COCAINE, POT, MDMA…

Upon boarding the bus to bring me from Bratislava to Budapest I got into a dispute with the guy who checked me in. When I booked my ticket online I had gone ahead and paid the fifty cents or whatever it was for my baggage, but the guy said there was no record of my payment and that I would have to pay again. I didn’t care so much about the money as I did about the principle of the matter and asked if I could get my money back if I showed him the email proving that I had already paid. He said yes. So, I paid for the baggage and then boarded the bus and brought up my email and when he came aboard I showed him that I had in fact paid. He said he would get my money and then returned a couple minutes later and apologized because apparently he had been informed that he couldn’t refund the money because they had already marked it up when they did the luggage tags and the money wouldn’t match up if he gave me back my fifty cents. Had I showed the email before boarding the bus it would have been a different matter. I was quite annoyed by this but didn’t feel like putting up any more fight over such a small amount of money, so I let it go.  But still…Bullshit.

When I arrived in Budapest I made the long walk from the bus station to my hostel and got checked in and met the one other guy in my eight-bed dorm room. He then headed out to dinner and I got settled in and took a shower, then descended to the restaurant/bar downstairs and got a burger, fries, and a coke for dinner and people watched for a bit before heading back up to my room and falling asleep watching some Netflix. The next morning I woke up to discover that my roommate had not come back the night before and I figured he must have had a really good night and gotten lucky. The weather was not very good my first day in Budapest so I spent the day writing. As the day progressed and my roommate did not show back up, I began to wonder if his night hadn’t been so good after all and if instead of getting lucky he had gotten dead. Finally after dinner he reappeared around 10pm and packed his stuff and checked out of the hostel. All he really said before leaving was that he was heading off to Serbia. It was weird.

The next day I got up and went out and explored the city a bit. Budapest is made up of two halves separated by the Danube River. My hostel was on the Pest side, which is flat, while the Buda side is hilly. I walked over to the Buda side and climbed the large hill there and got some nice views of the city.

After a brief return to my hostel I headed out again and went on the free walking tour. I knew the answers to several of the trivia questions that the tour guide asked because I had just watched the Rick Steve’s Budapest episode. While on the tour I started talking with a young Czech girl who we’ll call Monica. We chatted throughout the tour and afterwards we went out to grab some dinner at a vegan restaurant that she wanted to check out. While there I began to ask her The Questions. After we had finished eating we walked back up to the smaller of the two big hills on the Buda side of town where we had finished the walking tour and enjoyed the spectacular night views of the city from this vantage point.

I then walked her back to her hostel where we said goodnight and I headed off to a ruin bar. Rather than check out the huge and most famous of the ruin bars, I went to one that Iris had recommended to me when I was in Bratislava. It was a good spot with a Mexican theme, so since all I had had to eat for dinner was vegan food I decided to get my meat on with a pork burrito that I accompanied with a margarita. The burrito was okay, but I am still waiting to find some really good Mexican food in Europe at some point. There has to be at least one spot that does it right. At least the margarita was spot on though.

While I was eating I heard these two guys and a girl at the next table speaking English and decided that when I finished my burrito I would go over and ask if I could join them. Right as I was finishing eating they got up and went over to the pool table, which gave me an easier approach, so I walked over and asked if I could join them for a game. While we played I found out that one of the guys and the girl were a couple from Germany and that the other guy was a local who had met the girl when they were both on an exchange for school in China. After a game of pool we played a few games of foosball and then went and sat around and drank while I asked them some of The Questions. We finally called it a night and I returned to my hostel.

The next afternoon I met up with Monica and we went over to the Buda side of town and went to a small park area on the hill and sat on a bench enjoying the view and chatting for a couple of hours until it was time for her to head off to catch her bus home to Brno. I walked her across town to the bus station, where we said our goodbyes. After returning to my hostel and hanging out there for a while I went downstairs to get dinner. I got the goulash soup with bread and a glass of white wine. I then ordered some sausages with fries and a glass of red wine. Finally, I rounded things out with a glass of rosé. As I was eating my second order two cute young women came and sat at the table next to mine, and when they ordered their food they spoke in English. So, after I finished eating, while I was still working on my rosé, I turned to them and asked them where they were from. They told me they were German and after chatting for a moment they invited me to join them at their table. We continued to talk for quite a while and I asked them The Questions and then they wanted to go out.  So, we went and checked out the really big and most popular ruin bar, which I’m glad I saw but was definitely satisfied with just seeing the once, as it wasn’t really my scene. After one drink there we went back to the ruin bar I had gone to the night before and spent the rest of the evening there until they closed down at 1:30. We then returned to the hostel (they were staying at the same one), and said goodnight.

The next day I headed off to the famed thermal baths of Budapest. I hung out there for a few hours relaxing in baths and saunas of varying temperatures, both indoors and out including floating in the lazy river in one of the outdoor pools. My time there was incredibly relaxing and the people watching was quite entertaining. When I finally dragged myself out of the water I headed back to my hostel where I did some research and found a good looking spot for traditional food, then headed there and got some dinner.

I’ll come back to the restaurant in a little while though. As I did in real life. And we can put all of the restaurant experiences together in one delicious summary.

After a wonderful dinner I returned to my hostel and waited for the German girls (Rose and Amelia) to finish getting ready to go out, as we had made plans to do so before I headed off to dinner. Once they were ready we went back to the ruin bar where I had spent significant parts of my evenings the two nights prior and hung out there drinking wine and participating in the kind of ridiculous activities that go along with alcohol for a while. Amelia started to feel a little sick so we all walked back to the hostel and she headed off to bed, then Rose and I headed out again to find somewhere to go dancing. We found a kind of cramped spot in a narrow bar and boogied for a bit. We then left and wandered around the streets of Budapest before taking a seat on a bench with a fantastic view of a wall. As we sat there we talked and watched the drunk people pass by. As happens anytime you go out in Budapest at night people came by several times and told us that they had cocaine, pot, MDMA, etc. and were wondering if we were interested in making a purchase.  So far Budapest definitely tops the list of the cities I’ve been to for frequency of drug sale offerings. One guy who passed us asked where we were from and then gave us both high fives while telling us he was from Greece, Afterwards, he apologized to me for giving Rose a high five. It was weird. We finally left our fantastic bench, with the great view of the wall, after some crazy guy came and stood over us and kept speaking Hungarian, despite our clear indications that we understood nothing of what he was saying. We walked around a bit more and found another spot to sit and chat before finally returning to the hostel and having a cup of tea before heading off to bed.

The next day, after going on a nice long walk around the city I returned to the restaurant I had eaten at the night before. Once again though, we’ll get back to that.

After dinner Rose, Amelia, and I returned to our favorite ruin bar yet again, where we spent a few hours drinking wine and talking. We then went back to the hostel and spent a while in the kitchen hanging out before Amelia went to bed. Rose and I stayed up quite a bit longer until it started to get light out, eventually moving from the uncomfortable kitchen bench to the slightly less uncomfortable kitchen floor, sitting back against the kitchen cabinets. While we hung out she offered me free accommodation when I got to Germany, providing me with my third location in the country where I would have somewhere to stay for free.

The next day I woke up and extended my stay an extra night so I could continue to hang out with the German girls, as they were in town for one more night. That night for the third night in a row I returned to my favorite dinner spot in Budapest. We’re about to talk about it. I swear.

After dinner I arrived back at the hostel and the girls and I went back to the ruin bar that we went to every night, but it was packed so we found another bar instead and spent the evening there, playing games, drinking and conversing before heading back to the hostel and hanging out in the kitchen again with a replay of the night before, as Amelia once again went to bed while Rose and I spent a few hours together on the kitchen floor. The next morning I got up and said goodbye to the girls, then made the trek out to the bus station where I bought some snacks for the ride and waited for my bus to Belgrade, which arrived a bit late.

Okay, here it is as promised.

My first night at the restaurant I started off by ordering some Hungarian rich chicken soup, some traditional Hungarian lecho (sausage, pepper, onion, and tomato stew) served with egg barley, and a glass of rosé.

The waiter tried to take my menu, but I told him I would hang onto it, as I was most definitely not done ordering food. When I had nearly finished with the first round of my meal the waiter returned and I ordered this amazing salty crepe stuffed with meat in paprika sauce, along with a shot of plum pálinka (a local liquor) and a glass of homemade lemonade.

My waiter once again tried to take away my menu and once again I had to deny him. When I was finished with my crepe I made my last order of the night, finishing my meal off with a dessert of kaiser schmarren (sweet bread bits with powdered sugar and apricot jam).

My waiter didn’t even try to take my menu this time, despite the fact that I was now in fact finally done with it. I had the same waiter my second night at the restaurant and this time after I made my first order of goulash soup, along with some more of the salty crepes with meat covered in paprika sauce, and a glass of red wine he didn’t try to take my menu from me.

Once I had finished that, I ordered some breaded cheese with rice and tartar sauce, along with a glass of homemade raspberry soda.

My waiter then told me that I have an incredible stomach. I thanked him saying that I had trained it for years. Unfortunately, my favorite waiter was not working on my third night at the restaurant and the service that I received was not nearly as good. It took a while for me to get a seat despite that fact that there were available spots. Then after I ordered some soup and peppers stuffed with rice and meat in a tomato sauce along with a lemonade, I told my waitress that I would keep my menu, because I was going to want to order some more food.

However when I was just about finished with my first round of food, I went to order my next course and was told that I could no longer order anything, as they were about to close. Nobody had bothered to tell me they were going to close despite the fact that I had told them that I would be wanting more food. Also it said on the menu and the door that they closed at 10pm and it was not quite 9pm yet. I was quite displeased. Despite my negative final encounter with this restaurant though, overall I will still remember it fondly.  As I will the rest of my time in Budapest.