Budapest (a continué)

Where to begin.  Budapest (pronounced "Budapesht" by locals) was one of my all-time favorites.  After an extremely alarming discount airline flight, my traveling companions and I arrived in the Hungarian capital.  Our first mission: exchange currency.

Since Budapest is not part of the EuroZone, they do not use the Euro as currency which meant that we had to exchange our Euros for Hungarian forinths (I'm not even sure if that is spelled correctly but you probably don't either so ha).  The weird thing about Hungarian money is that the denominations of money are HUGE.  I can't remember exactly how many Hungarian forinths equal one Euro, but I want to say it's something like 300.  Thus, you can eat out at a restaurant and end up paying thousands of forinths for a meal.  It's both deceiving and mind-boggling.

After going through that confusing process, we headed to our hostel.  The Hungarian train system can only be described by one word.  Apocalyptic.  The cars were so old, they looked like they came out of some crazy zombie movie, complete with torn seats and cracked windows.  Seeing as Hungary has only been out of a communist system for around 20 years, it's understandable that their infrastructure is struggling.  Still.  Scary. 

As we lugged our giant traveling backpacks with us, we set out trying to find our hostel.  Budapest isn't big on street signs.  It took us 2 hours to find the hostel.  Turns out we had the wrong address.  Yay.

By the time we finally found the hostel, we were exhausted and wanted nothing more than to collapse, but we were in Eastern Europe!  And there's two distinct elements that Eastern Europe has going for it that got us off our beds:  cheap, delicious food and night life.  What else? 

We ate at a HEAVENLY restaurant called Menza.  The food was beyond amazing and so, so cheap.  We each had a four course meal for the equivalent of 8 Euros, which is unheard of in the rest of Europe.  Thank you Budapest. 

Hungarian stuffed peppers.  Um, yes.

Wow, this is taking forever so I'll speed it up.  The next few days consisted of clubs at night and communist monuments by day.  Budapest was such a beautiful city and I just couldn't get enough of its troubled history. 

A view of the GORGEOUS Parliament building from across the river.

We even made some lovely British friends on our first night there.  We arrived back at our hostel late at night on our first night and discovered that we still needed to put sheets on our bed.  As I awkwardly failed to stuff my pillow into a pillowcase, two British guys walked in.  Naturally, I introduced myself, still holding the pillow and obviously needing help.  Without any hesitation, one of the guys just grabbed the pillow from me and expertly stuffed the case.  With a charming British accent he said, "Here you go love," and I knew we were going to be best friends.

Our awesome friends from Liverpool.

The boys ended up traveling around with us the entire time we were in Budapest.  We went to this AMAZING bar called Szimpla, which is supposedly rated as one of the top 10 bars in the world (don't quote me on that).  The place looked like someone had ransacked a thrift store and then meticulously placed everything in a state of organized chaos.  If there's one thing that Budapest does well, it's grunge chic.

A view of the bar.

A hangout under the stairs?

Jonny smoking shisha and and blowing smoke rings like a boss.

Aside from a very creepy hostel worker that left flowers for my friend Merryn, the trip was mostly filled with sightseeing and going out at night.  Budapest is my second favorite city that I visited (we'll get to my first favorite later) and I would definitely go back there again.  Maybe I'll learn Hungarian...