All roads lead to Szimpla

Let me begin this post by saying that Budapest is the most unique city I have ever been to. It is a beautiful, old city with a ton of history, but it is also very modern and funky at the same time. My hostel was located in the old Jewish quarter which now the party quarter. I was a little nervous when I first landed on Budapest for a few reasons. The biggest being how foreign the language is. Most words were 12 letters long and at least 5 of them had accents. For example, the word for baggage claim is poggyászkiadás. I also think I got a bit of a bad first impression of the city because the airport is on the very outskirts and I had to travel through some ramshackle areas to get into the city center. I was also legitimately worried that my metro car was going to go flying off the tracks. But as soon as I walked up the steps into Budapest, I realized I had no reason to be nervous. Everyone was incredibly helpful and cheerful.  Plus it's always fun to pay for your meal with a 10000 note. 

After I checked into my hostel (which was the best hostel ever. If you ever go to Budapest, stay at Maverick City Lodge) I took a long walk through the city. I walked past the Great Synagogue (I visited it for real and went inside later) and then over the Chain Bridge and up to Buda Castle and Fisherman's Bastion. The castle and the bastion are located on top of a giant hill on the Buda side of the city. I had an incredible view of the Parliament building and the Danube flowing past Pest.

  I was staying in Budapest by myself, so I was very lucky to make friends in the hostel very quickly. On Thursday, my new friend and I took a walk through the city's cemetery. We were actually on a hunt for my great great grandfather, but weren't successful. We didn't find him, but the cemetery was very interesting. There were giant tombs and some with some very unconventional statues on them. 

Later that afternoon, we took a journey outside of the city to Memento Park. This is an outdoor museum where all the statues from Budapest's communist and soviet past were displayed. I really appreciated this Park because I am very interested in this period of history. I also think it is very important to educate every day people on the terrible things that happened in the past so they aren't repeated. 

Thursday night, our hostel had a pub crawl. We tasted palinka, a traditional Hungarian plum alcohol. Our first stop was a bar called Szimpla. Szimpla is the third best bar in the world and the best ruin bar in Budapest. Ruin bars are unique to Budapest. Many of them are underground and they all have unique decorations. Szimpla is actually 7 bars in one. The space is divided up into several rooms all filled with mismatched furniture and weird knickknacks. There are also cars and bathtubs to sit in. 

Friday was a much less lighthearted day for me. First, I visited the great synagogue. This is the largest synagogue in Europe and the second largest in the world. It was incredibly beautiful inside, but also filled with tragic history.

The Jewish people of Budapest were terribly mistreated during WWII. The synagogue had a good museum dedicated to the horrors they suffered. This is a memorial to those who lost their lives during WWII. 

The synagogue also has a genealogy project. Unfortunately, when I visited it was closed, so I wasn't able to look for my ancestors. 

After the synagogue, I went to the Terror House. This is a museum in the house that housed the headquarters for the political police during the communist regimes, as well as the jail cells for political prisoners. the history was very interesting, and equally distressing. 

We had another night out, which of course ended up at Szimpla. The next day was spent at the thermal baths. This was the perfect way to destress and detoxify. We visited every pool and every sauna. Friday night we had an awesome dinner (tacos! And guacamole!) and had one last drink at Szimpla. 

Today, I took my first train ride. Now I am in Bratislava, Slovakia for the night. It's a small, quiet city, especially compared to Budapest, but it's nice to relax before I head off to Vienna in the morning. 

As a side note, this is a bit of a rambling thought I've been having the past few days. When I set off on my adventure, I thought I was being really, well, adventurous. Along the way I have met people who have quit their jobs in order to travel for five months. I also met a girl who was going to Bosnia and Serbia after she left Budapest. I'm incredibly grateful that I have this opportunity to travel, but I've also been thinking about how big the world really is, and how little I am going to see in my 23 days of traveling. 

Also, I'm pretty bummed that my passport isn't getting stamped because every country in visiting is in the EU. But I guess that's just a really big first world problem.