I always knew that Budapest was on our agenda of places to go and I was completely indifferent on that decision. I didn't know anything about the city and hadn't really heard anything good or bad about it. So once again Budapest was a place that not only was I pleasantly surprised about but it has become one of my favorite places that I have gone to on this trip so far.
The quote at the top of this page is what is written above the doorway at the hostel that we stayed at, Carpe Noctem "Seize the night". We were recommended to stay here by some friends that we met in Rome who raved about it. This hostel is the most amazing place that I have ever stayed and ever been to before. The people that run the hostel and the people that I met here were some of the most amazing, unique, interesting, and fun people that I have ever met. The hostel was in a tall building and we had to hike up about 5 or 6 flights of stairs to get to the hostel which was a flat with 4 rooms - one room for 6 people, two for 8 people, and a staff room. Very intimate setting. Music was always playing in the common room, no one hibernated in their rooms, group dinners every night made by the staff, and planned nights out every night! The hostel fosters a family feel making us feel right at home and making friendships that I know will last. We planned to stay for 4 nights, then it was 5, and then we extended another 4 for a total of 9 nights in Budapest at this wonderful hostel. We left for one week and then decided to come back again. We currently are back in Budapest because we missed all of the people and this amazing city.
When we first got to Budapest I was thrilled because I knew that we would be meeting up with a friend from San Diego - Zach who I worked with at Sushi on the Rock. We have both been traveling for a month or so and have been trying to meet up somewhere but plans just weren't matching up. Budapest worked out accidentally for us to get together and we had the best time. Zach was one of the girls for the four days he was here. Walked around with us, dealt with our girl talk, and saw the Budapest sights with us as well. It was great to see a familiar face while being away from home.
On our second day in Budapest we decided to go caving which is crawling and squeezing through underground caves of Budapest. It was the most amazing experience. I normally don't like to do things that push my comfort zone and am somewhat of a scaredy cat, not even enjoying roller coasters and always being the one holding peoples shoes and belongings as they cliff jump at the Gorge in Washington. This wasn't a major risk taking activity but I was nervous to do it. We had the most hilarious Hungarian tour guide who constantly was motivating us and was trying to crack jokes in english that would not have been funny if he wasn't Hungarian. Our entire group bonded and laughed and had the best time the entire caving trip. We had to maneouver our bodies in the weirdest of ways to get through some of the tight spots and wore full on jump suites and helmets with headlights on them. I must admit I felt pretty cool in that getup.
Two of the other things that we did in Budapest were the Terror Museum and the World Press photo exhibition. Both of them were very moving and very memorable. The Terror Museum walked us through the history of Hungary under Nazi Germany occupation, suppression, internment, etc. It consisted of three floors of artistic, thorough, and thoughtful combinations of historical presentations of this period of time in Hungary. The basement of the museum consisted of the execution rooms and the types of torture tactics that they used back during that time period. It was very eerie and difficult to take in but also very moving. The muesum was good about having handouts explaining the succession of events and what each room was portraying. The combination of videos, artistic presentations of material, music, and informative handouts was perfectly executed. This made the museum interesting through and through. The world press exhibit was unbelieveable. This is the compilation of photos of the winners from the world press contest. The photos are equally beautiful and horrifying. Some of the pictures were hard to look at with how much pain and turmoil they captured but it was amazing to see photos from all over the world. It made me stop and think really hard about my life and how lucky I am. It also made me have perspective on the types of things that I sometimes forget happens in other countries. Some of the things in these photos were disease, natural disastor, wildlife, competition, war, crime, and many many more. I've never seen so much emotion portrayed through simply a picture. I feel very lucky that they happened to have this exhibition here in Budapest while we were here.
Budapest has been a place that it has just been enjoyable to walk around, shop around, and just take in the beautiful architecture surrounding you. The train station right by our hostel and one of the bridges were designed by the same man who designed the eiffel tower. We were able to see the beautiful sights along the Danube river at night on our booze cruise with our hostel. The buildings were all lite up and glowing and the boat sold bottles of champagne so everyone was popping bottles of champagne while enjoying the breathtaking views around us.
Our hostel truly made our experience here. The night life has been the most fun I have experienced in any city. We've had a booze cruise, a pub crawl of ruin bars that are abandon buildings that they decided to turn into bars, a reverse pub crawl of the same bars in reverse order, themed night when everyone dresses up in ridiculous costumes just because, open mic night (the best night), and Jager trains where you become a member of the club if you do 10 Jager bombs in an hour and a half. It doesn't matter what night of the week it is because the Carpe Noctem staff insists that every night is "an epic night" and you definitely cannot miss any night. One of the places we went to had tunnels leading you to different dance floor rooms with different music and one night we stumbled upon the room that was playing Hungarian music and everyone was huddled in groups chanting and jumping up and down. We knew none of the Hungarian words but we just acted like we did and tried our best to blend it yelling random words that we hoped sounded like what they were saying.
Our Carpe family tried their best to get us to stay for my birthday but since they wanted to celebrate with me they decided to have a Buda-birthday bash on our last night, the Thursday before my birthday. We went to the ballet at the Opera house which was such a beautiful ballet and I was amazed at the dancers and the story line and then danced the night away at a bar called Instant.
Budapest has become one of my favorite spots that I've been to on this trip and it is beyond my ability to put into words what is so special about this place. Part of it is the amazing hostel we stayed at and are staying at again for a few days but there is just something about Budapest - the people, the night life, the architecture, and so much more. All of the staff that work here came to Budapest at one point planning to stay for 5 days or so and some never left after setting foot in the hostel and some left and came back indefinitely. You get sucked in to Budapest in the best way possible. After Budapest we went to Prague, Vienna, and now we are back in Budapest for a few days. I think I will go off to Switzerland for 2 days and then to Amsterdam!
Stay tuned to hear about Prague and Vienna, it will be sooner than later :)
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