August 23-31, 1999 - Budapest, Hungary
Budapest was as wonderful as we remembered. It
was still the most "Western" city in the former East, it was still relatively
inexpensive, and the people were still as friendly as ever.
We had only planned to be in Budapest a couple
of days, then head to the Hungarian countryside and then the Transylvanian area of
Romania. But, as we've been taught many times on this trip, things don't always work out
as planned...
After staying in 6 different places in as many
days in Poland, on trains, and then in Budapest, Dave started to get a sore throat that
wouldn't go away. We decided Hungary would be a better place to get this looked at than
Egypt, so we found a doctor's office in the phone book and went to have it checked out.
The doctor took a quick look at Dave's throat and said "Tonsillitis." They gave
Dave a big injection of something and prescribed a couple different medications, and sent
us on our way; without charging us anything. We had lots of fun later trying to figure out
what the medicine was and when/how much to take. We're still not sure.
Dave's tonsillitis squelched any plans of going
far or having a rowdy birthday celebration, but it did warrant a stay in "nicer"
digs (a room with a bathroom). Kelly wandered around the city while Dave rested up, and
visited a few places she didn't get to when she studied here before. Luckily Katrin, the
German woman Kelly met in Zakopane was in town so they palled around a couple days and
visited the world's second largest Synagogue on Dohany Street, the Jewish Museum, and
stumbled upon a beautifully quaint, low-tech library built in the early part of the
century. After she left, Kelly tackled the recreational Margaret Island, smack in the
middle of Buda's hills and Pest's industry on the Danube. And then returned to some of her
favorites like Fisherman's Bastion, Matthias Church, the Citadella, and the Castle
District.
When Dave was feeling better we both attempted
to get to the Statue Park, a collection of communist-era statues that were removed from
the city and "dumped" in a park outside of town. We went to the bus station and,
lo and behold, the bus station had moved the day before. Not just the bus, but the entire
station. There were a few other people also trying to get to the park, and eventually we
all were shown to a blue bus, which we took to the end, then we were guided several blocks
away to the new bus station by a very helpful man. He showed us the correct yellow bus to
board, and then some other nice people on the bus let us know what stop we needed, because
the driver was very vague. The park itself was neat but had relatively few statues. Kelly
remembered a ton of Stalin and Lenin statues in 1989 and wondered where the rest of them
ended up. The best part of the excursion was the people we met. It was an international
group of Greek, Portuguese, and Egyptian (like our volunteer camp) med students that were
in Budapest doing practicums, and a British tag-a-long like ourselves. We spent the day
together and had great conversations about all sorts of cultural variances.
We also had the necessary domestic things to
take care of: laundry, reconfirming our flight, getting non-perishable food for the trip
to Egypt. It hit us that we only had a couple more days left on the Continent before the
Middle East and then Asia. One of the biggest challenges has been to be immersed in the
present culture, writing about experiences we had several weeks prior to the present (for
this website), while simultaneously reading about and planning for the next two or three
places we're heading. Thus, we needed to read up on Egypt a little bit and try to remember
the Arabic words we learned in Morocco.
We would have been sad to leave, but our
departure day was cold and rainy, and the last night we had gotten little sleep due to a
flood of crawly creatures in our room. So it seemed like a good time to move on.
