Spicy Food, Crusades, and Serenades

We received a recommendation for some good Indian food so we set out our first night after settling in to our apartment. The blocks were longer than they look on the map and our stomachs growled angrily at us. No food since the early morning on the train and it was nearly 6pm. We found the little restaurant and headed upstairs to the hastily decorated dining area. We ordered with abandon and didn’t consider the 10 dollars worth of naan we were ordering to go along with masalas all around and two giant beers. It was already hot, the semi-circular window pushed open to no apparent avail, so when our food arrived without the familiar creamy red color we realized we were in for something. It was hot hot hot. I mean hotter than Narendra’s wife curry, hot! Ron started sweating immediately and had sad little puppy eyes. It was a long day, and good Indian food was not to be. It was so hot we couldn’t savor it at all, forced to eat as quickly as possible and washing it down with beer so our mouths couldn’t register the flavor.

The bill came and it was hard to grasp at 7000 forint. The currency conversion is crazy and you feel a little rich holding a 20000 bill but really it is only $100. I’m having fun using the Czech crown, Turkish lira, Bulgarian leva, and the Hungarian forint, it’s a lot more interesting than using the Euro everywhere, immediately knowing you are getting overcharged on an overpriced slice of whatever.

Did I mention before, we are slightly obsessed with Mexican food? We’ve been able to shed all of our luxuries from home pretty easily. Except when it comes to the jalapeno pepper and heavenly blend of melted cheeses. We walked all over Budapest for 5 hours on a search, no a crusade for our beloved friend Senior Salsa. Finally limping in to a place called Iguana that we walked by hours before, not noticing, and then trying to find in vain later circling like blind dogs around and around Parliment area of Budapest.

Not totally forsaking Hungarian food, we enjoyed a lovely traditional dinner at Kulacs one night. I had a spicy pumpkin soup and paprikash chicken. Ron had goulash and stuffed cabbage which was sublime. There were morsels in his dish that were very foreign to my taste buds, not that I didn’t enjoy my chicken, it was much more bland than I anticipated considering the heat in other Hungarian dishes.


They had a quartet playing music and I got a personal serenade by an amazing violinist. Afterwards we offered a small tip, they declined but would accept a drink. Four expensive schnapps and chasers later added to our bill, and I felt like Rocky inadvertently buying everyone a round of drinks! C’est la vie, we will learn one of these days or go broke trying.

One other thing on Budapest that I found interesting is that it is named for the two cities across the river Danube that joined into one city back in 1873. The Buda side or west side has the Buda Castle and Citadel and is more residential. The Pest side (pronounced “pesht”) has downtown, the shopping district and the university. We spent all of our time on the Pest side, unless you count crossing a bridge halfway, so maybe we can’t say we’ve been to Budapest?

Do you like my new shirt? After Ron's rip-off he didn't want to wear his new Turkey flag tee so I took it off his hands and after a soak in some bleach, voila! new pink shirt for me!

Read more...

A day at the Szechneyi Thermal Bath

On a pleasant but very warm summer day we strolled down Andrassy Avenue, the grand boulevard of Budapest, taking in the neo-renaissance architecture of the city.

We headed towards the city park and came upon the impressive Hero’s Square. Quite literally we hadn't researched Budapest yet and when we just stumble upon a great monument, square, or building its like magic. Or the universe conspiring in wonderful ways.

Our final destination was located inside the park, Szechneyi Thermal Baths which are the largest medicinal baths in Europe. Entrance to the bath was about $15/each for the day and you even get a locker to hold your belongings if, that is, you can figure out the card they give you is meant to go in the locker door to release the key.

Stepping out into the pool area for the first time is just incredible, the nicest public pools I’ve ever seen, decorated lavishly in neo-Baroque style with white scupltures reflecting off the aqua pools below. The three pools outside ranged from cool to warm to hot. It was amazing to be inside a large pool that felt like a jacuzzi in the middle of a sunny day. Surprisingly it felt great. Now we are kicking ourselves for skipping out on Pamukkale Hot Springs in Turkey.

It was crowded but didn’t seem overwhelming. A lot of locals come to these baths, some regulars have come for years to play chess while lingering in the medicinal waters.

One of the pools had circles of jets spewing up from the floor monopolized by Hungarian grandmas in old fashioned bathing suits. I couldn’t figure out the fuss until I staked one out for myself and made a mad dash for it across the pool when it was free. And it was, how can I put this…aqua erotic. Go grandma!

A few hours later we discovered that the outside pools are only half the experience. Inside there are hot and cold plunges, whirlpools, steam rooms, and saunas.

I hate saunas. I try them every year or two, and like a dry martini I can never acquire the taste. If I liked to be hot and suffocating I would never have left Arizona. It’s a dry heat, they say, but that’s just a nice way of saying hella hot with the operative word on “hell”. Guess this is a good opportunity to give a big HI to all my pals in Dante’s Inferno sweating out another August!

Ron loved the saunas and especially liked going directly afterwards to the cold plunge, the 18 degrees celsius water jolting his system awake. Then to a 38 degree jacuzzi, I’m not sure if this would be a very therapetic order of events, but we had fun for hours running around like little kids.

Read more...

The Great Budapest Apartment Shuffle

Here’s the story of how we stayed in 3 apartments in 8 days in Budapest.

After getting off the neverending train ride we still needed to find a place to stay. We immediately met a women named Kathy that offered her apartment for 50 euro/night. We thanked her and went on our merry way, the price was too much for us and way too much for Budapest. We needed to hit the bank, get some food, and then purchase our next train ticket “before” we left the station so we don’t have to backtrack and fight the crowds more than necessary. That plan was quickly thwarted as good ole Kathy found us and started bargaining. We were a little worn down so settled on a much lower price and left to take a look at it.

The apartment was big but on closer inspection wasn’t exactly clean. I don’t even know if they changed the sheets, the bed sheet sporting a red wine stain and curly black hair. No internet connection. And the single sorry dusty fan was broken. Whatever. We were starving and needed food and would have agreed to a liver transplant at that point. The apartment had 4 doors bearing 5 locks and was like Fort Knox trying to get in and out. I prayed for no fires because we would surely be burnt to a crisp. We booked it for 3 nights but when we went back to the train station all the trains to Vienna were booked so we tried to book it for two extra nights.

However, the next morning the man of the house comes over, some ex-cop from NY, and tells us that the bathtub is leaking into the apartment below and we have to move out. But worry not, he has a friend with a hostel that we can move to and will meet us the next morning at 10am. Around 11am, and he meanders in, and takes us to a shitty little hovel that is charging $40/night for a sad room with a shared bathroom, all the other backpackers looking depressed and forlorn in the dim, depressing light. No thanks.

We took our plight to the street and went online to find a cute little studio from Firstapartments for an amazing price of 20 Euro or $28/night, complete with AC, internet, and kitchenette. When we showed up, it was even better than we imagined, it was super clean and well decorated in a deep red motif. The bathroom was so spotless you could eat off the floor. The owner, Gerry, was exceedingly cheerful and friendly and we wished we met him earlier. If you are ever in Budapest and want a good deal from a great guy, you better call him up!

I just love the big beds that use two comforters. This can actually save a relationship if you are with someone who is a bed hog or a “tuck and roller”. You know the type who tucks the covers under them and rolls away leaving their partner blanket-less and freezing. (Ahem, Ron.) My mom has known this one for years after renting an apartment in Val Gardena Italy, it must be a European thing, we first saw it in Prague and now we seek it out as our first bedding option. Second is the two twin Brady Bunch arrangement. Lastly is the too short, not wide enough full size bed that is way too small when it is hot out. No snuggles from me when it’s over 90 degrees out and you are in a room without a fan.

We were only supposed to stay 2 nights, but Ron woke up feeling sick with a cold. Now we had a conundrum, we had non-refundable train tickets and the room we were in was getting work done on the gas line the next day. Gerry found us another apartment from a friend in the Octogon area for two more nights and I went back to the train station to hawk the tickets to an English couple heading to Vienna. It was the first time I carried around a sign hand scrawled with a black sharpie and even though I was selling real tickets I felt like people took me for some kind of a scam artist. We recouped most of the ticket cost and I nursed Ron back to health with fizzy vitamin c tabs and endless cups of juice.

The two times we were to meet Gerry, he was an hour late like the other landlord and we were seriously wondering what Hungarian sense of time was, until we arrived at the train station on our very last day and realized that our watches were off by one hour the entire time we were there!

Read more...