Vijay and Shefali's TAtW

So it was an 11-hour bus ride from Kraków to Budapest. After the first hour, I wanted to jump out and kiss the ground. After the second, I wanted to jump out and explore the Slovakian countryside. You’ll see it in the pictures, it’s gorgeous. We arrived around 1 in the morning to an empty bus station and a shut-down Metro. This does not bode well. We don’t speak the language obviously (because we’re American) so we had to depend on our wits and good fortune. It was mostly good fortune. We asked around for directions and got nowhere, but some other tourists who were leaving heard us and gave us their metro tickets – good for the night bus till 7 am. Score. But we still didn’t know what bus to take. So we hoofed it a bit more and found a group of drunks, none of whom spoke English (that we could tell) – but one of whom spoke broken Spanish (in which Shefali is fluent). So we at least knew where to stand for the bus – across the street from where we had first landed. We are dum dums. We got on the bus and the driver was like a guardian angel, speaking beautiful English with a gravelly Hungarian inflection. He knew exactly where we were going and at one point even got off the bus to tell us to stay on – the security guards on the bus had told us to get off at the wrong stop. So he drops us off to where we can transfer – just one stop away from where we needed to go. Yet another kind Hungarian, who spoke no English, deftly guided us to the stop and showed us which buses went in our direction. It felt like more than just dumb luck – it truly was the kindness of others that conspired to deliver us safely to our hostel.

This place is a fucking dump.
Seriously.

It’s clearly the kind of place college dropouts frequent to pit themselves against alcoholic Darwinism and exchange venereal diseases. Oh, there’s also the broken elevator that “smells like R-Kelly’s sheets.” And it was not 99 cents. And the bathroom that, though deceptively clean, lacks a shower curtain and has a gambler’s chance of hot water day or night. Oh, and it smells like someone took a poo behind the walls. But hell, at least we got a story out of it. And the depressing squalor of it all just made us that much more determined to experience all the city had to offer. And in Budapest, that means two things – the city baths and the ruin bars. The baths were pretty awesome. It wasn’t quite like in Iceland; this was dirtier but also much more affordable. Also, clearly more lax on the whole shower-before-and-after rule. But you’ll see it was quite beautiful, and either way it was pretty easy to relax. Ruin bars started about 12 years ago. People bought up unused residential property, knocked down some walls, threw in a couple taps and decorated it with everything that didn’t make it to the thrift shop. It looks and plays better than it sounds. Now there’s the new wave, where artists curate installations throughout the entire structure, which typically consists of lots of small rooms, sometimes with music or DJs – and in that case usually pulsating weird techno – around a massive courtyard. So it’s like a bunch of tiny raves on the outside with a beer garden on the inside. And it’s fuckin’ ballin’. It’s worth checking it out even if you don’t drink. In fact, Budapest in general is pretty friendly to non-drinkers, so you’ll get a lot out of your night no matter where you go. And that was our approach after all the touring and walking and appreciating art and culture – we got the most out of our last night by doing our own tour of the ruin bar scene. And fun fact – we took more pictures in this city than anywhere else so far. It’s got such a strong and unique character to it, it stands out in so many ways. You should definitely come. …But don’t you dare stay at Suite Hostel. Seriously, we avoided that place like a fat kid avoids gym class. You know, because people smack him in his titties all the time. Seriously though, it was that bad.

Love and ruin,

Shefali and Vijay

[1]http://www.flickr.com/photos/97388931@N08/sets/72157634700266646/
[2]http://www.flickr.com/photos/97388931@N08/sets/72157634700788974/