Budapest

On Thursday, July 3, I catch a midday train to from Bratislava to Budapest. I arrive at the station with plenty of time to spare, and the train is predictably late. The trip is short, being only about three hours, and reasonably scenic. The journey was highlighted by a distant view of the massive Esztergom cathedral in Hungary from across the Danube in Slovakia. Esztergom was the first capital of Hungary (10th-13th C.) and is still home to the Hungarian primate. My arrival in Budapest is greeted by large crowds and congested traffic.

At 1.8 million people, Budapest is the largest city I will visit on my travels (discounting my night in London). The center of the city is a massive area stretching across both sides of the river. The walk from the train station to my hostel is a beast, and I am drenched when I arrive. The hostel is another one of those hidden ones without a prominent sign. It is on the second floor of an apartment building about a 15-20 minute walk from the river. The owner is obviously attempting to appeal to the numerous Australian backpackers for despite the name, Aboriginal Hostel, the walls are decorated with painted, "Aboriginal-style" motifs and animals. The hostel is quite cozy, but horrendously stuffy in the rooms and during the day.

The next day, I celebrate my national independence day by going out and seeing the national monuments of Hungary. I walk by the Great Synagogue of Budapest, but it is impossible to just see the inside. You have to buy a ticket for a tour that includes more sites as well. My next stop is St. Stephen's Basilica, which was only built in the last 150 years. For a modern cathedral, St. Stephen's is well-done though the interior is a little bit gaudy and crowded by tourists. A chapel around the back even contains millennia-old mummified right hand of St. Stephen himself. The best part of the cathedral, however, is the view from its tower. While the Danube is invisible, hidden by buildings, one can see almost the entirety of the city in all directions. It is quite windy at the top, as one can see by the state of my hair in the pictures.

Across the river in Buda (Budapest was actually three cities, two of them being Buda and Pest. Buda is on the west bank of the Danube, Pest is on the east.), I attempt to ascend Castle Hill. There is a tourist trap of a funicular directly across the main bridge, and, like all good tourist traps, the walking paths to the top of the hill are obscured. I end up walking to the south until a find a path up. Along the way, I pass numerous rundown, majestic buildings at the foot of the hill. I later encounter more of them across the river in Pest. I think that the buildings are left over from Budapest's days as the second city of a large imperial power in the 19th century and have just fallen into disrepair after the Hungary's loss of the First World War and the communist period.

After I finally reach the top, the way is blocked by some sort of festival. I loop my way around it, only to be blocked again. The event is some sort of Hungarian food festival that requires an entrance fee, but it is blocking entrance to one of the major Hungarian museums as well as the palace grounds. The Hungarians are meat-happy anyway, so I don't particularly feel like participating. Most of the other tourists feel the same way. They simply want to get to the other side of the festival, and the festival staff luckily let us. On the other side of the festival, I purchase a Hungarian pastry of coiled dough that is quite delicious. I also watch the passage of the festival parade, of which I have a video up on Facebook.

I then walk north to Matthias Church and Fisherman's Bastion. The church is covered in scaffolding and cannot be entered, but the neo-Gothic Bastion offers excellent views of the city and the river. It also offers a great view of the beautiful Hungarian parliament building. While I working my way down the hill towards the river, I passed two old ladies with a dog apiece. One dog started barking and set off the other one. This dog, a much larger black lab, felt the need to protect its squeak toy and bark at the same time. Much to my amusement, the dog's deep woofs, muffled by the toy, were interspersed with high-pitched squeaks.

Back in Pest, I wander south to the Market, a large open-air structure with several floors of sellers. The first floor is fruits, vegetables, and meat. The second is crafts and such, including the ubiquitous eastern European Russian matryoshka dolls (The nesting dolls. They are Russian and not really anything else, but are sold across eastern Europe to Westerners as misidentified eastern kitsch.). On my way out back towards my hostel, I buy a container of raspberries. The berries don't even make it back the fifteen minute walk.

The next day, my first stop is the Terror Museum, Hungary's communist museum. The museum is located in the former building of the Hungarian secret police. While the museum is listed as a major attraction, it is horribly biased. The museum portrays 50 years of Hungarian history as a reign of totalitarian terror over the unwilling Hungarian people by the Soviet Union, other Warsaw Pact members, and a few powerful Hungarians. According to the museum, the nation of Hungary was in a constant state of unrest and rebellion against the communist gov't. What the museum ignores, however, is that large portions of the Hungarian population were in support of the communist government or at least accepting or indifferent to it. The museum comes off as Hungary's well-contrived (they have "mood" lighting and a creepy soundtrack) attempt to shove a part of their history that they don't like under the carpet.

After the museum, I work my way to the large park to the northeast of the city center. Oddly, the road, one of the major routes in Budapest, is fenced off, the side roads are blocked off, and groups of police in riot gear are interspersed intermittently along the route. I later learned that a gay pride parade was taking place later that day, and, like much of eastern Europe, Hungary is severely homophobic. According to the news, many bottles were thrown, including ones filled with gasoline and lit on fire (i.e., Molotov cocktails/petrol bombs), and at least eight people injured. I was not around during that part or any part for that matter. The road was completely empty when I passed it.

Anyway, I reached the park and saw the impressive Heroes' Square, where a police academy graduation seemed to have just ended. Walking around the park, I eventually reached the palace in the center and sat down to rest. Strangely, an American youth dance troupe from L.A., the Westchester Lariats, performed on the steps of the palace. It was a little bit surreal, especially as the MC was an overly excited Columbian-American whose energy did not transfer to the crowds. On the way back to my hostel, I buy my train ticket to Ljubljana at the confusing main train station.

The next two days, I am feeling somewhat overwhelmed by the city and take it slow. On Sunday, I walk up towards the parliament building, whose inland side is not nearly as interesting as its river side, and eat dinner in the area. On Monday, I go to the Bodies exhibition, the one where human bodies have been dissected and preserved in interesting ways. It was in D.C. before I left, but the one here is much cheaper. The exhibition is quite interesting. I especially enjoy the section of the circulatory system. For it, they injected the system with some sort of colored hardening agent, and then dissolved all the other tissues, leaving behind a loufa-like collection of arteries, veins, and capillaries in the their normal positions.

It rains heavily that night, but the rain has luckily stopped when I leave the hostel at 5:25 am in order to catch my train to Zagreb. From Zagreb, I then catch a train to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. Overall, I feel that I spent one or two days too many in Budapest. While the city has many sites to see, the large number of people and tourists, as well as the city's physical size, was overwhelming for me. I did not feel particularly welcomed or safe.

Bratislava

As of June 30, my Fulbright grant and time in Poland are finished. I am now slowly traveling home via a mostly southern route. I am currently writing from Budapest, but the first stop of my trip was Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. Links to my picture albums are on the right of this page, including my photos from Bratislava. If you have Facebook, you can check out my videos as well.

I left my apartment in Gdansk on June 30 for an afternoon train to Warsaw, where I caught a night train to Bratislava. While I didn’t sleep particularly well, I only shared the six-bed couchette cabin with one other person. The train arrived in Bratislava at 5:41 am. This wasn’t really a problem as the sun had already risen, and there were plenty of people about. I still find the early sunrise and late sunset somewhat disturbing. During June in Gdansk, the sky was only dark from about 10 pm to 3 am. Suffering from a lack of sleep, I checked into my hostel before hitting the town.

As a tourist draw, Bratislava is trying to compete with the heavyweights of Prague, Vienna, Budapest, and Krakow, but sadly, it just doesn’t quite have what it takes. My first stop of the day was Bratislava Castle. While the castle has been around in some form for at least 700 years, it is an unimpressive square of stone that was only rebuilt in the 1960s. The castle is also currently undergoing another renovation/reconstruction and is closed to the public, along with the reportedly interesting museums that it houses.

Bratislava used to have a fairly nasty reputation as a city, a reputation that the city is desperately trying to rid itself of. To this effect, they have cleaned up the old town area, but I think that they perhaps cleaned it up too much. Everything looks like it was built within the last 15 years, even the buildings that are supposedly hundreds of years old. Most of the buildings are occupied by designer clothes stores or other high-end shops. The center of the city seems to be set aside solely for tourists to shop or eat in, with no other purpose. That said, the rougher side of the city is still visible occasionally. One can see a swarm of smokestacks reaching for the sky further out in the city, and I am pretty sure that I passed a dead hooker lying on the ground.

The city, while it may not have the historical chops than its more popular and populous neighbors do, does not make enough effort to play up the history is does have. There are guide posts placed around the city, but they only point to the castle, the presidential palace, and a changing random location. The church where the Hungarian monarchs (Bratislava was the capital of the Hungarian Empire for awhile) were crowned for 300 years is not open to the public. There are many museums scattered around the city, but much of their content has little relation to the city or area. The Bratislava Arms and Armor museum mostly consists of Western European armament and bad English translations. The National Art Gallery, which possesses a huge collection of Slovakian art from several centuries, is barely listed on the recent tourist maps. The city should advertise its history more if it wants complete with other central European destinations.

The highlight of my two days in Bratislava was my trip to the nearby Devin Castle. The castle, which was destroyed by Napoleon in the early 19^th century, sits on a rocky bluff at the confluence of the Danube and Morava rivers. Settlement at the location goes back thousands of years. While efforts are being made to polish it up just like Bratislava, it is still in ruined form for the most part and offers a gorgeous view of the surrounding hills and river. Check out my most recent picture album to see what I am talking about.

All things considered, I think that the real draw of Slovakia is its mountains and forests further east. If I had more time, I would like to explore them. Bratislava, even taking into account a side trip of a few hours to Devin Castle, is probably best done as a day trip from Vienna. At most, it is a nice place to stop for a day or two in between Budapest and Prague or Vienna. The city is, however, relatively free of the hordes of tourists that plague the larger cities that I have mentioned.