Hanne

The last month is a little out of order, but I'm working on it! So here goes...

I never thought that I would ever see a musical fountain or sing Hungarian karaoke until dawn, but it would seem that Budapest is full of surprises. Then again, I actually had no idea what to expect. With such a blank slate before starting, giant dancing paprikas carteheeling down the street probably would no have fazed me. (Just for the record, we didn’t actually see any giant dancing paprikas, but Budapest was still really neat.)

Holly and I arrived in Budapest on Thursday evening. I was very glad to see her at the station because it was a little disorientating to be in a strange land with a strange language- this was only the second time I had been somewhere where I could not understand a word! She had organized a hostel for us so we lugged all our baggage (Ok, mostly it was MY baggage!) the 7 blocks or so to Marco Polo and made ourselves at home. The room was interesting, there were 12 people but each bunk had a little cubicle, screened off by a curtain. So even though it was a dorm room there was still a little privacy, which was nice, as were the huge lockers. Yay! Then we went down to the river…

Thursday just happened to be a national holiday in Hungary. It was St Stephens day and seeing as St Stephen was the first King of Hungary I was quite a big deal. There was a MASSIVE fireworks display down by the river, fireworks exploding off two bridges and all along the bank. The display lasted half an hour and the fireworks were dancing around each other and some even had parachutes! I had never seen something like it before, very impressive. Then we grabbed a kebab and sat on the curb for a good half an hour watching people trickle by. It really was like a river of people, kind of like watching a television as they all wandered by, filtering around the bicycles and traffic light poles then joining again into one big mass. Trippy. Especially with the gunpowder in the air, creating a really theatrical atmosphere.

What next? Well, then it was Friday and a very hot Friday and we decided to climb a hill to look at the statue of liberty. It was rather a big hill, but the view was totally worth it, looking down the Danube onto the castle and Parliament and Fisherman’s Bastion. The best thing was the store selling cold water at the top. What a lifesaver! Then we spent rather while trying to climb DOWN the hill. Ordinarily this should be easier than up, but we kept running into dead ends and sheer cliff faces and other minor obstacles. When we finally emerged at the bottom Holly was looking for a bus to the castle, but then we realized it was like 200m down the road. Doh! We made a picnic of some sweet damper style bread with cinnamon and sugar then checked out the Fisherman’s bastion ,which is the coolest structure ever! Would be the perfect setting for a fairytale ball. Especially with the giant marzipan cake in the background…

All up we were in Budapest for 4.5 days. It is all kind of scrambled in my mind, but the best bits were definitely St Stephens Basilica, the blind Museum and Saturday night at the karaoke. St Stephens Basilica is absolutely huuuuge and incredibly ornate. When we went to have a look there was actually a wedding taking place so we got to clap for the bride before going out the back to inspect the mummified hand. That is one very odd thing about the churches over here, they all seem to have relics and bones from saints and other famous dignitaries. This one was particularly special though as it was not just a bone but the entire fist. Fingers curled over, tucked under the thumb, decorated with jewels. Or ‘Edelsteine’ as the lovely old man described them in his mix of English, German and Hungarian. Well, we got the gist! I am pretty sure it was St Stephen’s fist, but if not it was still pretty special as it had a huge silver house to be carried around in. Not many dead hands can boast an abode of their own.

The blind museum was also worth visiting. Actually I think it was a temporary exhibition. Set up in a gallery, all the light was blocked out and blind guides took you on a tour through the ‘garden’, the ‘street’, the ‘kitchen’. We had to recognize things like hoes and rakes and different spices. I was getting a bit too curious though because you were not supposed to open the fridge! There was a car and a bike too on the crossing the road part, but the bike had no engine in it. My hands had a look to see if they recognized the sort but to no avail! Our guide was a really bubbly 23 year old who chatted to us all the way through and answered any questions such as how she knew where the pepper was in the kitchen. We actually only went there after seeing a poster in the hostel but it was well worth the experience. I think they must have similar things in NZ too but never visited one (only at MOTAT in the dark dome).

So the blind exhibition (or ‘invisible exhibition’ as it was called) happened on Sunday and we visited in the hope that it might help us stay awake a little after Saturday night. One of Holly’s AFS friends from Germany was doing a practicum in Budapest and we met up for dinner and to go to the ‘gypsy pub’, a typical Hungarian sports bar in a basement in some obscure suburb. This was where I learnt my first Hungarian words when I was sent up to order to ‘boratsch cola’ (no idea how you spell it, but it was a mix of red wine and coca cola). Success, I came back with what we wanted! Very useful phrase to know… When they closed it had started raining but we took the tram over the bridge and got off in the middle to look at the view… and what a view it was! Raindrops falling, river rushing blackly past, lights of the city prickling and twinkling through the rain… well, of course we had to dance to celebrate. I made holly be the man though! And then we were heading back over to Pest when we found the karaoke bar. And this was probably the most Hungarian thing I did in Hungary, it was certainly no tourist spot! Luckily the other two could speak enough Hungarian to have a chat to the lady at our table and to exaplin they were exchange students when it was our turn to sing. ‘Neunundneunzig Luftballoons’, how fitting! Pretty much all the other songs were in in Hungarian (apart from ‘Cotton Eyed Joe’) but that was no deterrant! Yay for having the words projected on the screen, that’s one way to quickly assimilate written and spoken language! We finally headed home at around 6am, well after the sun had come out and just after most strip clubs shut down for the day.

This has turned into a kind of McFlurry of events, stirred with a plastic spoon until everything overlaps and tastes of caramel sauce. Ah well, caramel is tasty so it is all good! Margaret Island was also really neat, we had some strawberry candyfloss there as we watched a fountain that spurted in time to music piped up through funnels… everything from ‘the blue danube’ to opera. Quite mesmerizing. We spent about 2 hours there on Tuesday, watching and resting. Coolest fountain ever. And the House of Terror? Well, that was where the hungarian nazi party had their HQ and also where the Hungarian version of the Stasi (so the secret police) had their HQ after that. There was a huge tank sitting on a bed of oil and a wall of granite portraits in memorial to all the victims and those who simply ‘disappeared’. I certainly learnt a lot about history in the time we were there!

So that was Budapest in a nutshell, of course there were lots of kebabs in between and a couple of German guys touring Europe on 600cc bikes (a Yamaha and a Kawasaki?), the English lads in our dorm who boasted very loudly about what an ‘ugly as Hungarian chick’ had been doing with them the night before… Not to mention the tasty langos and the medicinal baths. A very happening place, but I am glad I was there with someone who could speak some Hungarian! We did the touristy things but also got a tiny glimpse backstage into the lives of ordinary Hungarian people. Great fun! And I will be thinking of the trip for a while to come whenever I cook with the spicy paprika I bought from the markets. It was not giant, it was not dancing, but I think it will nicely do the trick.