Budapest, Hungary

Budapest, Hungary

I visited Budapest twice. In 2006 my wife and I drove to Budapest from Slovenia, skirting Lake Balaton, on our journey by car through Eastern Europe. We stayed for three nights, then continued via Visegrad to Slovakia and beyond. I last posted a report about that journey back in  2007: Slovenia. More recently I dropped in for an overnight transit en-route from Sarajevo to St Petersburg in 2011. 

For reasons lost in the mists of time I stopped posting about that journey after Slovenia and did not post again until I departed on my third 'round the world trip in 2008. I am trying to correct that lapse now. Serendipitously I discovered an old draft from that time as a backup word file despite three changes of PC since. The first section below was written while the memory of that first visit was fresh. I'll add a few notes on the more recent visit after that. 

Budapest 2006 

After an excellent breakfast in the Lenti Hotel, just over the border from Slovenia, we decided to head towards Budapest. While in Lenti I used an internet café in town to book at the 3* Hotel Charles for three nights. We selected the minor roads closest to the northern shores of Lake Balaton, rather than the quicker freeways.

The towns and villages along the lake reminded us of waterfront holiday towns in any country, but were a step back in time for us. They reminded me of lakeside and seaside Australia in the ‘50s. Unfortunately, for some reason gremlins stole my photos of the area. 

Once we reached the outskirts of Budapest it was like any large industrial city. It was dirtier than some, but all major cities seem to present their worst face to incoming motorists. This was the first time we had used the map provided on a booking web-site to find a hotel. It wasn’t the last time we got totally lost as a result. Eventually we got there after an unintended tour through the centre of town. The lesson I learned from that, and later efforts, in those pre-smartphone days was to always go to a good on-line maps site to check hotel locations by inserting the address; never trust a booking site map. That often also led to discovering that hotels are not quite as close to things as is claimed in their advertisements..

Note that my comments on the hotel relate to it in 2006 and would not be valid today. For me it was an interesting experience as my first encounter with a large hotel in a country behind the old Iron Curtain. The Charles Hotel appeared to have been elite single-bedroom apartments during the communist era. Several of the rooms and some whole floors were privately-owned apartments. The room had an en-suite bathroom with a separate tiny kitchenette and a huge bedroom. It was shabby, but with a comfortable bed. I needed telescopic vision to see the small TV in the distance. As I chose the place because they had a kitchenette it was a bit disconcerting to find that there was a stove and a fridge but no cooking utensils, just a jug to boil water. When I asked for them to be provided: "but no-one cooks in Budapest". When I discovered the quality of their breakfast and the range and price of foods in the Budapest restaurants I understood why and stopped complaining. Undoubtedly this hotel provided the best breakfast quality and choices we had on that entire trip - or any trip since.

The staffing was way over the top by Western standards – people everywhere but very few who actually seemed to do much or react when you needed them. This was our first real experience on that trip of the strange difficulty larger hotels in ex-communist nations seemed to be having coming to terms with modern tourism. Repeatedly there was an underlying feeling that the customer should feel privileged to be allowed to stay at that hotel. Budapest was the first place we struck it – but as we travelled we found that attitude to also be the culture in all of the larger hotels we stayed at in Slovakia, Poland, old East Germany and some parts of Czech. Smaller or family-run hotels and pensions were quite a contrast.

I don't wish to overstate it; it was more nuances than anything obvious. But I stayed at enough hotels to notice the difference. The most extreme one was in Slovakia - but I'll mention it later. 

The hotel was about one kilometre from the bridge opposite the Citadel across to Pest. 

Buses ran regularly into town. The staff were helpful in explaining the bus and train system and sold us the initial tickets. Later, downtown, we bought day-passes. I discovered months later that one of the three separate subway lines apparently doesn't accept those - but we didn't know that and we didn't meet any inspectors. It's the odd line with the smaller, low carriages. 

One difficulty we discovered was that most of the subway stations are down long flights of stairs. We didn't discover many elevators or escalators, so it was a little difficult for those with arthritis. But we went anyway, just a little slowly at times.

We spent our first full day just wandering, stopping in shops, browsing through street markets, fascinated at the people and the little differences in cuisine, styles and ways of doing things.

This was a busy covered shopping strip or market down-town.

A restaurant with a rather deadly Arabic name selling Italian food in Hungary. I wondered whether the proprietor was aware of the meaning of that name in English.

We did not eat there; we mainly patronised little restaurants or cafeterias where the locals ate, but we also ate some street foods. I enjoyed Hungarian cuisine but cannot recall the names of the dishes other than goulash.

I spent an interesting afternoon visiting the Citadel Museum. I took the bus to the top of the hill and walked back down afterwards. This was the most picturesque fast food stall I have seen, just next to the Citadel monument.

 

The solid rock of the peak was excavated in WWII  to become munitions bunkers for the artillery sited there. 

Right click and expand to read the story.

The bunkers have been turned into a small museum of the Hungarian experience of that war. It was a very sad period for Hungary, which had soldiers and supporters on both sides. Until 1944 there was an uneasy alliance with Germany with the leader, Horthy, trying to maintain some degree of independence, including resisting deportation of Hungarian Jews and minorities to concentration camps. In 1944 the Arrow Cross, Hungary's Nazis, gained control and effectively the Germans ran the country; mass deportations commenced. Most never returned.

A year later when the Russians conquered the city the siege was long, merciless and immensely destructive. Compare the bridge then and now.

 

   

The building above the bunkers has become a boutique hotel. It still shows the scars of the siege.

 

A German DSF230 supplies glider fell into the building at 37 Attila Street. The 17 yo pilot was decapitated.

 

Unfortunately I was still using Kodak film in 2006 and one of my rolls of 36 disappeared, with most of my other Budapest pictures.

Budapest in transit, 2011

I used Malev Air to fly from Sarajevo to St Petersburg, which required a stopover in Budapest. I stayed at the Artotel, booked via Priceline. It was a comfortable room with a scenic view of the river.

 

The rear-facing rooms had this excellent view.

The pictures on the wall are all supposedly fine art. OK, I know I am a philistine but, seriously, this has to be a joke by the artist who must have laughed all the way to the bank when it was sold.

I was only there for the afternoon and evening, spending my time strolling around the district near the hotel and enjoying another tasty goulash. I also enjoyed re-discovering excellent Hungarian red wine. 

Where Do You Want To Go and What Do You Want To Do and See?

For some travellers those questions are irrelevant. You know why you are travelling because you are meeting a specific need. Whether it is for business or personal reasons, to attend a conference or your great-aunt's funeral, you know where you are going and what you intend to do. But for others, such as leisure travellers like myself, the question can be very important.

How detailed your planning should be will also vary. For some trips you don't need to plan at all. If you are heading off for the umpteenth time to see a regular customer or a relative you are fond of, you may not need to do more than throw some toiletries and spare undies in your briefcase, buy the tickets and call a cab to the station or the airport. If you are going to stay a week in a city you have never visited you probably need to do a little more planning and packing, but not a lot. Possibly all you would need to do is some reading on the city and its sights and culture, then choose a suitable location and accommodation. After that, buy the tickets, pack, call the cab and you are on your way.

But I tend to go on trips a little more complex than that. When I started planning my first 'round-the-world trip in 2002 my goal was very basic. I thought at that time that I had one single chance to see the world and I was going to see as much as I could for as long as I could afford. Consequently in 2003 we spent a month in the USA, visiting fourteen states by air and car, a few days in the Caribbean and four months seeing most of Western Europe and the British Isles.

We had a wonderful time, despite cramming such an enormous range of territory, languages, cultures and currencies into a short five months. I rarely felt rushed, threatened or stressed. I believe the detailed planning I did made the difference between enjoyment and disaster. I took over a year to make the plans and learned a lot by trial and error. I discovered something that surprised me along the way. I enjoyed the planning process almost as much as the trip.

I surprised the doctors and found I was still around after that trip so I decided to keep travelling until I couldn't. And I'm still travelling, nine years later.

The trips since then have been a little shorter. We went 'round-the-world again in 2006 for three months. Unfortunately, Australia is a long, long flight from anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere; we are simply too far from the rest of the world after my wife found that long plane trips were not good for her health. I went alone on the third 'round-the-world in 2008 and last year to South America; both were over seven weeks. In between those we travelled together on shorter flights to New Zealand, Fiji and New Caledonia for one or two weeks and regularly to Melbourne, Australia by road to see our family. We used that trip, 2000km each way, to see as much of South-Eastern Australia as we could by varying the route as much as possible each time.

Over that period I developed some basic techniques for the planning of my complex trips. Possibly some of them may help you plan yours.

The most basic of all questions, before you book anything at all, is where do you want to go and what do you want to see?

There are lots of factors you need to consider as part of those questions. If you are ready to head off to explore foreign lands, how foreign do you want them to be? Are you looking for a comfortable 5 star holiday in a culture not too different from your own, but in a pleasant and care-free climate? Or are you looking for exotic experiences, strange languages and interesting foods and don't mind a little discomfort along the way? Do you want to see old and historic ruins, ancient sites, beautiful countryside, or a modern vibrant metropolis? Or all of the above?

Work out those priorities first, because some of them may become mutually exclusive. Make sure you involve your partner. You don't want to discover your partner is only prepared to stay at the Hilton when you arrive at the youth hostel you pre-booked for a week, no matter how beautiful the view is or how delicious the breakfast may be.

I'll use myself as an example, but you must use your own interests and passions to decide which countries and cultures are the ones you want to visit.

Over time my focus on trips changed. The first one was based on “I want to see it all while I can”. Of course, it wasn't possible but we certainly saw a great deal; ancient and medieval, bucolic and modern. My next trip was more focussed on the cultures of Eastern Europe; I was particularly interested in the ways countries like Slovenia, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and East Germany were recovering from the communist era. On my next two trips I made a conscious effort to see most of the great wonders of the ancient and natural world that I had not already seen, so I added Angkor Wat, the Taj Mahal, Petra, Ancient Egypt, Yucatan, Teotihuacan, the Nazca Lines, Lake Titicaca, Macchu Pichu, Colca Canyon, Galapagos Islands and Iguazu Falls to the wonders of Europe and North America that I had already seen. They became my “Wonders of the World” trips – but I also managed to include re-visits to some of my favourite places such as London, New York and Hawaii.

The trip I am planning at the moment is on a few levels. I love travelling by rail, so I have deliberately planned many long rail trips; some fast and modern, some more venerable. In one brief 14-day period I will take the Stansted Express to London, to catch the Eurostar to Paris, then after a few days the Lyria TGV high-speed train to Visp, connecting on a local to Zermatt, then the Glacier Express to Chur followed by the Bernina Express to Tirano. I change trains there for a local to Milan, then a local to Venice followed by the night train to Zagreb. Whew!!. And I'm going to love every minute of it. I won't be finished there because after flying to Dubrovnik I take the bus to Mostar and the train from there to Sarajevo.

I will have a second focus on this trip: food. I enjoyed eating local foods with the locals on many of my previous trips, especially in Mexico, Peru and Ecuador. I deliberately avoid the tourist restaurants when I can. I intend to do that as much as I can on this next trip, especially in Kerala, India and in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. On every trip I try to combine seeing new places, thus Kerala, the Balkans and Russia, with seeing old favourites and friends; in this case those are in the UK.

Do you have a passion? Art? Ancient cities and cultures? Medieval forts? Architecture? Foreign languages? Battles of WWII? Whatever your passion, consider basing a trip around that. That does not mean that is all you do or see on your trip, but it gives an additional interest and structure to your planning.

Once you have worked that part out, decide on the next two most important decisions. How long do you want to go for and what is your budget? Actually, the latter is probably the priority, because that may decide the time limit as well.