This morning, I made my last border-crossing and arrived at my last destination in this Balkan-month: Budapest in Hungary (actually not part of the Balkans anymore).
I checked into the perfect hostel (Loft Hostel Budapest), with super nice staff, enormous living room and nice mixed guests. For the first time, check-in was not standing in my jacket at the reception but sitting down in the kitchen with a tea, getting lots of information about the city.
After lunch, I climbed the upper town with its little streets and buildings with the typical, beautifully colorful roofs. From up there I also had a perfect view on the famous Parliament building on the other side of the Danubio river. I climbed down on the other end of upper town, where a giant castle wall separates uppertown from downtown. I had been supposed to spend the evening in uppertown to watch the sundown from there but it was so cloudy that I didn’t expect any spectacular sundown to happen. Only when I was back in the Buda-part of Budapest, the sky suddenly turned from black to blue and then to red and orange.
My plan had been to eat dinner at a restaurant that the people in the hostel had recommended to me but it turned out to have only two dishes for me and all of them were with lots of tofu (Me and vegetarian restaurants don’t really get along very well), so I left for a different place. This other place (as well as almost every other restaurant in the city) was closed; I really don’t know when people have dinner here, it was only 8:30.
Unable to find food, I returned to the hostel and skipped my plans to go to a bar with live-music. I don’t know how often I have been in this situation in my life – walking 4 km trying to find food and returning hungry and with lots of lost time and happiness – and it still upsets me every time. It’s or cooking or having a really good and secure plan, otherwise it won’t work out – I should really know that by now.
However, I had some canned tuna and a good conversation with an American man at the hostel, which restored my mood eventually.
Now it’s late and I will keep it short and let the pictures speak.
P.S.: Hungarians like my name:
