{"id":10822,"date":"2012-04-11T17:22:04","date_gmt":"2012-04-11T22:22:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/?page_id=10822"},"modified":"2015-08-24T17:15:07","modified_gmt":"2015-08-24T22:15:07","slug":"budapest-day-1","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/?page_id=10822","title":{"rendered":"Budapest Day 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Berlin Day 6 Part 2<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last night, we had asked the bartender at the “Old German” bar if there was a post office closer to our hotel so we could mail off my package this morning. Well, the reply was that the post office would stay closed for the Monday after Easter. I guess I get to sleep in for a little bit longer since I don’t have to wake up early to mail off my package. I also did manage to stuff everything into my backpack, barely, and it’s now heavy as hell.<\/p>\n

Sidenotes about Berlin.<\/p>\n

When SO went to visit her friend the other day while I was blogging at Starbucks, she randomly ran into one of the Danes who we met at Kreuzberg on the street. Then yesterday, on the way to Pergamon Museum, we ran into an Asian family who ate at the same Korean restaurant that we ate at the other night. Crazy to be running into people in such a big city in such a short amount of time.<\/p>\n

German Simpsons intro is “Die Simpsons!”. I laugh every time I see that.<\/p>\n

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\nToday we leave Berlin and head to Budapest. Another beautiful sunny day. End it on a good note.<\/p>\n

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\nCobblestones and rolling luggage hate each other. This is the reason why I have a backpack.<\/p>\n

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\nOn the bus to the airport. I had asked the front desk for the easiest way to the airport and was told that it only took one single bus. No transfers, comes every 10 minutes, and it picks up right next to the subway station by our hotel. Super happy! Cheap and fast, only about 20 minutes!<\/p>\n

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\nThe nice orderly clean German streets.<\/p>\n

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\n20 minutes! I can’t believe this! I wish we had known about this bus when we first arrived in Berlin.<\/p>\n

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\nHad to walk to another terminal.<\/p>\n

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\nOne of the largest elevator I’ve ever been in. You can fit an entire full sized car in here.<\/p>\n

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\nPacked so full. See you in Budapest.<\/p>\n

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\nBreakfast at the airport. The bakery had this buttery dinner roll with chocolate chips inside. Genius! I also wrote out some postcards during breakfast.<\/p>\n

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\nPostcards, away you go to the other side of the world.<\/p>\n

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\nThrough security. They allow one lighter per person. They are also a lot more thorough with the security over here than anywhere else I’ve been. If you make the metal detector ring, the security will spend a good minute with you with a hand held metal detector going over every inch of you. Now thinking back, India had such lax security control. It was such a joke.<\/p>\n

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\nI don’t know what that is, all I know is that I am going to eat it.<\/p>\n

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\nLook at all the sour cream that they put on my baked potato. The Germans really love their sour cream! I don’t remember ordering sour cream with a side of potato.<\/p>\n

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\nBerlin Tegel airport is pretty crappy. I feel like I am in a warehouse.<\/p>\n

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\nOn the bus to the plane. Look! A lady with an accordion!!! I never did visit an accordion shop in Berlin. I was really excited at first, then Berlin got me down, and then I realized that I didn’t want to ship an accordion across the ocean and risk it getting damaged. Oh well, maybe next time.<\/p>\n

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\nIsn’t it funny to think about how an airplane is a long metal tube with wings?<\/p>\n

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\nUgh! Berlin being Berlin, and gets the last laugh. I get the only seat on my AirBerlin plane with no windows.<\/p>\n

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\nAirplane food. Some sort of corndog looking thing. I didn’t eat it though. I was so tired on the flight that I slept most of the time.<\/p>\n

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\nIt was a quick flight, reaching Budapest in under two hours. I had to contort my body and take a photo from the window behind my seat.<\/p>\n

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\nTouchdown. Just missed the puff of smoke.<\/p>\n

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\nA visit to the ATM and now I am rich, bitches! Hungarian forints. It’s about 225 HUF to 1 USD.<\/p>\n

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\nAirport shared van to take me to hotel.<\/p>\n

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\nSaw this posting in the bathroom. Taxi cowboys, eh.<\/p>\n

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\nCame out, tried to find a van, but was turned away. What’s going on?<\/p>\n

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\nAsked the shared van desk again, and apparently I am supposed to wait for a van to be assigned to my ticket number on this monitor. Got it.<\/p>\n

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\nOnly had to wait 5 minutes, and I was in a van heading into Budapest.<\/p>\n

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\nIt’s clean here. Really clean. I feel good about this place already. Though, the airport personnel are not as nice as the Germans.<\/p>\n

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\nBudapest suburbia.<\/p>\n

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\nI like the green and yellow color combo.<\/p>\n

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\nIn the city center now. Still spotlessly clean. Dare I say that Budapest is cleaner than Berlin? Yes, I believe it is. It feels so Western European here. I didn’t know what to expect of Budapest, but this feels very similar to Vienna.<\/p>\n

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\nReached hotel! We were the first stop out of everyone in the van.<\/p>\n

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\nThis is what $110 a night gets you in Budapest.<\/p>\n

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\nA large room with a walk in closet even!! The best part, working wifi and it’s fast!!<\/p>\n

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\nChurch right outside of our hotel. It’s still pretty early, only mid afternoon. Time to go out and have a quick look around Budapest. The weather here is pretty nice, it’s warmer than Berlin. The temperature is around the high 40s and low 50s. Can’t complain one bit.<\/p>\n

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\nClean! Before arriving, spotlessly clean city did not fit the description of a city in Hungary.<\/p>\n

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\nIt’s Monday after Easter, so most shops are still closed today and there are not many people out and about.<\/p>\n

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\nOhhhh yeah! I know where I am going tonight, and tomorrow night, and the night after that, and the night after that, and the night after that, ad infinitum.<\/p>\n

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\nLove the mustard colored trams.<\/p>\n

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\nGoulash!!! I must go in and have a look!<\/p>\n

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\nThis place looks like it’s been influenced by the Germans.<\/p>\n

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\nVery much a bier garten feel to it.<\/p>\n

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\nI will not be ordering that.<\/p>\n

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\nWe asked our waiter for a Hungarian beer, and this is what he brought out. It was pretty light. I’d imagine this is the Bud Light of Hungary. We started drinking and realized that it may be too early to eat. It’s only 4:30PM. We are loving Budapest already. I am riding the high from the last few days of Berlin and continuing it over here in Budapest.<\/p>\n

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\nThe Danube river is just ahead. This is about a 15 minutes walk from our hotel.<\/p>\n

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\nDanube River.<\/p>\n

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\nThis is a beautiful city!<\/p>\n

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\nThat’s one of the longest river cruise boats I’ve ever seen.<\/p>\n

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\nGhats! Reminds me of Varanasi, minus all the Varanasi.<\/p>\n

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\nAnother long river cruise boat.<\/p>\n

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\nAll that weight of the bridge rests on 4 small points. Ah, this reminds me of the days in college when I took Statics.<\/p>\n

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\nThere are so many statues and sculptures here in Budapest. I can’t walk 3 minutes without seeing one.<\/p>\n

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\nReminds me of my mutt.<\/p>\n

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\nThis lady was out singing and playing this strange electric instrument.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nShe had a beautiful soft voice and I don’t think she was busking either. I think she was just out singing for the hell of it. She was playing this bizarre instrument that I’ve never seen before. On one side there are buttons that she pushes and it creates synthesized notes, and on the other side, she held a small cloth(I think to reduce friction) with her hand and moved it up and down this rectangular touch pad. As she moved the cloth up and down on the touch pad, the instrument would create harp runs at the same rate that she moves across the touch pad. It was so strange and cool!<\/p>\n

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\nSee, more statues.<\/p>\n

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\nCafe Gerbeaud. This is a famous cafe, opened in 1858!!<\/p>\n

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\nThis is so Vienna! It’s understandable as both cities used to be part of the Austro Hungarian Empire.<\/p>\n

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\nYes, let’s eat and drink! Love coffee! Hmmmm, so good!<\/p>\n

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\nI can say that I love Budapest already.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nCastle Hill. That other side of Danube River is Buda, and the side that I am on is Pest. Now, say Buda and Pest together really fast.<\/p>\n

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\nSakura all over Europe. Who knew I didn’t have to go to Japan to look at sakura blossoms.<\/p>\n

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\nMore sculptures.<\/p>\n

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\nSeriously? Milking the NBA lockout, but wasn’t that almost a year ago?<\/p>\n

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\nI heard sing and saw a group of guys wearing reflective vests. They were all singing the same folk song in unison.<\/p>\n

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\nThen, as I got closer, I saw buckets of water flying out and girls screaming!<\/p>\n

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\nThey had surrounded a group of girls, and had poured water all over them.\u00a0 It was all in good fun and not malicious. What’s going on here?<\/p>\n

We were standing on the street next to a restaurant hostess, and we asked her about it. She said that it was Hungarian tradition for guys to sing and then pour water on girls on the Monday after Easter Sunday. Cool! I love how they have these old traditions where people sing these traditional folk songs. I heard the Turks sing folk songs, and now I’ve heard the Hungarians sing folk songs. The only singing in unison that I’ve heard in Austin is to Sweet Caroline or Don’t Stop Believing in a drunken bar. How sad of us…<\/p>\n

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\nWell, we are hungry, so why not eat at the restaurant of the nice informative hostess.<\/p>\n

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\nQuaint.<\/p>\n

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\nHungarian food! Yes! They are meat happy over here. Love it.<\/p>\n

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\nOf course, coffee.<\/p>\n

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\nTime to buy some water. The water in Budapest is supposedly safe, but might as well buy some water here. Better safe than sorry.<\/p>\n

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\nLooks even better at night.<\/p>\n

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\nOne of the very rare graffiti that I see here in Budapest.<\/p>\n

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Back to the hotel to catch up on blogging big time. Loving Budapest so far. Calm and beautiful.<\/p>\n

To be continued at Budapest Day 2 Part 1<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Berlin Day 6 Part 2. Last night, we had asked the bartender at the “Old German” bar if there was a post office closer to our hotel so we could mail off my package this morning. Well, the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":10820,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-10822","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10822"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29590,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10822\/revisions\/29590"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}