Budapest

What does one do at 5 am in Budapest?

This weekend was chalk full of crazy stories like this one.

I will start off by explaining our ambitious weekend plans.

Kyla, Brittney, Rowan and I originally were going to travel to Garmish-Partencurchin for 2 days. However, when our teacher cancelled classes the day before, we added a day in Budapest to our itinerary. You may ask, “but Budapest isn’t close to the mountains in Bavaria?” That is where the beauty of night busses comes into play.

It only cost us $20 to add Budapest into our itinerary! The night bus left from Prague at 11:55 pm, and got into Budapest at 5 am. This is the first of the three night busses we would be taking on this adventure. This ended up being our cheapest weekend trip by far, since we only had to pay for one night in a hostel, and weren’t flying. When we got in to the city, we bought our metro passes and headed to the center.

I must say, the Budapest metro was something else. First arriving at the station, there were countless homeless people sleeping on mattresses inside. It was a giant slumber party in there. However, it was the metro cars that took the prize on sketchiness. When we walked down and saw the underground, we didn’t know what we had gotten ourselves into. The blue cars were rusty and looked about 300 years old. You could hear the screeching from miles away. The glass on certain windows was broken, and the doors slammed shut. We had to sprint on to avoid getting a limb cut off.

Of all the metros we have taken on our travels so far, Budapest’s are definitely the most “memorable.” But they got us where we needed to go.

The baths didn’t open till 6 am, so we went to the city center to walk around first. We each only brought one backpack for the weekend, since we had to carry everything around with us. This was the most low-maintenance weekend of all time.

When we got to the center, we were thrilled to find we had Budapest completely to ourselves. Since it was a colder day, all the homeless people were sleeping in the metro. It was a Thursday morning at 5 am, so there were no tourists. We basically opened up the city.

We had been told to go to a certain central metro stop, and when we got off our maps weren’t working. Rowan pointed to something in the distance that looked fancy and significant, so naturally we headed that way. We ended up at St. Stephen's Basilica, a Roman Catholic Basilica named after the first king of Hungary, King Stephen.

You can tell by the picture that the sun hadn't completely risen yet!

We continued walking until we found Heroes Square, a Hungarian square and park filled with many significant statues and memorials that symbolize Hungary's path to democracy.

During the Holocaust, Hungary had the biggest percentage of Jews who were sent to camps and lost their lives. The death toll from this time period was around 800,000 Hungarian Jews. There was a memorial in the park honoring the victims.

The first shows a line of barbed wire filled with notes, letters, and pictures from those affected by the Holocaust. On the ground there are suitcases from deportations as well as many other Jewish items left behind.

Memorial to Soviet Troops who "liberated" Hungary in 1945

Hungarians love Ronald Reagan since he helped end Communism in their country! He even had his own statue in the park!

We continued through the park and stumbled into Parliament! Completed in 1904, the building houses the National Assembly of Hungary!

During communism, a red star was placed at the top of its Dome. Once communism collapsed, the star was removed!

Thinking about all the coffee I was going to drink once the shops opened! (Still around 6 AM at this point)

Parliament was built right next to the Dabube River, and we got amazing views of the city. We learned that the side we were standing on was Pest, and the other side of the river was Buda!

We headed off to the baths, which thankfully open at 6 am! We walked by some amazing statues and street art which put us in an optimistic mood despite the metro ride looming in the distance.

Hero of Hungary’s anti-Soviet 1956 uprising, Imre Nagy. He is facing away from the Soviet "liberation" statue, and towards the Parliament building. Strong symbolism of the importance of democracy to Hungarians!

We made it to the Széchenyi Medicinal Baths, and had the whole place to ourselves! Apparently it's not normal for people to go at 6 am on a Thursday morning in 40 degrees temperatures.

The Széchenyi Medicinal Baths are the largest healing baths in all of Europe! The waters have medicinal properties, and many people spend hours there! There are a total of 18 pools in the vicinity, with 3 outdoor and 15 indoor. There are certain pools where hospital patients can go and do therapy. We only swam in the outdoor pools, but made sure to check out all of the other ones before we left!

The water feels like a hot tub, which felt amazing in the 40 degree temperatures! Getting out was another story... part of the reason we stayed in for 3 hours! We should be immortal by those medicinal water standards.

The Széchenyi baths were built in the early 1900s. At that time, women weren't allowed in the same baths. Now, we can go wherever we want because girls run the world!!

(I would like it, however, if there could be a separate bath for old men with speedos. This would be nice.)

Fun in the sun! Crazy that we will be on snowy mountain peaks tomorrow..

After an amazing morning at the baths, it was time for a late lunch! We wanted to find a traditional Hungarian restaurant, and found one that used the Hung(a)ry pun. This was all we had ever dreamed of.

Hungarian sausages in corn, onions, and tomatoes in curry sauce! SO GOOD

The rest of the later afternoon/evening we explored the city and crossed over to Buda! The four of us are all coming back here on choir tour in a week, so we didn't feel pressure to see every single thing! On choir tour, we will be here for another day trip, but won't have time to go in the baths. That was our main goal for the day!

When you realize how homeless you look at the end of the day. Backpacker life!

Once it got dark, we crossed over the famous Chain Bridge for incredible views of the city! The air was ice cold and the wind was whipping through our hair, but it was 200% worth the views.

You can see the top of Parliament lit up in this photo! Night time on the Danube.

We were about to head out to catch our bus when we noticed a light booth being set up. There was a light show planned to be projected on the bridge, and it was incredible. Could you end a night in Budapest with any more of a show?

Peep the Buda Castle in the background!

We loaded the bus around 11 pm, and took the night bus to Garmish Partencurchin! We were all able to sleep significantly better than the first night trip, and dreamt of the mountains we would summit in the morning.

What we woke up to