Hungary - Budapest

Day 197 - Monday, August 6

The train to Budapest was scheduled to get in fairly late and was delayed on top of that, so I didn't get there until about 10pm. When I finally got to the place I was staying, Club Apartments & Rooms, I was really excited to have my own room for a few days, and a clean, bug-free bed. One small problem, no one answered my many rings and knocks at the door - apparently reception isn't 24 hours. Ummm...that's not good. That quite important piece of information was nowhere on the website I booked through (Agoda again) or on the "important details" provided with the email confirmation. After getting let in the building by another guest, receiving the wifi password from them, using the wifi and skype to call the cell phone number provided with my confirmation, and perhaps someone getting woken up to come over and let me in, I finally got inside the room, which was actually a really nice studio apartment - a very pleasant surprise as I had only booked a "room" and not an "apartment."

I would've provided my own pictures of the apartment at this point, but -- and I'm jumping the gun a little bit here -- my camera was stolen on Thursday in Budapest. The same camera I just bought a few months ago, and the same camera for which I spent $50 on a replacement charger just a week prior in Krakow. So no pictures with this blog, except a few I stole from Google. Without any pictures to break-up my rambling, I'll try to keep this blog short and sweet.

Day 198 - Tuesday, August 7

Tuesday I explored the city, which was a really neat blend of old and new, with some amazing old castles and churches. I took lots of pictures. They were all stolen.

Day 199 - Wednesday, August 8

The place I was at didn't have availability after Tuesday night, so on Wednesday, I moved from my quiet oasis in the private studio apartment to a party hostel - Carpe Noctem Vitae. When I got there at noon I discovered what seemed a bit like a clean version of a fraternity/sorority house, where everyone was either already drinking or preparing for a long day of drinking. It seems I showed up in Budapest during the week of Sziget - one of Europe's biggest multi-day music festivals. Of the 20 or so people in the common room of the hostel, half of them were wearing bright tank tops that said "Let's Sziget Fucked," like these:

From I Hope I Don't Get Rabies

And the guy working there that checked me in was in a full-body Tiger suit. I took a picture. It was stolen. As I was leaving on Friday to head to Slovenia, I checked out the lineup of musicians for Wednesday and Thursday, and decided Thursday's lineup sounded a lot better, so I planned to go on Thursday. Those of us that didn't go to the festival on Wednesday got together with 20-30 folks from the affiliate hostels for a pub crawl. Apparently "ruin" bars are the cool thing in Budapest, where basically bar owners buy old falling apart buildings and stick a bar and some furniture in the middle/throughout. Some of them were actually quite cool.

Day 200 - Thursday, August 9

When I woke up on Thursday, I called an audible and decided against the festival. Instead, I opted to check out Szechenyi Furdo, one of several very old therapeutic baths in Hungary.

From I Hope I Don't Get Rabies

My best guess is that while I was swimming in the pool there, my camera was stolen out of my bag. I think I jinxed myself because just a few days previous, I had reflected on how I'd been fortunate not to have anything stolen to that point. Oh well. At least it wasn't a really nice camera, and at least I had already gotten all my pictures prior to Hungary off of it.