Bojogni (Bow-fog-an-knee) all round
Trip Start
Aug 09, 2004
1
5
13
Trip End
Oct 08, 2004
Where I stayed
Budapest, Szentendre, Egar, Seged, Hungary
Friday, August 27, 2004
27/08/04 - 03/08/04
Budapest....our home for the next few days. Actually we ended up staying in Budapest for about 7 days (with a couple of day trips here and there) - the longest we have stayed in one place so far and I doubt that we will be staying this long in any other, time being the key factor. You could say that we could have unpacked our bags and made ourselves at home like some of the Japanese backpackers, well at the "Best Hostel" anyway. Some of the girls in our room even put their stuff away in any cupboards or draws available, there's no place like home I suppose.
Obviously our first day in Budapest was a bit of a write-off though as we were so tired from having no sleep from the night before. Little bit of walking along the Danu River and a bit of late afternoon kipping. On the Saturday afternoon we came across the Budapest Parade, similar to the Berlin "Love" Parade but on a smaller scale. For those of you that are unaware of what that is - it is a huge dance party that begins with large trucks pulling floats behind them with DJ's playing music. Must say that some of the floats were a bit of an eye opener....little bit of down played S&M here and there. Got a good look of the parade from the top of the St Stephen's Basilica in town. Instead of following the parade all the way to Hero's Square where the big rave party was taking place we went to go see a Cultural Folkdance......lots of slapping of thighs and women dancing with beakers on their heads filled with wine - very entertaining. Caught the end of the rave though and some fireworks.
Budapest is very beautiful and has often been described as the Paris of the east - can definitely see why.
Of course when in Budapest you can not look past a Termal, as it has so many to choose from. Chrissy and I definitely took a liking to the whole Termal experience. We ended up going to the one in the city park - "Szechenyl Baths" - the one famous for the old men playing chess while trying to turn back the years. Unfortunately, that day we had a couple of run ins with the local elderly community - for some reason whatever we did didn't seem to agree with them.....ie. splashing water when we weren't etc, etc....can't please anyone here, well not on the day that we were there anyway.
From Budapest we took a couple of day trips - one to Szentendre and one to Egar. Both pretty little towns in the wine areas north/north-east of Budapest. The bus trip out to Szentendre was made a little more interesting when some woman jumped in front of the bus, trying to get on, and as a result we were delayed for 20 mins because the bus driver wouldn't let her on. The police were called, some guy was going around filming things and finally she was allowed on, not to a welcome reception, after been given a fine. Szentendre was quite touristy, whereas Egar was a little bigger but thankfully it didn't have the same number of tourists and there was a castle on the hill with great views overlooking the town.
One evening in Budapest we meet up with some locals who took us to a couple of bars to experience the Budapest nightlife and learn a few more Hungarian words to add to my repertoire ie. Bojogni (burping) - very useful words of course.
Our last destination in Hungary before heading in to Serbia was Szeged. Yet another pretty little town on the Danu river. While there the town was having a Paprika/Fish soup Festival but on the last day in Hungary we unfortunately didn't have enough money to try the famous soup as we had spent everything in preparation of going into the next country. People were brewing soup all along the river in their own little cauldrons while some tents had these huge ones over a metre big. You could easily stew some little boys or girls in those suckers.
