Budapest, Hungary

We found our hostel* in Budapest by listening to a girl who had hopped on the train somewhere before Budapest and who was going from cabin to cabin, bike in hand, handing out maps and asking if anyone needed assistance finding a hostel. Despite her cheery demeanor, Gina and I were very distrustful of what was basically a tout, so we talked to her three times before conceding that she was representing the hostel group that our guidebook recommended for Budapest, and we might has well book through her. I think she found our reticence bizarre, but she ultimately got her booking.

*I would have couchsurfed again in Budapest but regrettably Kyle actually had stuff to do at work and wasn’t able to do the preliminary search like he did in Krakow, and we never had regular, free internet access after we left Turkey.

We booked the cheapest option, which ended up having a pretty solid location as it wasn’t too far of a walk but still far enough that we were removed from the pricey, touristy area for food. The building was a university dorm that gets converted into a hostel during the summer. No AC and a large unisex bathroom (the unisex showers worried Gina until we figure out you could lock the door). There was a group of a dozen-ish German(?) friends who shared our floor, but we simply awkwardly passed each other in the bathrooms and kitchen and never spoke to each other.

We built our time in Budapest around 2 free (yay!) tours, done by the same company and working on the same tip-only basis as others. The first was a general informational/historical tour by a girl near-ish my age. This tour had an enormous group, as it included twenty-odd future MBA students from Columbia University on their "networking/bonding/bacchanal" pre-MBA trip. The second trip was a fastinating "Communist Tour" given by a lady in her forties who spoke about the differences between life under communism and life now. She was appropriately nuanced, explaining how some things have gotten better, and somethings worse, confirming my belief that one system of government isn't absolutely better than the other, but each has their strengths and weaknesses*. An excellent example was education. College education is infinitely better, as admissions are no longer dictated by how active/loyal you were in the Party, but now by merit. In contrast, the quality of primary and secondary education has plummeted as budgets have been cut, salaries slashed, and kids no long spend their entire day in school.
*Don't worry, my vote is still for capitalism

What was most interesting about this was that the guides were far more negative on their country than most tours. Like my tour in Sofia, the guides were natives, but they were very harsh on their current leaders and the current state of their country. For example, the older guide stressed that the Hungarian parliament was only 20 years old, not yet a real parliament worthy of their magnificent home. She thought Hungarian was very much a post-communist state, not yet a liberal, capitalist democracy like most of the EU. She talked about the systemic corruption in the state medical service - doctors are grossly underpaid, so while medical care is legally free, it is necessary to bribe doctors if you want any sort of treatment, or to be treated as a human. This led to an interesting observation by an Estonian (Latvian?) girl on the tour that said there is no such corruption in Estonian medicine, perhaps because bribery wasn't established under communism.

Another interesting episode of negativity, our younger guide of the first day is studying international law, and planning on leaving for England or Germany once she gets a degree (brain drain) so she can actually make money. She decided to not study EU law because she did not have faith EU will stick around much longer. I mentioned the inertia EU has, and another guy on the tour replied, "Yes, [EU] is like a machine. It is the Borg"

On the first day we also did a tour of the Parliment building. Our guide was a very grumpy old lady. but it was a majestic building. On the second day, we spent the morning in the National museum, sheltering from the rain. The National Museum scored major points for organizing itself chronologically, having a geopolitical map of Europe at the entrance of each room for reference, and focusing on war and politics, putting silly things like culture and art in the periphery.

Food: For our first lunch, we picked a random restaurant and ordered the two set menus without having the slightest idea of what we were eating. Ended up my meatloaf was good, but Gina's mystery meat (liver?) was only OK. For dinner, Gina got goulash (yummy) and and I got vegetarian surprise. The second day we had breakfast and lunch at the large Central Market right next to our hostel. My breakfast was a mistakenly ordered poppy seed pastry (rather dry) along with a very Hungarian stuffed paprika pepper, and for lunch I got a wonderfully greasy Hungarian burger, complete with cole slaw and bacon piled within.

Service was consistently slow, which was frequently frustrating, but the waitresses were always polite and attentive, whenever they actually made it over to our table.