My first night in Budapest
Some of you hoped that I would do something crazy while I was abroad…well, I think I accomplished that last night. More on that later…
Greetings from Istanbul, Bulgaria, Bangalore, India, Prague, Romania and the Far East! No Budapest isn’t in any of these places, and no, I haven’t been to them…yet. These are some of the places that people confuse with Budapest. So I’ll take this time to clear up some of these misconceptions and talk about the city. Budapest is in Hungary with neighboring countries being Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Ukraine, and Slovakia. Even though Hungary has these neighbors, it is very isolated because its language, Hungarian, has no modern day derivative. There are Hungarian speakers just outside of the country in areas such as Transylvania (in Romania), because Hungary used to be three times bigger. Budapest is the capital of Hungary and rests on the blue Danube. It looked pretty grey and brown yesterday, but there was a hint of blue. The Danube (or Duna in Hungarian) splits the city into to parts that were once separate cities—Buda and Pest (pronounced pesht). I am living in the center of the city on the Pest side.
My apartment is a really nice two bedroom apartment with really high ceilings. I live on Ráday Utca, which I hear is the up and coming street. To enter my apartment, I enter it from the street and then there are stairs that spiral upwards. Each floor off of the stairwell is open to the courtyard, and each floor is a balcony looking onto the courtyard. So I enter my apartment from the balcony of the courtyard. There’s not internet or landphone, so I’m not sure how I’ll contact other people on my program yet until I get a cellphone.
I arrived in Budapest yesterday after about 16 hours in airplanes and airports. I flew from Minneapolis to Chicago to Frankfurt to Budapest. In Minneapolis there were two people on my program on the same flight and by Frankfurt, there were five of us traveling together. In Frankfurt, I wanted to practice my German a little, so I talked to all the officials in German and I also ordered food at a McDonald’s in German. So that was fun. When we arrived in Budapest, there were three people waiting at the airport for the five of us to take us to our apartments. I was dropped off at my apartment at about 11 am on Monday and I was instructed not to leave until the landlord came. Unfortunately, she didn’t come until 5. I tried really hard to stay awake until then, but I caved in and fell asleep. She finally came and she showed me around the neighborhood. I looked around and ordered a pizza at a restaurant down a few blocks. There are many great cafes on my street. Apparently during the spring and summer months the street is lined with tables for the cafes. The building right next to my apartment is a computer store that has a huge Apple logo on the outside.
Once my roommate arrived, we explored the city. We walked to Kálvin tér (square), which has a lot of shops and is the closest subway stop. Then we walked past Dohány utcai zsinagóga (The Dohány Street or Great Synagogue), which is the largest synagogue in Europe and has very beautiful turkish architecture. My language class will be right next to it. Then we saw the Danube at night and lights from the bridges and Castle hill reflecting in the water. It was incredible. Then we started to head home and to find some place to eat…this is where our adventure began.
We were walking down Váci utca, which is a tourist shopping district, and we ran into two women on the street, slightly older, from Prague. They asked us where a certain street was, so we pulled out a map to find that street. They said they had just arrived in Budapest, and being the dumb Americans we were, we said that we had just got there too. We walked with them for awhile until we found an elevator in the middle of the sidewalk. They said they were going to a pub (I thought they said club) and they asked us if we wanted to come (how could we possibly say no?). So we sat in a booth and we paired off as if we were on dates. I wasn’t hungry, so I wanted to get a Coke. But, they were getting food and Hungarian wine, so I decided to try some goulash. After all, it was my first night—why not try the goulash? And I had some wine. The evening was going well. The Czech girl I was with was 26 and we were having a good time talking even though her English wasn’t the best. Then she asked me to dance (I should have known something was wrong at this point), so we danced. And later she gave me her email address! Everything was really fun until we got the bill. It turns out they ordered a $200 or so bottle of wine and the girls had some other drinks that were really expensive. Anyway—the total was around 450 US dollars. For comparison, my goulash was about $8. The Czech girls said they had reached their credit limit for the day, but that we could meet up at a spa the next day. So Wilson and I split the bill. We had no idea they ordered such expensive wine and drinks. They ordered it without us looking at the price. And the wine wasn’t even that good, though I don’t know much about wines. I wish I would have had my Coke. We think they worked for the restaurant and were scamming us. It was a little suspicious that an attractive 26-year old Czech woman was having a good time with me, danced with me and gave me her email address. I think they prey on dumb Americans like us. Just imagine this for a second—We were the classic dumb Americans with our map, saying “Hey! We just arrived too!” I was pretty upset about everything after it happened, so I called my mom, and she thought the whole incident was funny. After that I could at least sleep that night.
Was that crazy enough? I hope so… This was a great lesson to learn on the first night. I want to say I’ll never make a stupid mistake like this again, but being a dumb American, I’m sure I’ll do something again—maybe not to this scale.
After three days with very little sleep, I should go.
Dan