Budapest Day 1

Travel dayyyy. Luckily it wasn’t too long of a train tide. Well first, I had my free breakfast, and made sure to take extra for the road. While I was waiting for the train, I called Lauren and we caught up which is nice as always 🫶🏻 and then off I went to the train. I had to catch a metro first, and then the actual train to Budapest. The metro train was a bit late so it was leaving me with 10 minutes to find and catch the train. In moments like this I think about how much Ailish would hate to be travelling with me right now- cuz she’s always on top of being somewhere with a reasonable amount of time to figure things out 😅. The train ride started out…. Interesting. This train was quite nice and spacious! But there’s this thing where you can get a seat reservation for the train if you want, but you don’t have to. So obviously I didn’t. But the issue is that people will reserve last minute and then I have to move seats. Anyways, so some man came to take my seat so I just moved in. Suddenly he’s actually a literal creep and is being all like “I lost my phone and wallet and everything can you help me” and I feel literally trapped because I’m on the inside. Obviously I didn’t help him- I wasn’t being mean he’s just not the kind of person that you help- like, he didn’t even have a train ticket to be on the train, I’m pretty sure he was just trying to scam people. There were other things that he said that I didn’t like, but luckily 2 guys from the table across from me had moved to sit in front, and eventually the guy pissed off. Their friend moved into the weird guy’s seat, and I ended up chatting with them for the rest of the train ride! They were a nice group of friends from Scotland and they gave me lots of recommendations for things across Europe. Funny enough, two of them went to Vancouver for an exchange semester and they loved it! We laughed lots and I got to know them a bit. Even though the train ride started out weird, it ended up being my favourite train ride yet! The strangest of situations will always bring people together. More on that later.
So I touched down in Budapest and walked for about 25 mins to my hostel. The first glaring truth is that my hostel sits on top of a bar so I came to realize that it was gonna be noisy. It’s all good though, I got ear plugs. I settled in my room and took a short nap and just some time to lay and decompress because idk why, that train ride drained me. After, I decided to walk out into the city just to check it out. First of all, I didn’t even realize that Hungary has a different currency, and I was really confused because everything looked like it was measured in altitude (350ft = 1€). I went to the inner city area, down to the river that separates ‘Buda’ and ‘Pest.’ I was standing, looking out at the water when suddenly a girl comes up to me and asks for a tissue because her makeup is running into her eye. We start chatting and I find out that she’s a local that lives here, her name’s Anna, and she’s about to meet her ex at the moment 😱. Suddenly I’m giving her relationship advice, and we’re talking and laughing but then we’re interrupted by her ex arriving to see her. We exchange contact and plan to catch up tomorrow!! After, I walk down to the water to catch up on my Vienna FindPenguin posts hahaha and then I walk up and over the bridge to watch the sun go down. I walk back towards my hostel and go to get some food because I’m starving! The reception lady at my hostel recommended this fast food italian place and it was quite delicious. I had “Cacciatore” which is like chicken paprikash with mascarpone and grana padano. Also did you know that paprika was invented in Hungary? After dinner I went back to the hostel where I met all of my roommates! It’s a room of 8, so there were quite a few groups. I ended up going out to the club with 3 girls from Spain from my room. I didn’t drink because I was honestly so tired, but I thought that I might as well check out the club that all of my roommates seem to be raving about. It’s only a 4 minutes walk away which was so ideal. We danced for a little bit but I ended up heading back after an hour cuz I’m tired. GN!!Les mer