Italiano: Buda, Buda, Buda, Buda Rockin' Everywhere!

Library of Parliament on Pest

When was the last time you experienced an entirely sincere smile? You know, the kind that can only be generated by a sense of absolute contentment?

It was one of those weekends. I don’t think a minute passed by where I was not smiling. Without exaggeration, this past weekend was one of the most blissful weekends of my life.

I went to Budapest, Hungary. Jared, Kristin and I missed two buses to the train station Thursday night. This delayed us 2 full hours, but surprisingly, it didn’t faze us. Once on the train to Brescia, we had to make a switch about an hour en route. This didn’t dampen our spirits either. Once our second train arrived in Bergamo, Italy, we walked close to two miles to Jackson and Ryan’s hotel they had booked. We woke up at 6am and caught a taxi to the Bergamo aeroporto and took Ryanair flight into Budapest. From there we caught a taxi to our hostel. It took trains, planes and automobiles, but we made it to our final destination and let me assure you, it was worth every bit of the hassle.

I’ll back track and explain myself. Our flight was out of Bergamo, which is just outside of Milan. We didn’t exactly put forth our best effort when researching the detail of our trip. You see, our flight out of Bergamo was at 8:15 am. Bergamo is about 2 hours away from Verona by train. The unexpected news—No trains left Verona for Milan/Bergamo until 7am. This complicated our process. So on Wednesday night, we made this realization (we’re in college, we sometimes don’t think things through) and immediately began to brainstorm how we were going to make it work while spending the least amount of money. I’m broke FYI. That’s when Ryan and Jackson came into the picture. They had a flight out of Bergamo booked for Friday too. They were headed to Barcelona. Anyway, they also booked a cheap hotel in Bergamo since their flight was so early. CHEAP being the operative word. We sketchily walked 2 miles in a foreign city at 11pm lugging our suitcases. After about an hour of navigating street signs, we arrived at the sketchiest hotel I have ever seen. Ryan and Jackson snuck us in the back door and we crashed on the floor. No pillow. No blanket. No shower curtain. No working toilet. Just Jared, Jackson, Ryan, Kristin and I packed into a small hotel room in Bergamo, Italy. It was all part of the experience and coincidentally, the best 5-hour rest I’ve ever had.

Our "quaint" Hotel Post. This is the front of the building by the way. Nothing says "Welcome!" like quality graffiti!

When we arrived in Budapest, we met Lynnie at the airport. She had flown in from France to meet us. Lynnie is Jared’s girlfriend who goes to KU. We had our hostel arrange our transportation and we showed up at Boomerang Hostel around 11:00.

So naturally, as spontaneous (or stupid) college kids, we explored! We had no plans, no knowledge of the crazy Hungarian language, no idea of where Budapest actually is, no clue what attractions are there…We literally just picked a place on the map and said, “Andiamo!”

We started walking and asked locals where we should go. The Hungarians were some of the nicest people I have encountered while abroad. Everyone knew English and seemed to be thrilled when we said we were from America. We felt like celebrities. Over the weekend we saw the cathedral, crossed the bridge to the castle, saw the Fisherman’s Bastian, the library of parliament, the cave church and enjoyed the most to-die-for Hungarian goulash. We even hiked to the top of Budapest and looked over the Danube River and the entire town. I love Budapest.

The highpoints of the trip cannot be highlighted. Why? Because the entire weekend was one of the highlights of my life.

Budapest was originally two separate places: Buda and Pest. Don’t feel badly, it was news to me too. Anyway, the Danube River separated the two and eventually they were merged into what we know as Budapest. The term “Pest” meant furnace or cave. This is pretty interesting because if I understood correctly, the cave church we went to was one of the reasons behind the name of the town. It is a church that was built in a cave in Budapest in 1926. Despite seeing the Vatican and St. Peter’s Basilica, cave church was one of the neatest churches I’ve been in. Chiseled rock formed an exterior entrance to the church and the low ceilings and textured floor and walls made me feel like I was in a movie or something. It was unreal. There were hardly any ornate decorations or add-ons. It was simply rock walls, tunnels and crosses here and there. I think there was one stained-glass window. Conceptually speaking, the church was meant to show/embody the greatness of God’s natural creation here on earth. What better way to emphasize this than to build a church literally within the earth? The church served as a refuge during WWII and was shut down a few years later by communist secret police. It was reopened for use about 20 years ago and run by Hungarian Paulite monks. They hold mass there to this very day. How cool would it be to attend mass in a church that is inside a cave?

Exterior of Cave Church

Cave Church Sanctuary

So clearly our daytime was full of exploration of the city and history, but you just can’t experience a foreign city without checking out the nightlife. So that is exactly what we did. Side note—we met this guy, Michael, in Verona. He is part of the Erasmus study abroad program and he happened to be in Budapest that weekend with his group—Michael let us know about a pub crawl happening that night so we decided to stop by and check it out. Hungarian bars are nothing like bars in America, or Italy. There was really neat graffiti all over the walls, a DJ playing house music and lots of little rooms with couches and chairs for small group mingling I guess. So mingle we did. We met some Italians! Funny how while we were in Hungary, we felt like these Italian guys were a slice of home sweet home! We realized we have grown more accustomed to Italy than we thought. So we all immediately bonded and went out with them to a couple of bars and met up with some Erasmus kids from Boston, Massachusetts. They were studying in Milano. It is truly a small world. The night was a lot of fun. We made new friends and got to see what kids our age do for fun in Budapest.

Our Italian Amicos from Milano- Antonio Guissepe and Sabian with Jared

I found Waldo in Budapest!

Nightlife is exciting, but this blog post would be nothing if I failed to mention the Hungarian food. We made it a point of the trip to eat local, Hungarian food at all meals. We were “success—full”! We ate delicious goulash and some sort of pasta thing. We had no idea what the Hungarian menus said so we closed our eyes and pointed. Whatever our finger landed on, we ate. Our little decision-making game never failed us. On our last night we went to a neat restaurant where there was live Hungarian music. The specialty on the menu was your choice of raw meat on a hot stone plate that you got to cook yourself and enjoy. I enjoyed every last bite! To my surprise the Hungarian wines were better than any I had ever tasted in Italy. Budapest is unlike the rest.

Delicious Hungarian Goulash

Chicken served on our hot stone plate

Our Hungarian musical performer who charmed us with a little John Denver while we dined

I dropped a couple thousand forints while in Budapest. Forint is the Hungarian currency. Don’t worry Dad, one thousand forints is close to $10 U.S. dollars. It took us a while to get used to this new currency, that’s for sure. We were in shock for a solid five minutes when we got our bill at dinner one night for 4,000 HUF. As broke college students, it’s hard for us to pay for something with two digits before the decimal point. So four digit numbers were close to incomprehensible. However we felt like millionaires! Budapest is the best.

We woke up Sunday morning to catch a cab at 4:30am to the airport. It was early, but once again, nothing could bring us down while in Budapest. We caught our taxi, plane, trains and bus and made it safely back to Verona before noon.

Budapest is an incredible place. It is absolutely charming, beautiful and interesting. It was great to see that part of Western Europe. However, I think the real reasoning behind the perfect weekend getaway had to do with the people I was with. Jared, Kristin, Lynnie and I made the perfect team. We took our time. We enjoyed the present. We harnessed our inner spontaneity and all agreed the most important part of the trip for us was to explore the city and culture. It wasn’t about meeting cute boys, going out until the wee hours or seeing just how loud and obnoxious we could be as American tourists. We were all on the same page and no one could find any reason to complain about anything. Budapest brought out the best in us. It’s crazy how something so random can cause such impact. This past weekend is one to be savored.

I’m still smiling and I’ve been home for a couple hours now. Budapest was bliss. I’m not sure another weekend can top it.