Hungary, Budapest: Another 2-sided city

Another alternative title: chain bridge, castles, converted churches, crawling through caves, cooking, clubbin', and chillin'

The first thing I did upon my arrival at Tiger Tim's hostel was sleep. A glorious extra 2 hours after my overnight train. The next thing I did was jump right into the city...

Budapest, like Istanbul & Belgrade I believe, is also divided by water. The Buda side is the main side, and the 'Pest' side is home to a type of 'castle district' up on a hill, with 3 churches and 6 museums.

To get there, we crossed the chain bridge, the first permanent (although reconstructed since WWII) bridge in the city. This was made slightly more challenging with the bazillion km/h winds of the day also trying to take up space.

Roamed around the castles, saw a gorgeous view of the 'buda' side, and entered yet another Converted Church, originally a 13th century design, until the Turks turned it into a mosque with a Byzantic style interior. Now it's back to a church.

(hmmm, and I clearly don't know how to flip pictures right IN blogspot... hopefully I'll learn...)

With all the thermal waters in Budapest, caves have been created, discovered, and made tourist-friendly. Put on your old clothes, throw on a jumpsuit and helmet with flashlight, and come join us as we crawl, squirm, slip and slide aroud the muddy caves. Note: if you are claustraphobic, this may not be for you. Ok, just stay calm. Calm. Calm dammit we'll be out in 2 hours! Hahahaha, I actually got used to it pretty quickly and when relaxed had a great time crawling and slithering around. I would find myself with sore knees and hips the next day.......

Cooking - when it's home-made and culturally relevant, is AMAZING. Our hostel dude, Tim, made a communal meal called (dammit I forget) with pasta covered in a stew/soup sorta sauce with meat, onions, paprika (p.s. Hungarians grow & eat a lot of this stuff). It was nice because it brought a lot of people from the hostel together, so after the cookin' (and eating) was done we could go

Clubbing- which, as it was a Monday night, was done at a student bar. And our cover charge to get in came with 3 free (man, these are watered-down!) beers. But definitely the start to a great night, especially when dancing is involved :)

And that was ALL ONE DAY, so naturally the next day was for chilling. Late breakfast, strolling around Budapest, and a trip to the Thermal baths. Several indoor and outdoor baths of various temperatures make up this complex. Naturally, being with 4 other guys, I had to lead the group to jump into the coldest one (still not as cold as the lake in May, go Canada). You can hop between them and the sauna, or stay in one underneath a strong stream of water to get your neck massaged. Not too shabby....

On the theme of 'C' words, and I know some of these are a stretch, but other fun Budapest facts:

- home to the longest subway on Continent (yellow line)
- Church bells ring here too! But only at noon. Why? To remind the people of victory over Turks.
- Cynicism - although the people are happy, they are cynical that they have joined the EU, but still don't have the euro since 'their economy isn't strong enough.' Wages are low, taxes are high (up to 25%) so the national sport is cheating on one's tax return.
- despite this, I loved the people & the city, great Character!