Down the Rabbit Hole and off to Carpe

Budapest, Budapest, Budapest.... where to even start with Budapest and the people that were there.

This city was by far some of the most fun I have had in all of my travels. The hostel while giving you the opportunity to go and sightsee and play tourist is not geared towards that type of traveller in any way shape or form.

Carpe Noctem (seize the night) is a party hostel and the people working and living there make it some of the most fun you will have in Europe provided that you are willing to be open and join in on all of the fun. Every night has a destination and usually a good drinks deal.

My first day there I had only had a bed for about 30 minutes when I was invited out in passing to Mongolian BBQ, which was 4000 florins and included unlimited food, beer and wine. The guys I went with turned out to be staff for the most part and this led to some great impressions of them as I learnt the wonderful back stories of a few of them. The day progressed quickly and then before I knew it tequila had been ordered, much to Suzi’s dismay. The three guys who were hitting it hard got some shit for their antics to put it lightly, in the end one of them even lost the battle with his stomach at the table and resulted in me making a hasty retreat while it was dealt with – not my problem is the phrase that came to mind.

That night was, like all at Carpe, one for going out, the exact specific destinations on that night eluding me at this point but there was drinking and more than one bar that we went to over the course of the night.

The drinking specifics is something that will come in a later post, after I grab the schedule from Carpe’s site.

More importantly is the fact that some sightseeing was enjoyed. On one day I went with three other people to the House of Terror/Horror which is based in the old headquarters of first the Nazi secret police and then the Soviet secret police. It was an experience to say the least, I had no real idea about the role that Hungary had played in the second world war, other than the fact I knew they were in it, and then the information about what the Soviets had done in their time in the country was a bit of a shock.

I recommend to anyone who heads to Budapest to go there, but at the same time make sure you have something to do afterwards that is a bit more uplifting as the museum in the end is depressing in the reality that it portrays.

After the museum I headed with one of the other guys to Hero Square which is one of the quintessential things that most people see in Budapest and it is on almost all of the post cards that you will get. It was nice and made, like so many sights in Budapest, for some nice pictures. We then wandered around for almost 3 hours in Budapest and took in the main tourist street, one that we were warned not to go near at night, and also the market hall and one of the main bridges in town which gave some nice views across the city.

The other main chunk of sight seeing that I did, embarrassingly, was not done until the day I was leaving, very hung over from the Shit Pub Pub-crawl, to be explained another time, I wandered quite some distance in a random direction and ended up at some of the sights I had not managed to get to the time before and even with the mediocre weather that day it made for some nice pictures and being able to get to almost all of the sights on the Pest side of Budapest.

This leaves the other city, with respect to my experience, unexplored and will probably prove to be the excuse for me going back there at some point for another drunken week of Carpe madness.

The time I was going to be spending in Budapest was only 4 nights, this number quickly changed once I checked the time tables for the buses and discovered that the bus to Kiev that ran on Fridays no longer existed – I had to stay till I got the bus on Monday night. This meant a weekend in Budapest which in the end was the best way to have it and it was just as fun as I expected it to be but once it was over the bus on Monday to Kiev was looming and it was not something I was going to miss.

After a goodbye that was almost on par with when I left Australia from the people at Carpe I went to the bus station and wait is something that I certainly did. The bus was scheduled to arrive in Budapest at 9 pm. Waiting there early as always 9 pm came and went, and with no bus in sight, concerned to say the least I waited, and waited and then over an hour late the bus arrived much to my relief. I go the last free seat on the bus and then we were away.