PEST PART II

so then i got up and we went to budapest. i just wanted to sleep. but noooooo. ehh who cares. seriously budapest is gorgeous. the danube river is beautiful, the castles are awesome, and the bridges and amazing. it's picturesque for sure...basically is was like visiting one of the kingdoms in lord of the rings, minus the bows/arrow/hobbits/etc. it was sunny the whole weekend, so barna showed us around the river on the pest side downtown (where he lives, for 200 euros/month) and then hit the buda side by walking across a bridge that resembles a scaled down version on the brooklyn bridge. explored a castle and sat on a cliff overlooking the whole buda side while talking about the fall of communism in hungary. barna was telling me how they had a revolution three years ago involving some corruption in the government and how he was apart of it. they were running around fighting and stuff. yess. that's awesome! saw the inside of a really amazing church, but the interesting part was that where jesus is supposed to be on the altar (in statue form, of course) there was an old king that basically formed the city 1000 years ago and apparently was a strong catholic. interesing place to put him though...:) i must also say that every statue we saw involved some human we had never heard of, and a horse. we concluded after seeing this a million times that, in actuality, the horse is the important part of each statue. there was something amazing this certain horse did.........hmmm

after exploring the entire city, we hit the most popular hungarian destination in budapest...the BATHS. they have hot springs there, and they basically build a whole classical temple around it, which tons and tons of pools full of tons and tons of russians. this is really eastern europe now, and apparently lots of russians either vacation in hungary, or have relatives there. many people there used to speak russian, including barna's mom, because during communist reign, well, you know it goes...

but that baths were awesome. switching from hot water to a sauna to cold water to hot water blah blah blah was great. just kicked it there for three hours! europeans love this place. i must say i loved it too. and so did bin, especially when the fountains "peed" on him. haha. he likes that kind of stuff.

after we went to an amazing hungarian cafe that served some interesting hungarian and serbian dishes. i don't really even know what i ate, but i do know that it was muy deliciouso. it was some sort of meat with potatoes..and the atmosphere was great. just a bunch of hungarians drinking beer and smoking in a crowded little cafe that looked like it was about to fall down. nice.

after, it was off to a halloween/bollywood themed dance party that actually just turned out to be a typical techno dance party. still cool, just not "bollywood" cool. :) drinks were buy one get one free for a half hour when we got there, so we got a couple extra for the rest of the night w/out have to spend many more forints (forints are the hungarian currency). did a little chillin, did a little techno dancing, and it was all good. but at one point the dj was playing some kind of slower dance songs and they were making me sleepy (and i gotta mention that barna was not enjoying his girlfriend's company...cause he doesn't ever like to go out with her..hhaha), so we left and went to another place with a live band. of course, the lead singer of the band was dressed as a vampire. the band was wierd. they played odd things like american big band swing. what the?? it was pretty cool, but no one was really dressed up there except the lead singer so we peaced out and went back to barna's to hang out.

next day..woke up at 12. didnt move till 1. searched for lunch. but it was sunday. sundays suck for finding lunch. we walked a good 1 hour brisk walk around the city and finally found the most awesome place you could ever imagine...that's right...the most awesome place you could ever imagine! hungarian beef stew with homemade noodle balls and a pickled cucumber salad is the bomb. checked out a libeskind building and heroes square, which of course is fulled of famous horses with some weird men on them. by then the day was almost over, and it was time to eat again. so on our way out we hit a place that served a little goulash..yeaaah goulash. its like a soup that has meat and vegetables in it. good stuff. and finally barna wanted to show us a romantic part of the city...up at freedom statue (kind of like statue of liberty but smaller and overlooking the whole city). it was quite romantic. bin and i were able to hold eachother tightly while watching cars go over the mini-brooklyn bridge. haha. ok so at this point it was time to go home. and we did. got home in like 2 hours because barna was going like 10000 kilometers an hour back to austria...