Wanderings

Szia everyone,

Today marks the final Saturday that we’ll all be spending in Budapest, so Jack and I (Matt) decided to explore the city a bit this morning. In fairness, we were just looking for some lunch before going to the laundromat, but sometimes that turns into an adventure of its own. I suppose we already sort of knew, but it turned out that we’d always gone the same direction whenever we left the hotel and headed for Pest instead of looking for things in Buda, so we were pleasantly surprised to find out that we’ve been staying only two blocks away from a cluster of restaurants and shops we never knew existed. After searching for a bit, we found a Chinese restaurant that looked promising and settled in for a quick but tasty lunch.

We promise, it looked really good.

As we left and headed back towards the main road in the area, it became apparent that we had forgotten to keep track of quite how many turns we had made, too busy checking out all of the interesting shops and figuring out what we wanted to come back to. We quickly found our way to a familiar tram stop, though, and rode that back to a stop just a block or two from the laundromat. On the last leg of our trip, though, we made our most important discovery of the morning: The Donut Library.

Beautiful.

We decided that we were a bit too full to stop in today, but rest assured that we’ll find our way back in the next few days.

Later this afternoon, the two of us set out again, this time accompanied by Colin and Ian. We headed off to Andrássy út, one of the most famous streets in the city, and took a walk along part of it. We started about half way up and walked up towards Hero’s Square and City Park, checking out the shops and restaurants along the way. We even found a new branch of St. Olaf’s favorite cafe.

 

Who knew you could get Pause pizza all the way over here?

  Unfortunately, it was raining mildly the whole time, but not enough to ruin the walk by any means.

Colin, Ian and Matt. Not pictured: Jack (he was taking the picture), Jack's umbrella (it's in Northfield).

Pretty, but probably even better in May

  

   

Eventually we came to the park, and first walked around Vajdahunyad vára, a castle that was originally constructed for show, but which was such a success that it was made a permanent structure. None of the architecture is original, but instead pulls bits and pieces from other famous structures around Hungary and puts them together to create a unique design all its own.

    We took a walk through the proper park then, and even though it’s a little grey this time of year, it’s still a nice slice of nature in the middle of the city. Plus, it has a rad skate park. Not that any of us could have done anything with it, but still neat.

  

Everything someone needs. Maybe not us, but someone.

    At that point, we needed to head back to the hotel if we were going to get dinner before our later plans, but even on the way back we made another discovery when we passed by the Széchenyi Baths, which sounded like a rather nice change of pace from being somewhat cold and soggy if there had been more time.

Széchenyi Baths

 

After that, I (Jack) went with Colin and Miranda to the Fővárosi Nagycirkusz, the local circus. It turned out to be a great indoor activity for a rainy night. 
 

According to my Hungarian, this means "something something-Circus"

It was full of interesting acts; many were acrobats, some were animals, and one was an especially amusing clown. We went with the cheapest tickets possible, but we ended up next to the live band, which we considered a win. The memories of the event will stick with us for a long time, as will the circus’s smell whenever we wear the same clothes we wore tonight. I’ll post a selection of pictures from the event at the end of the post.

I returned to the hotel to spend the rest of my night finishing up homework, which I found out this afternoon was due tomorrow, not Monday. Some star students finished their problem sets up yesterday, and I’m sure others will put the finishing touches on theirs tomorrow, but the one bit of math I know we all did today was adding up the days we have left here. I think all of us got the same answer: not enough. (Also, six.) After spending the amount of time here that we have, it’s started to feel like a home, and I don’t mean that entirely in a cheesy, end-of-a-Disney-movie sort of way. In a more practical sense, we’ve been settling into daily routines: going to class during the day, doing schoolwork at nights, taking the metro from place to place, doing laundry (I took care of a load today–my clean sock levels were getting perilously low.) It feels less like we’re visiting Budapest, and more like we’re living in it. I suspect that this familiarity with the city is going to make it especially hard to leave when the time comes.

Then again, I still call the local currency “Florints” rather than “Forints”, so maybe I should dial back the sentimentality a couple of notches and get to the circus pictures. All photos below are courtesy of Miranda!

Szia!
-Jack and Matt I