BORAT
November 3
Outside when we woke up: IT WAS SNOWING! No joke; the skies were grey and there were snow flurries all over the place! It was so exciting but at the same time kinda scary cuz a) this was the second time IN HER LIFE that Marilena had ever even seen snow, and b) Tera Linsley doesn’t do cold or snow… FORTUNATELY, it only lasted about an hour then cleared up to be a BEAUTIFUL (yet still freezing cold) day.
After taking advantage of free breakfast offered by our hostel, we bundled up for our day of sightseeing in the freezingness. I wore my warmest clothes (that were hardly warm at all): my Diesel sneaks, jeans, wife beater, long sleeve shirt, black zippy sweatshirt, and a scarf… not gonna lie, this is what I wear at home when it gets to be around 50; I was a goner.
So we left our hostel around 10AM and hopped on the bus (woot for MORE public transportation) heading toward downtown. The guy at the hostel laughed at us when we asked how much/where we needed to buy tickets from – heh, ooo so this is one of those countries where paying for bus tickets was OPTIONAL… gotcha! ;)
On the bus we were obviously the dumb Americans: firstly it was a rough ride and we were falling over onto people for most of the time. Secondly we were the only ones NOT dressed for a blizzard.
“gmphstrompster” – oh hey guys, I think this is us! The Hungarian language is sophisticated and unpronounceable jibberish. We hopped off at the stop a local told us to get off at then (after stopping in a bookstore for a much needed Hungarian travel book) headed toward the center to buy tickets for a two-hour bus tour that took us around both Buda and Pest.
For our hour in between ticket buying and the tour departure we decided to explore St. Stephen’s Basilica (wait, who the heck was St. Stephen?) across the street. The interior was incredible! Everything was in a reddish marble with gold trim… it was just as beautiful as Saint Peter’s. After exploring the inside we paid our 400 finfers to climb to the top of the dome. Literally we climbed a million stairs for about 20 minutes straight. It was PAINFUL but absolutely worth it. The view was breathtaking. We were in the tallest structure in both Buda and Pest and could see the entire city! However, it was about 10 degrees at the top though so we only lasted up there for a little while…
Our tour was on a horribly yellow (why is my favorite color always butchered SO badly?!), fish tank of a bus, filled with old people except us. Whatever, it was so worth it. Our guide, Jeno was great – he thought we were Dutch! Cool. He narrated all two hours of the tour in English AND German; god, it’s gotta get real old telling the same jokes twice in a row all day long.
The various things we drove by and learned about in both Buda and Pest included Heroes Square, the Parliament Building, the Opera House, the Royal Palace, the Danube River (that divides Budapest into Buda and Pest), etc. It was so worth the 4000 finfers (about 14 euro). After the tour our anxiety about being in a random place was greatly decreased.
We ate lunch in the nearest restaurant to the tour drop off cuz it was freezing. The restaurant was called “Wallstreet,” and turned out to be one of the 10 restaurants recommended to eat at in Pest according to our Hungarian travel book. We ate goulash… it was fabulously delicious (even if it WAS boiling hot).
When it was time to pay, it took us about 45 minutes, 3 pieces of scratch paper, 1 cell phone calculator, and 50 calculations to figure out how many finfers each of us owed and THEN how many euros each of our finfers were worth. The bill totaled about 12,000 finfers – after that, I was totally lost and grateful to have Marilena, the math minor, with us!
Then we bundled back up and headed back out into the cold. Unfortunately the Opera House was closed and we weren’t able to peak around the inside (which is sposed to be really awesome) because I think there was a show that evening… maaaan.
After being rejected from the Opera House, we scrambled down to the metro to get out of the freezingness. We had been wondering all day why the streets seemed kinda empty then we realized it’s cuz people travel in the metro underground where it’s warm (unlike us, who were WALKING ON THE SIDEWALKS OUT IN THE COLD). Navigating was difficult because all the stop names were unpronounceable and looked exactly the same, but somehow Amelia managed to get us to our next destination: The West End City Center (AKA one of the hugest malls I’ve ever been in). It was packed full of Hungarians. I guess that makes sense though, in a place where, half the year it’s below freezing, might as well give the people a cool mall to hang out in! We roamed all four floors for a while (I bought a green hat to match my eyes that lately are overwhelmingly green… not from tears for once) then came across Paradise Cinemas…
Yes, we spent Friday afternoon watching a movie at the theaters in Hungary! It took Kate and I, liek, 15 minutes to work up the courage to go ask the hot guy working there if any of the movies playing were in English… turned out FOUR were (with Hungarian subtitles)! Woooo! We paid our 9000 finfers for tickets (about 4ish euros/6 dollars… sweet, because movies at home are prolly up to about 11 dollars by now) then 410 finfers (less 2 euro) for a HUGE Coke Light and headed into the theater…
Okay, so maybe it wasn’t too brilliant for us to see BORAT in a foreign country. It made America looked like a big, fucked up, asshole.
I’m not sure if it was the scene where Borat and a fat man were chasing each other around naked, or when Borat was chatting with feminists about how women have smaller brains than men, or if it was when he announced to an arena of Southerners at a rodeo that George Bush should drink the blood of all the Iraqi people after we kill them all… but I’m not gonna lie, the four of us felt very ashamed and embarrassed to be Americans walking out of that theater. I tried not to speak until we were out of the crowd… maybe they’d think I was German? I must admit, the movie WAS hilarious, BUT I think I’ll feel a little more comfortable enjoying it in a room full of Americans.
It was about 8:00 by the time we got to the hostel. The ride home was complicated by the fact that the metro line we needed to take to get to our bus stop was shut down for the evening for construction… soooo we waited out in the freezingness for our beloved bus #7 to show up. None of us remembered what the stop of our hostel was called. Hm, I guess for the first time since we’ve been here, we were comforted by the fact that our hostel is marked by the point where the streets start to get dark and scary.
The original plan for the evening was to go to a pay-16-euro-and-get-all-you-can-eat-and-drink-of-Hungarian-food-and-booze restaurant but we all felt full from goulash at lunch and decided to walk to a nearby restaurant as recommended by the guy that worked at the front desk (that was watching TV with his girlfriend… it was so cute).
It was ice cold outside on our walk to Paprika (that we got lost on) but it was so worth it! For about 10 euro each we got HUGE main courses, and split a bottle of wine, and two huge deserts. We were considering e-mailing Rick to let him know that if he ever was interested in writing a Budapest travel guide he should for sure include Paprika!
During dinner we opened up maps and guide books and planned out the events for our FINAL day of our Fall Break Eurotrip. Since dinner was done around 11 and we had to get an early start the next day, we called it a night and crashed early. WHAT a day.
Outside when we woke up: IT WAS SNOWING! No joke; the skies were grey and there were snow flurries all over the place! It was so exciting but at the same time kinda scary cuz a) this was the second time IN HER LIFE that Marilena had ever even seen snow, and b) Tera Linsley doesn’t do cold or snow… FORTUNATELY, it only lasted about an hour then cleared up to be a BEAUTIFUL (yet still freezing cold) day.
After taking advantage of free breakfast offered by our hostel, we bundled up for our day of sightseeing in the freezingness. I wore my warmest clothes (that were hardly warm at all): my Diesel sneaks, jeans, wife beater, long sleeve shirt, black zippy sweatshirt, and a scarf… not gonna lie, this is what I wear at home when it gets to be around 50; I was a goner.
So we left our hostel around 10AM and hopped on the bus (woot for MORE public transportation) heading toward downtown. The guy at the hostel laughed at us when we asked how much/where we needed to buy tickets from – heh, ooo so this is one of those countries where paying for bus tickets was OPTIONAL… gotcha! ;)
On the bus we were obviously the dumb Americans: firstly it was a rough ride and we were falling over onto people for most of the time. Secondly we were the only ones NOT dressed for a blizzard.
“gmphstrompster” – oh hey guys, I think this is us! The Hungarian language is sophisticated and unpronounceable jibberish. We hopped off at the stop a local told us to get off at then (after stopping in a bookstore for a much needed Hungarian travel book) headed toward the center to buy tickets for a two-hour bus tour that took us around both Buda and Pest.
For our hour in between ticket buying and the tour departure we decided to explore St. Stephen’s Basilica (wait, who the heck was St. Stephen?) across the street. The interior was incredible! Everything was in a reddish marble with gold trim… it was just as beautiful as Saint Peter’s. After exploring the inside we paid our 400 finfers to climb to the top of the dome. Literally we climbed a million stairs for about 20 minutes straight. It was PAINFUL but absolutely worth it. The view was breathtaking. We were in the tallest structure in both Buda and Pest and could see the entire city! However, it was about 10 degrees at the top though so we only lasted up there for a little while…
Our tour was on a horribly yellow (why is my favorite color always butchered SO badly?!), fish tank of a bus, filled with old people except us. Whatever, it was so worth it. Our guide, Jeno was great – he thought we were Dutch! Cool. He narrated all two hours of the tour in English AND German; god, it’s gotta get real old telling the same jokes twice in a row all day long.
The various things we drove by and learned about in both Buda and Pest included Heroes Square, the Parliament Building, the Opera House, the Royal Palace, the Danube River (that divides Budapest into Buda and Pest), etc. It was so worth the 4000 finfers (about 14 euro). After the tour our anxiety about being in a random place was greatly decreased.
We ate lunch in the nearest restaurant to the tour drop off cuz it was freezing. The restaurant was called “Wallstreet,” and turned out to be one of the 10 restaurants recommended to eat at in Pest according to our Hungarian travel book. We ate goulash… it was fabulously delicious (even if it WAS boiling hot).
When it was time to pay, it took us about 45 minutes, 3 pieces of scratch paper, 1 cell phone calculator, and 50 calculations to figure out how many finfers each of us owed and THEN how many euros each of our finfers were worth. The bill totaled about 12,000 finfers – after that, I was totally lost and grateful to have Marilena, the math minor, with us!
Then we bundled back up and headed back out into the cold. Unfortunately the Opera House was closed and we weren’t able to peak around the inside (which is sposed to be really awesome) because I think there was a show that evening… maaaan.
After being rejected from the Opera House, we scrambled down to the metro to get out of the freezingness. We had been wondering all day why the streets seemed kinda empty then we realized it’s cuz people travel in the metro underground where it’s warm (unlike us, who were WALKING ON THE SIDEWALKS OUT IN THE COLD). Navigating was difficult because all the stop names were unpronounceable and looked exactly the same, but somehow Amelia managed to get us to our next destination: The West End City Center (AKA one of the hugest malls I’ve ever been in). It was packed full of Hungarians. I guess that makes sense though, in a place where, half the year it’s below freezing, might as well give the people a cool mall to hang out in! We roamed all four floors for a while (I bought a green hat to match my eyes that lately are overwhelmingly green… not from tears for once) then came across Paradise Cinemas…
Yes, we spent Friday afternoon watching a movie at the theaters in Hungary! It took Kate and I, liek, 15 minutes to work up the courage to go ask the hot guy working there if any of the movies playing were in English… turned out FOUR were (with Hungarian subtitles)! Woooo! We paid our 9000 finfers for tickets (about 4ish euros/6 dollars… sweet, because movies at home are prolly up to about 11 dollars by now) then 410 finfers (less 2 euro) for a HUGE Coke Light and headed into the theater…
Okay, so maybe it wasn’t too brilliant for us to see BORAT in a foreign country. It made America looked like a big, fucked up, asshole.
I’m not sure if it was the scene where Borat and a fat man were chasing each other around naked, or when Borat was chatting with feminists about how women have smaller brains than men, or if it was when he announced to an arena of Southerners at a rodeo that George Bush should drink the blood of all the Iraqi people after we kill them all… but I’m not gonna lie, the four of us felt very ashamed and embarrassed to be Americans walking out of that theater. I tried not to speak until we were out of the crowd… maybe they’d think I was German? I must admit, the movie WAS hilarious, BUT I think I’ll feel a little more comfortable enjoying it in a room full of Americans.
It was about 8:00 by the time we got to the hostel. The ride home was complicated by the fact that the metro line we needed to take to get to our bus stop was shut down for the evening for construction… soooo we waited out in the freezingness for our beloved bus #7 to show up. None of us remembered what the stop of our hostel was called. Hm, I guess for the first time since we’ve been here, we were comforted by the fact that our hostel is marked by the point where the streets start to get dark and scary.
The original plan for the evening was to go to a pay-16-euro-and-get-all-you-can-eat-and-drink-of-Hungarian-food-and-booze restaurant but we all felt full from goulash at lunch and decided to walk to a nearby restaurant as recommended by the guy that worked at the front desk (that was watching TV with his girlfriend… it was so cute).
It was ice cold outside on our walk to Paprika (that we got lost on) but it was so worth it! For about 10 euro each we got HUGE main courses, and split a bottle of wine, and two huge deserts. We were considering e-mailing Rick to let him know that if he ever was interested in writing a Budapest travel guide he should for sure include Paprika!
During dinner we opened up maps and guide books and planned out the events for our FINAL day of our Fall Break Eurotrip. Since dinner was done around 11 and we had to get an early start the next day, we called it a night and crashed early. WHAT a day.
posted by tera a firenze at 12:55 AM
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