Still waiting to see those Hungary photos, eh? Well, lemme tell you, trying to find a decent online photo sharing service that won't bombard visitors' emails with spam or pollute its own pages with banner adverts, afford us a bit of privacy and be easy enough for everybody to use is... still forthcoming. I like BlueMelon, but who in the blue hell has even heard of it? Soon, everybody, soon. In the meantime, it's almost a week later, so before I forget too much, here are some of the memories of the trip:
- We basically did it, for better or worse, without a guide book. The book that we ordered (from the hipster Wallpaper City Guide series, Phaidon Press) didn't make it to the bookstore in time. So we printed and cobbled together some pages from Lonely Planet online, which proved to be... outdated. Every one of the recommended restaurants we tried to go to not only was closed, but had been for quite some time. While this left our trip a bit more freeform and pleasantly unplanned, it sure would have been nice to know the backstory of what we were looking at sometimes.
- Everybody in Budapest speaks English. Not just passable English either-- fluent English. The one guy who didn't worked in this upscale pizza joint and spoke a bit of German, so we muddled through. If your travel plans are decided/overruled by perceived language barriers, don't worry-- you won't have any difficulties here.
- I'm a bit of an architecture buff and this city of 1.7M inhabitants has arguably the most ecclectic collection of buildings anywhere-- and lots of them. Baroque, Beaux-Arts, Classicist, Romanesque, Gothic and Art Nouveau, even a bit of Bauhaus thrown in. More depressingly, there's also a lot of tilt-up Communist slabs too-- yuk. I'd hazard a guess that about 80-85% of these gorgeous buildings are in a state of decay as well-- I muttered "gloriously decrepit" as a description and it stuck-- because these faded grand dames were still breathtaking-- almost as breathtaking as the fact that a lot of buildings (all of which had residents and offices in them) still seemed to be standing mostly out of habit. Don't let that stop you though-- there is a LOT of money going through Budapest and Hungary these days, and one-by-one those buildings are getting refurbished, and the finished product looks stunning. But for much the same reasons as I prefer Reno over Vegas, I like Budapest-- maybe I'm from the old school, but a little bit of grime and a little less clean-scrubbed is what makes a city a city. If you can look past the soot and peeling paint-- Budapest is beautiful.
- I avoid discussing politics as a general rule, but if anybody needs to see an example of the inherent failure of the Communist system, I say get thee to Budapest-- the reason those beautiful buildings are in such disrepair was because the Communists (who got booted in 1989-- it's a parlimentary republic form of government now) found the buildings vulgar, and didn't have the funds for upkeep anyways. Those awful concrete slabs with holes punched out for windows are, oddly enough, in about the same sham-bolic shape as their 100-year-older bretheren thanks to bad design, cheap materials, and lousy workmanship. With the influx of money occurring from tourism and industry, things are turning around at an astonishing rate. I've traveled a bit, and I can honestly say that I've never seen as many construction cranes in one place as I did in Budapest.
- Hungary's a good enough deal, though not rock-bottom cheap. It's not on the Euro, but on their own currency called the Hungarian Forint (HUF), whose exchange rate worked out to a dizzying 1 Euro = 290 HUF. A very memorable evening in a wine bar set us back a whopping 5800 HUF (20 EU), and we waddled out of there. Be warned: Hungary is planning to go on the Euro sometime in 2012-13, so get out here before everything normalizes. But folks looking for cut rate designer label stuff-- Armani, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Promod, etc.-- all of these stores are here-- the pricing equals out to the rest of the world, so no special discounts on that front.
- There is such a thing as Hungarian wine, and they are quite proud of it-- 22 distinct wine growing regions, with all the basic types covered (red, white, rosé, sparkling, dessert), and a history that dates back to Roman times. It's all quite drinkable stuff too-- and is not just the cheapo Egri Bikavér (aka Bull's Blood) you can find at Fred Meyer, Trader Joe's, etc. World class? Not really, but give these guys time. At the risk of damning with faint praise, it's still better than any German wines we've quaffed.
But... patience is a virtue as they say, so bear with us a little bit longer-- the shots (and commentary) will be worth it.
B and I just returned last night from our first out-of-Germany trip: We spent 4 days in the terrific city of Budapest, Hungary. There is the temptation to do a full-blown travelogue, but that tends to make people's eyes glaze over. At the moment, there are a lot of pictures to be edited/cleaned up/sweetened, and they will probably be posted to an off-site photo blog like Picassa and liked to from here on this blog. But for now, I'll just say that I would recommend Budapest to anybody in a heartbeat-- it's not as well known as, say, Prague, and that's the hook-- before (re)development completely engulfs it and turns this city into a clean-scrubbed, Disney-fied version of its former self, there is much to recommend. But for now, enjoy this one photo-- that's the view from our hotel window of the Hungarian Parliment building at night (click on photo for enlarged view). While we did not find Budapest to be a hyper cheap "bargain," we paid only 70 Euros a night for a 4-Star hotel with Danube views like this. More to come!
The weather has been really nice lately-- to think it was snowing a couple weeks ago! But B managed to get away from work early on Friday, and we had ourselves a right nice weekend-- a little sun, walks around the Wöhrder See lake, and some people watching and wine sipping outdoors by the city walls. Today though, we used our alpine start of 2:00pm to do a little snooping around Nuremberg's neighboring city of Fürth (pronounced "furt"). The last time either of us was in this smaller (population 120,000, seventh largest city in Bavaria) city was in August when doing some whirlwind apartment shopping, and our main concern at the time was that even though it was only about 4 miles away, it didn't have the big town amenities or conveniences of Nuremberg. But Fürth is not without its charms or history-- for a start, it's actually older than Nuremberg, with the first recorded mention going back to the year 1007, and both Henry Kissinger and Levi Strauss were born there. But anyways, today we just hopped on the train with no particular place to go when we arrived, other than to find the "city center," and poke around. What we found was a city with most of its architecture and buildings intact-- some as far back as the 17th century, a terrific city park that has walking/biking paths that follow the Pegnitz river (and lead back to Nuremberg), and a nice quaint shopping area. Not that we'll be moving there anytime soon, bit it was a very pleasant time on a glorious day.
I'm shocked and happy to say that I got my German driver's license on the first attempt. This notorious test has an appalling failure rate for first-time test takers, especially for non-Germans. Part of this has to do with the atrocious translation; another part has to do with most of this translation being in "British" English, so you get terms like "kerb," "boot," "alighting," "lorry," and "tyre" (that's curb, car trunk, getting off/leaving, truck, and tire for us Yankees-- all those years listening to Brit new wave bands and obsessively reading the album liner notes finally paid off) and so forth. But mainly, the questions are very difficult, deliberately vague (there is what's written in the manual, and there is the spirit or intent of the rule, and the correct answer could be either interpretation), and there may be multiple correct answers for each question-- but no partial credit given. So if you checked off one box for the correct answer instead of required two, you get the entire question wrong-- very tough. Driving tests are also something of a racket here: Yes, the Germans take the subject very seriously (not a bad thing necessarily)-- the average 16-year old will have to enroll in a special school, and it will cost their family thousands of Euros, and taking each test costs 70 Euros whether you pass it or not. Thanks to my underemployment situation, I busted my tail studying-- I took about 55 mock tests/dry runs, and read the 306(!) page manual cover to cover multiple times. Americans from different states moving to Germany will have different experiences-- because each state has its own agreement with the German government for driver license reciprocity. In practical terms, for this blog's west coast readers this means that Washington driver's licenses can be handed over and you will receive a German license on the spot-- no testing whatsoever. Oregon drivers must take the written test, but no physical driving test is needed; Californians on the other hand have to take both the written AND road tests. Very strange indeed.
