(non)sensical awesomnimity: Fall Break: Budapest!

Living in Eastern Europe is pretty awesome for many reasons. I think one of my favorite reasons, however, is how cheap travelling between countries can be. I have mentioned before that coming to Ukraine was my first time leaving the US. Surprisingly for many people, I have never experienced culture shock since being here.

Many schools in Ukraine have a Fall Break in the school year in addition to Winter and Spring Breaks. Basically Ukrainians believe in "having a rest." I was invited by a couple of PCVs that I had gotten to know better at Camp Bereg to go with them to Budapest for Fall Break. Let's just say it was pretty awesome.

Ferris wheel in Vinnytsia

The day we left for the border started very early for me. You see, we all planned to meet in Vinnytsia and then take a train together from there. Getting to Vinnytsia isn't exactly easy for me to do from where I live. I took a train in that direction, got off of it in a village in Vinnystska Oblast at 4ish in the AM, hopped on a bus that would go through my friend Elyse's village (to pick her up) on the way Vinnytsia. Upon arriving there, we headed to McDonald's since it was open that early to wait for the rest of our party. Our train didn't leave until night time and we were lucky enough to be in town when a bunch of other PCVs would be there for a meeting, so while they had their meeting, Elyse showed us around her oblast center which included seeing the biggest fountain in Europe, the Roshen factory, a love park, and a closed amusement park. After the meeting was over, we met up with the others and went out for pizza after their meeting was over.

Eventually, the four of us ventured to the train station and traveled on an overnight train from Vinnytsia to a town called Chop which is located on the border of Ukraine and Hungary. From there, we took the border train to the village on the other side, a cute little place by the name of Zahony. Unfortunately for us, we had forgotten to exchange money in Ukraine and had to set off into the village in search of a bank to make an exchange so we could buy our tickets to Budapest. After going the wrong direction, we finally found what seemed to be the square of the town as well as a few banks to choose from. The thing that sucked was none of them offered currency exchange for UAH! This was also an adventure since none of us spoke Hungarian, and no one we found could speak much English, let alone Ukrainian or Russian. We did luck out in finding a rather nice bank teller who exchanged our UAH with her own money at a good rate. We headed back for the train station where we bought our tickets using the Hungarian phrase book I had made for my Kindle!

Our ticket to Hungary!

The ride was 5.5 hours long, and most of that trip was spent playing Durak and Hearts. Thank goodness we enjoyed playing cards so much! We got into Budapest in the evening, headed to the metro and found our hostel after a small amount confusion. The guy working the desk at the hostel recommended a restaurant for us to eat at at a discount. We headed there and each of us ordered something different and sampled one another's food. It was all delicious! We also made sure to get our free beers and a bottle of some really tasty wine. After dinner we headed back to the hostel and called a night.

We learned the story of the
"Little Princess"

The following morning we left the hostel on a mission to find the meeting point for a free walking tour we had found online. On the walk there we continuously hoped that the tour wouldn't be cancelled due to the weather being a bit on the cold and rainy side. Luckily for us, we found the tour and we were so glad we did! The tour lasted a few hours and covered a good amount of the Pest side with an excursion to Buda via one of the many bridges that connects the two parts of town. We saw a few statues and monuments, churches and government buildings, learned a bit about Hungarian history, and were given a small lesson in Hungarian to use at bars. The tour guide also told the group about how there would be a free concert that night which automatically gave us something to do in the evening! On our walk back to the hostel, we found ourselves amused a T-Mobile pay phone with a pink phone and then we decided to stop in to H&M since we had passed it on the way to meeting our tour. I finally bought a hat and some tights, which was for the best since I had neither and it was rather cold! Both of which saved my butt this winter, by the way. Post H&M, we walked along the shops on our way back the hostel where we planned on relaxing before trying to find Thai food before heading out for the night.

Finding the Thai food was little difficult, but worth it since it was pretty yummy and something none of us had had in awhile. After dinner we walked back to the club and learned we had missed the first band, who were Hungarian, and they were setting up for the band from Romania. While waiting for the set to start, Davi and I went to get some Hungarian firewater for the four of us while Kristen and Elyse found a place for us to sit. It turned out we weren't the only ones from the tour who had come out for the show and we wound up talking to the others for awhile before enjoying the show. The band was called Grimus and I enjoyed them so much I was able to convince Davi to go in on a CD with me (it is actually one of my favorites to listen to). After the show we went out to one of the many ruin-pubs with some of the people we met at the show. It turned out that a couple of them were staying in the same hostel we were, so post bar we walked back together, but not before picking up late night snacks at a 24 market up the street.

Thai. Yum!

After sleeping in a bit, we walked to the largest bath houses in Budapest (which was by no means a short walk!) On the walk there we stopped into Subway where we enjoyed our taste of America before continuing onto the Baths. We made sure to experience as much as we could while we were there. We sat in pools of varied degrees, saunas of varied degrees, and attempted to sit in a steam room only to discover it was impossible to breathe in there. I think our coolest success was managing to sit in a 100 degree Celsius sauna for a full 5 minutes followed by rubbing ourselves down with ice. It was awesome sitting in there and watching tough looking guys walk in, make a "holy crap it is hot in here" face, and walk back out. We left there just as the sun was going down and began our venture back to the hostel by foot. I eventually had to give up that plan because my feet just weren't having it, so we took the metro back to the center, found the biggest Synagogue in Europe, got some food, and readied our things back at the hostel so we'd be ready to go in the morning to catch our train back to Zahony.

Heel clicking in Hero's Square.

Once we were back in Chop, Davi decided to try and trade in her Hungarian forint for UAH at a local bank, but after the man working there tried giving her an unfair price, she just decided to keep it for the time being. When we boarded our train back to Kyiv, we discovered we were the only ones in our car (for the time being). We took advantage of this by being as silly as possible in an empty train car.

Here is some info about our trip:
Hostel: Maverick Hostel
Walking Tour: Free Budapest Walking Tours
Hungarian Trains: Timetables!
Ruin Pubs: Locations and Information
Bathhouse: Szechenyi Bath and Spa

Here are some more pictures from the trip: