The capital of Hungary. This is one of the biggest cities so far. Planned on spending four days, but it turned into five.
The majority of the allure of the city came from the hostel where I stayed: the Backpackers’ Guesthouse. The hostel is a good two miles from the city center, but still, it’s an amazing place to stay. I met a Kiwi on the overnight train from Krakow and we navigated our way to the hostel, deep in a residential area.
That first day, went hiking with Mark, American, to the local sites. The Dabube river bisects the city, separating sides Buda and Pest. The riverside heights afford terrific views.
Went with my two roommates, Cory and Adam to a giant bath house in the city’s park near the zoo and circus. The baths here are legendary and are littered about the city.
That night, stayed in the hostel and played some guitar with roommates….three guitars in one room!
Friday, did some walking around the city, getting acquainted with the scenery/layout.
That night, I played guitar for around 3 hours in the TV room and everyone sang along to all the classics, then at around midnight the whole hostel cleared out and we all walked to a nearby (a good 1.5 mi) dance club.
The walk was its own event; about 100 meters from our place, we decided to see how many of us we could jam into a phone booth! That was a new one for me. Someone found a trashed gay and it became the evening’s mascot. We climbed on trash piles of old TV boxes and heaps of wood. It was the oddest site…all this trash in the streets.
Had a good time…and of course there was a falafel stand open for us on the walk home…are there falafel stands in EVERY city I’m going to?! We took tons of pictures…and there was trash EVERYWHERE…see pic caption.

Saturday, didn’t do much. Mostly stayed at the hostel, but did manage to have lunch with a friend of James’s from our stay in Portugal. Sat night, we stayed in the hostel and played music and talked…great times with great people.

Sunday evening, we all went to the same bath again…this time with the water housing for my camera. We had a blast. The bath has a sauna, a snow machine, a cold!!! pool a hot pool, a medium temp hot pool with a whirlpool in the middle…and more and more. This place is HUGE.

L to R: Fraser, Mark, Wong, Will, Me, Dan, Rosanne.
We came out rubberized and looking for some live music…so back to the hostel and then back to downtown to a pub that 10 minutes prior had had live music….but there WAS NFL football playing!
From there to another spot just down the block until about 4 am. Monday morning was my time to leave, but there were plans in place to visit a field/park of old Soviet monuments that had previously been placed around Budapest. There was Stalin staring at us from high at the entrance. Seven of us spent a couple hours climbing up these things and jumping off them and just generally having a good time. These pictures are hilarious and great at the same time.

Monday night, the seven of us plus a couple more made dinner for eachother and Fraser rented a couple movies for a mellow movie night. After dinner, we all went into one of the larger dorm rooms and filmed a video for a song I’d just written. Motivated by a suggestion from Dan, we got the whole hostel in this one room and used a rough recording to lip sync the words and dance/jump around. It was a great time and everyone was so cool about doing it. Can’t wait to edit the footage together! Thanks to everyone who participated…you guys are awesome!

This hostel was unlike any place I think I have ever stayed. I think it was like what a commune must be like. So many people extended their stay after arriving and sampling the atmosphere. People there ware always coming together to do things or just sit around and talk. People were so generous. I traded my green jacket and red gloves for a new (read different) cost and sweet Russian leather hat! It would be easy to stay there for a month or more. As they told me when I arrived, the place just sucks you in. The experience of this sort of living was tremendous, if markedly different than all others I have had on this trip. I can’t say I got much of a feel for the Hungarian people as I might have, but I wouldn’t have traded the friendships.

I slept through most of a really good movie and now am on the train in Slovenia after just passing Zagreb, Croatia. It’s much more mountainous here. Just beautiful. About an hour from Ljubljana…say that name three times fast OR slow!