Budapest

We rode into Budapest on a midnight train from Prague. Our sleeper car is a room with a door, 3 bunks, that all fold up into the wall, and a window that you can crack open. You can only book one of these trains if you have an overnight trip, otherwise the trains just have seating arranged on an aisle with four seats on both sides, i.e. groups of two that face each other with a little table in the middle that folds out from the wall. There wasn't a third person so the top bed remained locked up. For some reason I like sleeping in the bunks on the trains. I think it reminds me of my mission, and travelling with other elders to and from zone conferences. It can be super noisy and shove you around, but that's actually what you're paying for.

For only spending a day there, we got to see a lot. We had some previous suggestions, and we had our hostel clerk circle a few sites on a map and we set off to see the first one. It was a communist monument overlooking the whole city, from the west side. Budapest is built on the banks of the Danube river. The west side was the former city of Buda, and the east side the city of Pesht. The west side is quite a bit higher than the east, on which the Soviet monument, and castle hill reside. Castle hill, built in 1248, is a few km north, north of the monument and is home to national museums and a number of restaurants built into the battlements that line the cliff. The castle is incredible, and looks straight across the Danube at the parliament building on the east side. The parliament building is beautiful (3rd largest in the world), and was built by the winner of an architectural contest to design it. The second and third place winners of the contest got their designs put into other gov't buildings close by. Also, on the east side is the synagogue, which is the second largest in the world.

Anyone who has been to a former Soviet country will spot a Soviet monument a mile away. The formula is simple: A cement statue, usually of a soldier or leader, that stands quite high, maybe 50 feet, and overlooks the city. Prague had a ginormous statue of Stallin that overlooked the city, which is now the site of their giant metronome (supposedly marking the time of oppression, or time since freedom, or something like that). They blew the Stallin statue all to hell when they became a free nation. There's a picture of the detonation in the museum of communism, in Prague. It looks like they used about 10 times the necessary explosives to blow that thing up. Anyway, Budapest still has their monument overlooking the city. We climbed to the top to overlook the city. Budapest is huge. It sprawls in every direction as far as the eye can see.

We caught one of those hop on-off sight seeing busses to the castle and some of the other sites. You put on headphones and a lady with poor grammar and a wierd accent narrates what you are seeing. I felt like I could relate to the city not only because of Soviet rule, but because Budapest was sacked by the Mongols in 1241. They have a spot that is called something like Nobel road, where a lot of famous composers, economists, and John von Neumann (father of the computer) once studied.

When I went home I chatted with the hostel owner named Sechiey. He spoke English really well, which he had learned in Canada. I asked him about Canada and the Hostel business and he had quite an interesting story. One job he had had out of high school was working construction in Siberia. Later he decided to move to Canada. Travel must be easier to Canada as an EU citizen. He didn't have any plans, and didn't speak a word of English. He went with $1500 in his pocket -- that's it. He got off the plane in Toronto, went to a taxi and said, "Hotel." So the driver takes him to like the Ritz, where he spends $300 in two nights. Woops. $600 gone. On something like his 2nd or 3rd day he was eating in a cafe and spots a Hungarian girl. He said he knew by her look, and accent. So he starts chatting with her, and comes to find out she has a friend that can hook him up with a job at a factory. He gets a job there, and finds an apartment not speaking English. He said there was a lot of pointing and motioning on the job when he got instructions. He works there for a while until he catches wind of an opportunity in construction. So a few months later he starts his own aluminum siding business. Of course, he had never done aluminum siding, he just knew that the foreman said, if you can finish this house in a day I will contract you for more homes. He said, he'd seen it done before so he was confident he could do it. He finished the home, the boss checked his work the next day, and he won a contract to do the aluminum siding for 300 homes. He made a bunch of money, but wanted to come back home, so that's when he started 'The Leanback Hostel' on Erzebet (Elizabeth) street in Budapest.