Budapest : stay weird and eat pizza

After another pleasant flight in one of my favorite pink airplanes I arrived at Budapest on thursday. I quickly found the desk where i could buy a ticket for the bus and merto into the city. This combi ticket was 530 HUF! This turned out to be only about 1,70 in euro's though :P The bus and metro ride was quite amusing, cause the bus kept reminding everyone to 'validate their ticket' and the metro made a strangely musical sound before closing its' doors.

When i got to my hostel, there seemed to be a line to get in. This turned out to be the line to the club that was located below the hostel. So I walked up to the sercurity guard, who just looked at me and said 'Hostel? Up.' So up we go.

The guy at the reception checked me in and told me that there was unlimited drinking for ten euro's in the club downstairs. So down we go. Spend most of my time in the karaoke area with a bunch of locals. I got introduced to the local shot of Palinka, which is kind of like Schnapps. Needless to say i had a pretty great time :)

As a result, i did have some difficulty getting up the next morning. But once i did manage to get out of bed, i went to the grocery store to stock up on some breakfast and lunch foods for the next couple of days. After that me and a roommate, Renee from Michigan USA, wanted to go on one of the walking tours (there are three tours here!). But unfortunately it was canceled. So we just walked around for a while. It was raining, so we didn't stay our too long.

At night the weather had luckily cleared up though, cause i had signed up for a pubcrawl with two others: Andrew from Texas and Luigi from Italy. We visited four really cool bars known as ruin pubs. These pubs are located in old buildings that were bombed in the second world war. So they have a really raw style to them. At every bar we got a different shot, one of which was again the Palinka, and Andrew and I took turns buying beer. The last stop was at Instant, which Kai (my younger brother) had told me about. So that was pretty cool. Had a great night with a nicely mixed group of people from all over the world :) When we got back to the hostel, we noticed the pizza place across the street was still open. So we went to get some pizza, which turned out to be 200 HUF (0,64 EUR) a slice!

The next day, saturday, Andrew and I went on the walking tour, which went all over the city and tough us all about politics, history and culture of Budapest. The guide also had a nice annakdote about the Palinka.
- The first one will be tough, you'll feel the burning
- The second will go down easier and you'll start to feel warm
- The third one will have you on the dance floor
- The fourth one will have you laying down on the dancefloor
- And the fifth one will have you speaking Hungarian fluently

During this walking tour I also had my first Langos, which is a kind of fried dough, with garlic, sour cream and cheese. So good after two nights of heavy drinking ;)

After the walking tour we went to a local beerfestival. I tried a bunch of local beers, with the Zodiak IPA of the Brewdapest brewery being my favorite. For dinner we had a real cheeseburger. So the burger was replaced with a piece of paneer cheese, nomnomnom! After that i met up with Adam, who i met a couple of years ago when we were both studying in Vilnius. He works on one of those beerbikes and he still had a drunk British hen party on board :P After they left we had to bring the bike back to the parking lot where they are stored. We had a couple of beers and some homemade Palinka from one of his colleagues on the bike. After that Adam decided i should also the other Hungarian shot: Unicum. This is more like Jagermeister, so that was a lot worse than the Palinka.

We kind of went on crawling pubs after that. And somewhere along the way we found this huge table, with a huge chair and some huge foods on it. So we had some fun with an apple so big i could barely wrap my arms around it. After a good ten minutes we noticed a sign that said 'Don't touch' and another sign saying 'Happy Jewish New Year'.

We ended the night at Szimpla, which was another really cool ruin pub. After taking an uber back to the hostel, I got myself another slice of pizza :)

So on sunday, after three nights of drinking, i decided to treat my body to some wellness by going to the Szechinyi Spa. This is one of the biggest spa's in all of Europe, which has about thirty thermal baths and swimming pools. So i just spend three hours circling between a sauna, a super cold bath and then a thermal bath. When i got out i felt revitalized and my skin was the softest it's been in a while :)

For dinner I made pasta with white paprika's, which are a typical Hungarian thing. At night we took it a bit easy, with a couple of beers in the common area. And Andrew and I took a tram ride along the river at night. The view was really nice, because all the buildings and bridges are nicely illuminated.

Monday Adam had a day off, so we went to the Margit Sziget together. On this island we spend some time cycling around and drinking beer. We cycled through an old monastery and saw some super fluffy chicken at the petting zoo :P After that we tried to find something to eat, but the 200huf pizza deal couldn't be beat.

At night i went to Szimpla with a bunch of people from the hostel. And apparently there was a bit of a tradition started by some guy at the hostel. He stated that there was only one way to leave Budapest: 'And that is completely fucked off your face'. And who am i to break with this tradition? So lots of beer and Palinka :)

After only a couple of hours of sleep i had to say goodbye to all the cool people i've met. Amazing how much you can do in only five days.

When i was half way down the stairs i heard someone calling my name. It was Luigi. I had told him to stay fun, stay happy and stay weird. And all he said was:

Eat pizza :)

Budapest: stay weird and eat pizza.