We got up and solved our hostel problems, then went in search of coffee. “Coffee Heaven,” a local chain, was kind of pricey,. In one likely place, we asked for coffee and the server said flatly, “It’s eleven,” as if we were mental to request coffee at so late an hour. But at this Italian-owned touristy place, the lady said, “Of course!” and we got cappuccinos for €1, or the equivalent in forints. In Budapest, all the restaurants have people standing outside them on the street, holding menus and trying to sell their establishment to passers-by.
After cappuccinos we crossed the river to Buda and hiked up a large hill (small mountain? I’m not learned in geology) to check out this statue that is visible from the river. It is of a woman holding a leaf above her head. Smaller statues, one of a man running with a torch and another of a man beating the tar out of a hydra creature, surround her.
All the inscriptions were in Hungarian (a kind of indecipherable mix of German and Slavic, with umlauts and accents everywhere), so I have no idea to what the monument was dedicated. Behind it was something called the Citadell or Citadella. Everything atop the mountain catered to tourists, so there was enough English for me to discern that the Citadell contains a wax museum, but it was hot and it cost 12.500 Ft., so we headed back down the mountain. We returned to the hostel, but our friends from the program had not arrived, so we left them a note and headed back out. In trying to find St. Stephen’s basilica, we ended up at Parliament, a magnificent building with flying buttresses and a green adjacent park. Martha climbed a tree and I lay down beneath it and we spent a long while relaxing and taking silly pictures.
Eventually we got up and succeeded in finding St. Stephen’s, a grand basilica covered in sculptures of saints. Beautiful. I assume this is the same St. Stephen we have to thank for the festival the previous night. It seems the grandest church in the city; perhaps St. Stephen is the patron saint of Budapest. We couldn’t enter the structure because a wedding was taking place; we saw a long white limousine pull up and the wedding party emerge. What a magnificent (and probably expensive) church in which to be married!
After this we returned to the hostel and found our friends: Sidney, Christina, and Sheena. We got pizza, then went down to the Danube. The banks by the bridge seem to be the most happening place in the city. They had some sand on one bank, though it clearly had not arrived there by natural means. We had a view of one of the magnificent bridges. The back of the 200 Ft. coin has the exact same view. Perhaps the artist sat in the same spot as us when s/he created the image! We watched the evening fade into night. Budapest, all its great buildings lit up, is magnificent in the dark. The best part of the evening for me was the live band that was playing (the preceding Hungarian folk dances were charmant, but not exciting). It was upbeat and wonderful, with violins, a viola, cello, double bass, trombone (!) and drums. I couldn’t get enough of it.
Our late-coming friends had spent the previous night clubbing in Vienna, and we returned to the hostel. They went to bed. Martha and I, still full of energy, went in search of fun and drinking. To our surprise, we found that Budapest does not have much of a nightlife. The people were generally older, and the establishments more like restaurants than bars/clubs. We might have searched farther from the Danube, but Martha’s feet hurt and the atmosphere boded no guarantee of success, so we simply sat and talked for a while. We noticed one young woman who seemed to be a prostitute. She was kind of sluttily dressed and approached an unattractive middle-aged man (perhaps to proposition him?) for a short while before leaving. At 1:00 in the morning the lights on the famous bridge went out (Budapest nights really do end early! Vienna is bumpin’ until daylight) and we headed home. More homeless (sleeping on the street) and buskers. We saw one young guy with aviator glasses who we’d noticed the night before, now playing with a different group. A professional busker?
Another thing I forgot to mention about Budapest. At busy street intersections, they have places to cross underground. Stairs at the sidewalk corners lead down to underground rooms, and you can then cross the underground room to the opposite street corner without waiting for traffic. Also traffic doesn’t have to halt while pedestrians cross. I hadn’t seen this before and think it’s a stroke of genius. Pedestrians don’t wait for traffic and traffic doesn’t wait for pedestrians. I wish all cities had these in their busiest intersections. Sometimes one can find little stands at the bigger of these underground pedestrian crossings, and almost all have beggars/buskers in them, as it is (naturally, being underground) in the shade and cooler than above ground in the summer. Also lots of people are constantly using them, so it’s a strategic spot for begging, I guess. Anyway, Budapest is currently the only place I’ve seen these things, and I think they’re awesome. Props, Hungarians.
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