided to leave our comfort zone of pest and venture across the danube to the buda side...crazy-i know. The Danube has nine bridges that cross it, so we picked one and had one of those moments where we were like "wow, we are walking across a bridge over the danube right now...in hungary...weird". As we looked up we could see the huge palace on top of the hill. We hiked up to it and then ventured through the streets of buda looking at all the cool buildings. Underneath buda is an intricate labyrinth that was originally made by thermal pools, but was then home to cavemen, then dug out and used as a secret military headquarters during the world wars. It was so cool, we got to go underground and walk through it. I kind of freaked out that there was no oxygen but quickly forgot about it when we saw that in one of the secret rooms was a fountain of not water, but wine. yum.

Laura:
Budapest Part II

Wednesdaz afternoon we met a guide and a group of tourists all around our age at the train station, where we all got on a bus and proceeded about 10 minutes outside of the citz center for our caving adventure. We were given overalls that resembled space suits and helmets equipped with halogen lights, and then the group of us were led to the cave enterance. We spent the next two and a half hours or so literallz crawling on our hands and knees along pathwazs that led throughout the cave into various "rooms" where we would turn off our lights and sit in pitch darkness where I couldnt see mz hand directlz in front of mz face. I was a little worried Meg was going to freak out due to the lack of oxygen, especiallz when our guide began comparing our situation to that of being in space, but luckilz she held it together. It was all in all exactlz what I wanted in a caving experience...lots of squeezing through little holes, banging our helmets on low ceilings, and sliding down rocks on our stomachs into darkness without any end in sight. We both loved it.

And then that was the night I thought Meghan and I were going to die. It was about 4am, and I was sleeping soundly until I heard a noise coming from the window of our room. We were on the second floor of a building that was located on a back street of the city, and we had left the window open when we went bed that night, thinking there was no way anyone would reach the window. But as I woke up, still half asleep, I looked at the window just in time to see two hands and a dark figure begin to climb inside our room. At first I thought it was Meghan, and I thought to myself, "now what's she doing," but then I looked over and saw that she was still sleeping beside me. I FREAKED OUT. I'm pretty sure I almost had a heart attack. I started shaking Meghan, screaming at her that someone was coming through the window and to run. We jumped out of bed, both screaming our heads off, and ran through the hallway of our hostel, her in the lead and me following right on her heels. Between screams, however, we heard some girl's voice drift down the hall repeating, "English?...English?" We stopped screaming and looked at each other in confusion. As it turns out, the intruder was not some creepy drunk guy coming to attack us, but rather this stupid drunk chick who was staying in the room next to us. Apparently her two roomates had gone home with guys they had met out at the bars, leaving her without a key, and she thought she was climbing into her room, not ours. We couldnt believe she had gotten up there from the street, and she assured in a drunken slur that she was "a ridiculously good climber." I could have killed her. Needless to say, we slept with the window locked from then on. We considered climbing through her window the next night to give her a taste of how it felt, but unfortunately she was leaving Budapest the next day.

Thursday was a pretty lazy day...we walked around the citz for about an hour looking for a used English bookshop we had read about in Lonely Planet. Once we found it the effort was well worth it. The walls were lined with used books for sale and we felt like kids in a candy shop (books have become our primary source of entertainment and we value them like gems). Just when I thought we were going to be looking in there for three hours my eye caught sight of a book title that left Meghan and I feeling like coming to Budapest was a sign. See, we had read the first three books in this historical fiction series, but were feeling extremely unfullfilled in life knowing that books 4, 5 and 6 were still out there. Low and behold, this random secondhand bookshop in the middle of Budapest, Hungry, had, of the series, books 4, 5 and 6. It was amazing (I really hope our friends will still hang out with us when we come home after reading this). We couldnt refrain from buying all three of the series, plus three more unrelated books, to haul around with us for the next couple of weeks....if i ever complain about our bags being heavy you can just tell me to shut up.

After that we rented bikes and cruised around the city on a bikepath that follows the Danube river, and spent the night at a hookah bar we had found, reliving our memories of Istanbul. Today was spent at the torture museum which tells about the Secret Police during Communist rule in Hungry. The building in which the museum is located is the actual building used by the secret police during that time, and when we went underground we saw authentic torture and prison cells. We visited the museum gift shop on our way out and found it extremely odd that they were selling candles in the shape of Stalin's head....so odd, in fact, that we each bought one. Not too sure what I'm going to do with it now that I think about it. Tonight we have no home, as we have a flight to Split, Croatia at 6am and apparently have to be there 2 hours early. So we wasted a few hours this evening going to see the movie Miss Potter (we were all set to go see Harry Potter until we were informed it was dubbed in Hungarian), and now we are going to waste a few more hours reading in a coffee shop until we have to pick up our bags and 10pm and head to the airport. Wow, it is going to be a long night.