Day 69 - The Buda

It was a very mellow day today. I got up around ten, watched everyone else getting ready. The guys from Krakow who said they'd be up around six, and the gals from Ireland who said they were sleeping in until noon. I got to wait a half hour for the gal from Mexico to take her shower. I didn't really care. It was a nice morning. I had breakfast, some cereal I'd bought at the store the night before. That reminds me, dinner last night was frozen vegetables and the closest thing I could find to tater tots. Long live Ashland. :)

After all that, it was finally time to head out. I walked to the train station to pick up a map. While I was there, I was engaged in conversation by a man who rents rooms in his house here. He wanted help getting young tourists to stay with him. He was a big guy, so I could understand how people might be a little afraid if he tried the hard sell. He talked about how hard it's become because a lot of foriegn interests (arabs as he put it) have taken over the hotel industry here and how the textile and some other industries have been taken over by the chinese. With as much programming as the US is shipping off to South America and India, it's hard to imagine how people in the US are going to make money, especially after we've covered every square meter of the country with housing no one can afford, which at the current rate will be in about two months. :P I guess that's why the government is backing the entertainment industry so hard. It's one of the few things we still export effectively.

After our discussion of geopolitics, I wished him the best and headed for Buda. The rail station is well on the east side of town, and Buda is on the west. In fact, you can imagine the division of the two cities like the division of the word. Buda on the west side, Pest on the east. I saw lots of lovely architecture. When I got to the river, I realized that the most beautiful stuff is on the far side, though. There's a huge rocky green hill just on the other side of the river that I climbed to get some great views. There's a church in a cave there, too, but I was wearing shorts, so I decided to leave it alone. A lot of churches don't want anything above the knee, and I didn't want to see the inside that badly. The park on that hill was great. You could go to the fort at the top where they had some statues, which I took pictures of, and some old artillery pieces and ambulances they had up there from when there was a working fort, which I didn't take pictures of. The light was bad. Then I walked down, taking more pictures of the lovely greenery. Then it happened, something I knew was coming from the second I started growing my hair out. Someone mistook me for Jesus. Luckily it was just a local body builder. I'm waiting for a crazy person to really think I am Jesus.

The universe having the sense of humor that it does, I then walked around a three card monte game being conducted in the park. Even walking around it, one of the guys running the game called out to me like I was rude for just walking by. Part of me wanted to warn the people he was most likely stealing from, but I left them, without a word, to their own devices.

I tracked along the river, heading north. I had intended to explore the island park in the middle of the river, but I then realized it was four and I hadn't eaten anything. There was a vegetarian restaurant listed on my map. So instead of hitting the island, I just took some pictures of it (and of the incredibly ornate parliament building beside it) and went to an early dinner. Apparently hungarians eat late, or never eat at "Vegetarium", because I was the only one there. I tried the big sampler plate and ended up polishing off seasoned potatoes, herb rice, soaked cabbage, mushroom dumplings, tofu with tomato and peppers, and a mushroom rice patty somewhat reminiscent of a garden burger. This and a raspberry yogurt shake all for eleven bucks (and that's including an overly generous tip). I was very full.

I wandered back towards the hostel, taking a few pictures along the way. I took a detour to head past a small park. It was full of dogs. No one breed seems to predominate in Budapest. Black collies, terriers, dobermans; poodles, they're all here. There was something that looked like a saint bernard mix I rather wish I'd taken a movie of. It's size was unreal. Whenever it moved, it took it's coat a second to catch up. If it had been in a movie, I would have thought it was bad computer animation.

After that I headed back to the hostel, started this update, watched the computer crash, and then decided to follow its example. All that food needed digesting, after all. I took a nice three hour nap, which was probably good as my roommates were up chatting unti two. It was standard raunchy hostel faire, mostly. I thought with women in the room, it might tone down a bit. You would need a delicate, well calibrated instrument to detect the difference.

So here I am the next morning, more than a little glad that only one of my roommates will still be there tonight. But with the vagaries of hostel life, who knows who'll be next. It's time to do a bit more research and continue my exploration.

• Flights to Athens
• Map locations of attractions I want to visit

I'm seriously considering finding accomodation outside of Athens. For having hosted the olympics only five years ago, people say it's truly disgusting now. We shall see.