Budapest

OK. I think I'm getting the hang of this. Through trial and error, I've been able to figure out that "Új bejegyzés" means "add new post" in Hungarian. I suppose that's all I need to know.

Budapest is good times. It's charms are definitely more subtle than Prague or Krakow, but it's still very nice. It's got some very lovely buildings, and one nice little pockets of town, but it's not like Prague in that you can't be plopped down in the old town and end up with a picture-postcard-perfect snapshot view in every direction. Being so large, though, there are interesting things everywhere. You can pop into just about any area of town and find some nice historical monuments or buildings.

The highlights here are definitely the food and the people. Chow is cheap, and is consistently very good. The wine is quite tastey as well, although I've yet to find any that match up with a few of the Moravian pours I had in the Czech Republic. I'll be hitting the House of Hungarian wines tomorrow, though, so that might no last. I'm also going to be taking a cooking class on Hungarian cuisine tomorrow, so maybe I can steal some more ideas for home.

The people I'm staying with have basically made me a part of the extended family. I'm actually sleeping in what I believe is thier living room during the tourist offseason. They've gone way beyond what would be considered normal friendliness or assistance for a paid guest. However, I think that's the general gist here. People in Hungary just have class.

I was able to partake of the thermal bath house scene this weekend. I went to the big public bath in the main city park, rather than the famous and touristy one in one of the ritzy hotels here. Was pretty interesting people watching. Was a nice experience, too. It wasn't as fancy, elaborite, or for that matter flesh-exposing (you wear swimsuits here) as the place I went to in Baden-Baden last year, but it's definitely less stodgy and a much more social experience. And it's just part of local culture. If you live in Budapest, a few time of month you drop into the bath, dip into a thermal mineral pool, and chit-chat and play chess in the pool with your pals. It was probably the most enjoyable thing I've done here. But of course I'm always looking for and opportunity to strut my beefcake around.

I also made a new friend this weekend. Met a gal from Australia on a tour of a couple towns further up the Danube on Friday. We ended up hanging out on Friday and Saturday nights. Was a good thing, too, as the night life scene here is surprizingly low-key. The main tourist strip was completely closed down by midnight on Saturday, and the places we knew of that were supposed to be good local hang-out neighborhoods were pretty thin. We were able to get boozed up on our own just fine, though.