Budapest

It  was two weeks ago when we arrived at Budapest from Wien. It was a great experience as the buildings were unique in design. There are more colors in the roof of the building. Also, the shape of the dome is different from what we saw in Munchen, Salzburg, and Wien.

We first had to struggle with going to our hotel as it was in the Castle area in Buda - I just knew that Budapest consists of two parts, namely Buda and Pest. It was a way up which is not easy with two luggages. Afterwards, we went to the Parliament at Pest. The building was very big and amazing.

A memorable experience is how the visit to Budapest breaks my stereotyping that all Europe are the same. We saw some similarity between the cities in Europe which we have visited before. But the city was very different. First, the train station was not as modern as the other cities. Also, at the time we had just been to cities where there was no ticket required for the train station for 5 days. So we were quite surprised that in Budapest, there is a people employed to check the ticket one by one visually. Another surprise was that they dare to have escalator with a very steep angle. It makes sense to save space but usually people do not want a very steep angle for safety reason. But they are ok while I feel like I am in a theme park ride.

It was also a unique experience of finding a Korean food which was not located in the city center. We needed to pass Ferenc Puskas station. Ferenc Puskas is a Hungarian soccer who is considered as one of the greatest player. So I was expecting a huge stadion until I found that it only referred to a ruin of a stadion.

The next day was also memorable. We went through from the Buda Castle down and then to various parts of the city.

It was sad to leave the city. But the sadness didn’t stay long as we were surprised on the Hungarian train that we use to go to the next destination. It was the most value for money of my trip. The train itself was fine. But first, the air con took some time to be felt. Second, it was the first time where we took train with compartment. Third, the compartment was three chairs facing another chairs. I never thought that the people there are used with sitting in front of strangers. We were fortunate that there was just two of us in that compartment, with one lady joining from Bratislava onwards. The one that were to our shock was the time before and at the departure where two different people went into our compartment asking for money. The first one was asking for himself while the second one asked for donations for some children. We learned to say no even when the second one already tried to help to put the luggage in the upper compartment of which is impossible to be done by myself.

Oh, another thing is that Hungarian seems to be caring about their history much. There are many monuments to remember of the history. We also saw a 15-minutes nice 3D video on the Hungarian history at the Castle viewing area. I guess we will always remember Budapest as it is one of the most unique places that we have ever visited.