seekingmygreaterperhaps

BUDAPEST! Arguably one of the most beautiful cities I’ve seen this far. It’s actually quite rad. Yes, I said rad. I am staying a week with my dear friend Szili (that’s pronounced Silly, just so we are clear. Hungarians are wierd and add z’s and j’s to everything.) Szili lives in Budapest, and is one of my close friends from camp.

On the first night of my arrival, he took me to eat “kolbice” – it’s kind of like a bread burrito filled with sausage. I honestly haven’t known what I’m eating the entire time I’m here… but it’s always been delicious. Then we went and walked around Budapest at night. Everything is all lit up and beautiful.

This is Parliament at night. Swoon.

Next it was MARCH 15th!!!! WOOO!!! Oh. That doesn’t have any significance to you non-Hungarians? It’s a celebration of the revolution when they broke away from Austria. Everyone wheres green, red, and white ribbons and there is a big festival by the castle. It was awesome. There are booths set up lining the streets, and people everywhere.

We went into Buda Castle and walked around the art gallery. There, we were able to make a button… I made it into a fun game and made us trade haha. Here is Szili with his button, that he annoyingly loves and won’t take off his coat even though it’s lame. I guess that’s my payback haha.

After that, we ate “langos” and “kurtoskalacs.” Yeah, don’t worry, I can’t figure out how to say that either. However, they were delicious.

Basically, this was delicious. The swirly one is kind of a dessert. It’s hollow bread and you cook it with cinnamon sugar? I think. Everything is a mystery to me. When me and Szili go into restaurants, I kind of just close the menu and let him order. I’ve eaten duck, Hungarian pizza, and other things I didn’t even ask. It’ a good system.

We then walked around for a while, enjoying the scenery (me) and being a tour guide (Szili). We took a boat ride on the Danube at night, which is incredible. Part of Budapest’s public transportation is their ferries. Which is awesome. Period.

Buda-ful. Get it? See what I did there?

Szili has been trying to show me all the aspects of the Hungarian lifestyle… including the drinking. They really like beer, and this nasty, er, I mean delightfully tasty drink called Palinka. And there is another one called Unicum, and another one that I can’t even remember but it’s made out of pine trees.

This, is a yard of beer. That is all.

This is Heroes Square. We caught it on the nicest day, and it’s a really cool space. I enjoyed trying to pronounce Hungarian words and being completely wrong. In the middle of an inscription, it said “IV” so I said, “iv”…. it was just a Roman numeral for 4. Pish posh.

We walked around some gardens and stumbled on a castle type museum that reminded me a lot of Hogwarts. It was a beautiful day. NOTICE THOSE SHORT SLEEVES?

Finally, we met up with Kristina (another camp friend) On Margaret’s Island, an island in the middle of the Danube. It’s a park and really beautiful. We fed the ducks, and Kristina.

This is Kristina!!

Shortly thereafter, I conquered my fear of the dark, and we took an oil lamp down to Dracula’s labrinth. Yeah, I guess he was a real person, which apparently only I didn’t know. There is a labrinth of a jail or something underground where he was once kept. It’s completely black in parts, and we only had an oil lamp for the 3 of us. This is a special thing you get to do during the last hour that it is open, and it makes it a lot more fun. Even if I did jump a few times…

Budapest = love in all ways, always.