Buda & Pest

Happy New Year!

I am quite late on this blog from a combination of being busy and lazy.

I last left you in Slovakia on St. Stephen’s Day. We then had a gorgeous train ride to our next destination in Budapest, Hungary. It took about 2.5 hours to get to the capital city along the Carpathian mountain range and Danube river.

Buda and Pest were actually two different cities that are separated by the Danube river. Buda is the old part which holds the castle and palace. Pest is the newer city, and these days the biggest section. Buda and Pest are connected by multiple bridges that span the Danube- each bridge is grander than the other.

Very quickly Budapest rose to my top five list of “most beautiful cities”. It really is a jewel. The city is a wonder to see and visit. I can’t say enough good things about it.


We had decent weather on most days, considering it was late December and early January. During our six days in Budapest we saw quite a bit and ate quite well.

Additionally, we had the great fortune of meeting some of our friends- The Keys: Barclay, Sonya and their two children plus Leanne. Barclay is a Fulbright Scholar of history and Leanne is on a Fulbright with Linguistics and also teaches English. So, you have never partied in Budapest until you have done it with a Historian, Linguist and an Economist!

We spent most days visiting the famous buildings of Budapest including the grand Parliament Building, Castle Hill, St. Stephen’s Church and all the gorgeous architecture. I will let the pictures speak for themselves. Most nights we gorged ourselves on Hungarian food.

Hungary has a history similar to that of Poland (always being controlled by someone). The Ottoman Empire ran it for 150 years, then came the Austrian-Hungarian Empire (the Hapsburgs’), then the Communists. Actually Budapest was the site of one of the earliest and largest communist revolts.  In 1956, the citizens tried to break away from the Soviets. The Soviet tanks were sent in and 30,000 were killed on the streets.

Although Hungary is in the EU, it is not on Euro yet. It still uses its own national currency the Forint. What we found fun about the Forint are the denominations. 200 Forints equal $1. So, to stop at an ATM and get a few days of “walking around money,” I would get 100,000 Forints. For a decent dinner we would drop 40,000. It was fun to carry around 10,000 domination bills.

We celebrated New Year’s Eve in Budapest with our friends. It gets quite wild there. They have a main drag called the Vaci Utca. On New Year’s Eve it reminded me of Bourbon Street in New Orleans (without the beads). Thousands of people, horns blowing, people drinking (and drinking). Our biggest problem were the fireworks. People would just shoot them off right in the middle of these packed crowds. It felt like a war zone when they landed next to you. Poor Trey and Abbie did not care at all for that. But it was certainly a memorable way in ring in 2010.

On New Year’s Day- our friends watched the kids, and I took Lisa out for a romantic dinner cruise up and down the Danube. We had a great time.

We said goodbye to our friends and headed home on January 2. It was a 17.5 hour train ride- but we scheduled the journey to be during the evening and night and we had two sleeping compartment. Therefore the trip was rather nice.

I look forward to returning to Budapest someday.