In the middle of March (which, terrifyingly, is now over three months ago) Christina, Hannah, and I decided that we wanted to take a trip to Prague. Unfortunately (and as you can probably tell if you've actually read the title of this blog post) we didn't actually make it there, at least not on the weekend we were intending to go. Apparently buses tend to be fully booked when you try to buy your tickets the day before you want to travel, who'd of thought it? Luckily, we had a Plan B - or rather, Hannah is very good at crisis-Googling. Approximately three hours after we had been turned away from the bus station (and I had very nearly had a breakdown because my laptop had crashed that morning and it was all just too much to take) we were booking tickets to Budapest, because Hungarian buses are apparently never fully booked.
The downside of our Plan B was that the bus we had booked left at 7AM. This meant a wake-up call at a time that shouldn't even be allowed to exist in the morning (except perhaps if you have yet to have gone to bed - but then I never knew how to go to bed at normal times), made slightly more bearable by free fizzy water, wafers and Mr. Bean.
 |
| Impressed by the funny money. |
By the time we arrived in Budapest, our eyes were on the verge of having to be propped open by matchsticks and only one thing could get us enthused for a long day of sightseeing - funny money! Luckily, Hungarian money was funny enough to keep us alive until we could buy some energy drink. Reaching the Old Town (which is the Buda half of the city, the Pest half is more modern) involved a ride on a metro train that bore more resemblance to a cattle wagon than any metro train I've ever seen before, and also a moment of utter stupidity on our parts. As we stood on the bank of the river looking for a) the centre of the Old Town and b) somewhere to buy energy drink, we almost managed to miss the Parliament building. To put this in perspective for people who have never been to Budapest, this is the Parliament building:
 |
| How can you miss this? |
It is, as you can see, rather big, rather impressive, and rather unmissable, or so you'd think. Possibly sightseeing on three hours sleep isn't such a good idea.
Luckily, a can of Red Bull later we were in full sightseeing mode. With the help of two of the most bored-looking information centre staff members in existence (who we then managed to annoy by leaving the door to the centre open, you'd have thought they'd have been pleased to have something to do) we managed to see all of the main sights in Buda, the highlight being the Fisherman's Bastion where Hannah, during a mammoth photo shoot, mused "Maybe I just look better horizontal." We also, thanks to my expert researching, visited a slightly unconventional sight. It was the statue of Andras Hadik (who is no doubt very famous and important to the Hungarians but if you want to know why I'm afraid you'll have to Google him because I have absolutely no idea) astride his horse, and we (or possibly just I, but I had the guidebook and the return tickets so where I went the others had to follow) were particularly interested in seeking him out because we'd heard that students rubbed a certain part of the horse's anatomy in order to get good degree results. Undeterred by the fact that the statue turned out to be on top of a rather large plinth, we set about ensuring our Firsts.
 |
| Eyes definitely not on the prize. |
Having embarrassed ourselves sufficiently with our climbing of ancient monuments, we set off in search of our next destination, Margaret Island. We mainly wanted to see it because the guidebook informed us that it was neither Buda nor Pest (and as it used to be the home of the Turkish pashas' "women of ill-repute", we were sure to feel at home there), but in the end it turned out to be another highlight of our day. The reason is simple, this:
 |
| To me, to you. |
The man hiring them out advertised them as bikes, we thought they looked more like Chuckle brothers mobiles, but whatever they were they were brilliant fun to drive. I let the others take care of the pedalling, while I took on the oh-so-taxing role of steering and braking, which was admittedly not as easy as it sounds. In our hour of hiring the 'bike' we saw everything the island had to offer: a water tower, some ruins, a zoo containing birds and ponies, and this graffiti:
 |
| It seems you can never escape Austria (pun possibly intended). |
If you can't read it, it says "Natascha Kampusch", who is of course one of Austria's "cellar children" (yes, more than one child has been locked in a cellar in Austria, in fact it's become a bit of a national joke, although obviously most people in Austria are wonderfully hospitable and are not at all planning to lock you in your cellar when they invite you round for dinner...).
After a delicious lunch in which only Hannah bothered to try the national fare (Christina and I had learnt our lesson in Slovenia), we set off to see what Pest had to offer. As it turned out, not as much as Buda, and the main things we saw that afternoon were rain, Hare Krishnas, and Andrassy utca, Budapest's answer to the Champs Elysées (just as long but not quite as beautiful).However, the Hare Krishnas gave us free chocolate and the beer we bought in the bus station with our leftover funny money made the bus journey back a lot better than the outward journey - or maybe it was just that the tiredness had made us delusional by that point!
No comments:
Post a Comment