Trip to Budapest: Day 1 - Old style

Being teachers with normal salaries, when going on vacation, staying on five star hotels is never an option especially when you have three children. That what makes eastern European cities like Budapest such a great thing at the moment. The iron curtain has lifted but economically they are still much cheaper then their western counterparts. As we left our children with the grandparents, we hade no problem of having a three night stay at five star luxury hotel Corinthia. Getting your luggage carried and excellent room service, top notch breakfast and silent rooms, thats all in a price that you pay at a normal way-side hotel in Sweden (yes, OK, its maybe a little more expensive, but really *5 star*). To be honest several things comes with extra charge, but the only one you really have to consider is the breakfast, and yes, it is worth the extra money.

Arriving in Budapest we used the very effective transfer buses that you could book easily as youwaited at the luggage drop, with a half-hour drive to your hotel. It costs roughly 2200 forints (65 kr/10$) per single trip.

The hotel is fresh and tip top. We didnt actually use the spa, but it seems extensive even though not especially cheap (but then I dont do that stuff normally either). I would say it is on par with Swedish prices.

Both at the airport and beforehand in guides you are adviced to buy the subway/bus card, but it comes at roughly 300 SEK/45$.If you live close to the center (we stayed roughly 1 km from the central shopping district Vaci Utca close to Donau) and are not adverse to walking 20 minutes here and there, you dont really need to travel by bus/train. The one exception could be Gellert mountain, which we passed on as the imposing hill seemed to much, especially this cold spring. Normally the weather is fair spring weather this time of year, but during our stay it stayed around +5 degrees.

We started with walking downtown and found quite a number of nice stalls with handicrafts and foodstuffs of local character around the Vörösmarty square. I'm sure some of it was like when they sell Viking helmets in Sweden, but other things felt more genuine in some sense. After that stroll we went for some fine culture at the State Opera.

Excellent lamb chops

Beef gulasch with majgaluska

Preparation of ...

... kurtoskalacs pastries

Here by the brand Vites Kurtoz

View of Donau and Varhegy (Royal mountain) beyond

The Budapest sping festival was at its final week when we visited, and we had booked tickets at the Hungarian State Opera to watch the Wagner opera Parsifal, actually without ever had conciously listened to it or read up on the story, which in hindsight maybe wasnt sooo smart. Central Budapest, at least, seems to have been spared most of the bombing or communistic destruction and ugly buildings that other European cities was struck by last century, and walking there is quite interesting if you are the least fascinated by stone architecture, and the State Opera is one of many buildings that carries that central European heritage that is somehow a mixture of dark and light, hope and age.

Back to our visit, the first thing you should know about Hungary is that the language is like no other in Europe with the exception of finnish and estonian. This means you cant manage as well as usual on your english and french/german/italian/spanish skills to guess the meaning of words. I can usually get by quite well with that, but here it really was allmost impossible. So you better come prepared or hope that they know some neglish (which they seemed to quite often). We had to ask where our seats was several times, but I have to say everyone we have interacted with here have been very helpful and nice, really.

The opera itself? Well: 1. It is five hours! Yes. So with seats that maybe didnt have the optimum comfort (not too much holstery...), and singing in german, when the first act ended and we realized it wasnt over but had just started, we felt we had heard and enjoyed the ambience and the music and could leave as staying would only mean more of the same with increasing pain. We did stay and had a drink in the beatiful rooms upstairs, though, after which we walked home in the evening sunshine.
I must say the music was a real eyeopener - I mean, it was like hearing music from the Lord of the Rings movies or a number of other modern classics. So it was kind of a history lesson beyond that of Wagners connection with german history. But next time I go to an opera, I will go to a shorter one, and preferably one in a language I can follow better.

All in all a nice start of our trip here, one that ended with some cozy movies and a dinner ordered with room service.

Day 2 is here