Charlie's Thoughts

In order to make the most of my last weekend of Eurail pass validity, I packed my bags and headed East to Vienna and Budapest. Despite a lingering illness, I had a fantastic time. This was my furthest journey east in Europe to date and also one of the longest.

Follow up:

I woke up around 6:15 on Thursday morning to catch the first train out of Munich to Vienna where I was meeting my friend for the weekend. After we met around noon, we dropped off our bags at the hostel and headed out. Sights included the beautiful Schönbrunn Palace and surroundings which were quite impressive. Covering at least a square mile, the Palace area is home to a number of cool attractions. We checked out the Palm House first, mainly because of its awesome appearance. After that we made our way over to the actual palace and up the hill where we had a fantastic view of the palace and city.

After that we made our way to a vocational gardening school which is only open once a month. Wandered around there for a bit, then headed to the city center and bummed around. At that point, it was about time for Charlie’s afternoon sick nap, so we slept for a couple hours at the hostel.

Not wanting to waste too much time sleeping, I got up in the middle of the night (8PM). At which point we went to the hostel bar for a snack and to claim our welcome drinks. We tried a few more cocktails there before heading back downtown. Eventually we ended up at the Circus/Fair area of town where we got Currywurst, more beer, and rode the ferris wheel. Actually, we rode a normal Ferris wheel instead of “the” Ferris wheel. But we we’re pretty sure our ride was better.

Once we’d had our fair share of fair stuff, we headed to a bar she had heard about. After literally walking back and forth down a street three times, we finally asked someone where this place was. Apparently it’s an unmarked door that just opens into a bar (sketchy). The place was really cool though. It had a bar in the center and lots of seating around the outside for lounging. What was most interesting though was the décor. We are pretty sure that the entire room is composed of white walls and random white shapes hanging from the ceiling. But this place was decorated entirely by a series of 12 projectors showing very colorful designs on the walls. I should have taken pictures, but didn’t. Too bad we couldn’t go back…does it change every night? What does it look like during the day? We’ll never know. In any case, we barely caught the last subway (clutch) and headed home.

Friday we woke up, checked out and headed to check out some things near the center. The church was pretty nice, but the highlight was the “House of Music”. Sitting somewhere in between the Twilight Zone, Electronica, and Philosophy, this “museum” poses grandiose questions about deeply philosophical topics while somehow maintaining that the museum was about music. It was more like Impression 5 meets Philosophy 201. I think they forgot to hand us our drugs at the door, nevertheless we had a good time.

Finally, we wandered around the inner ring to our subway and headed to the station to travel to Budapest. Let me preface this by saying that Budapest is so much more different than every other city I’ve been to thus far. While closest to Prauge, it was just so much more distinct than the other cities. The pre-soviet-era buses and trams definitely gave it some character, but it wasn’t just the dilapidation around the edges which set it apart. The feel of the city was very different from Western Europe. While walking down the street, the buildings all felt more imposing, though there were greenplaces and city art aplenty. Certain streets with outdoor cafes felt akin to NYC or Paris even.

The first night we went to enjoy one such restaurant before heading back and hanging out for the night. (Charlie only got 1.5-hours of afternoon-sick-nap-time on the train). The following day, we crammed in all the sites. We started by going to the outskirts of town for a flea market. This was a sight to behold as literally anything one could conceivably want was being sold. Most of it was Soviet era junk probably unused for years. I’m almost sure one could assemble a tank using only parts from this market.

After this we headed back to town, checked out a huge food / souvenir type market and grabbed lunch. After lunch (Next to the coolest fountain ever), we wandered through the city a bit more and headed up the hill to the fortress area. There we checked out more churches and ramparts and had some nice views. Finally, we headed back to the house to grab dinner.

Our night started out with a Hungarian stand-up comedy show in English which, for a number of reasons, turned out to be quite entertaining. After that, we wandered to the famous “Ruin Bars” of Budapest. These bars are built in ruined or abandoned buildings. The one we went to was quite impressive. It spanned two floors with ample seating area and was very well lit and decorated, maintaining the feel of the open-air portions and surrounding buildings. Later on we checked out another (much less cool) bar and eventually headed home.

The next morning we checked out a few more areas and most notably, the House of Photography which was 150% less trippy than its counterpart in Vienna. I took the last train home (3 PM) and eventually got back home after my whirlwind weekend.

I am getting pretty used to wandering around Europe, but it was a really nice experience to have these cities still seem "new" to me. We didn't do some of the more touristy things, instead opting for a more specialized list of sights and bars assembled by my colleague. As I mentioned, I really enjoyed Budapest (Both the Buda and Pest sides!) I think it's definitely a must-see city if traveling around Europe. It also serves as a good stepping stone for getting further east. In any case, that wraps up my large European travels for the summer. But no worries, I'll have more meanderings coming yet!