Bucket List: The Boundless Beauty of Budapest

The first thing I saw when I got off the bus in the inner city.

In recent posts I've talked about going further afield for bucket-list trips to the Black Forest and Prague.

Budapest has also been sitting on my bucket list for a while, but more as a place I felt I should see rather than a top-of-the-charts destination.

Well, that's certainly changed.

Debating a trip to Istanbul or Budapest recently over the long Easter weekend, Budapest won out for budget and security concerns. I could not be happier that it did!

Looking across the river from Pest into Buda
at Matthias Church and the fisherman's bastion

On Saturday I had an early-morning flight and then took the express bus from the airport to the center of the city. Although my guest house was just a five-minute walk from the stop, check-in wasn't until the afternoon, so I'd already booked myself on a free walking tour that morning.

It was the best walking tour of that type I've ever taken in terms of getting a deeper history of the city and relating things like architecture to the socio-political events of different eras.

The shoes on the Danube is a memorial to 3000+
people executed on the riverbank during
WWII. They were forced to remove their shoes
and face the water before being shot with arrows
so their bodies would fall into the river
and be washed away.

Even though I had visited Estonia (albeit only for the Christmas market and some light sightseeing) and Prague, I felt the imprint of the communist legacy more acutely in Budapest, probably due to the tour guide's very frank stories about the darker side of Hungarians and their history.

This a memorial in front of the Parliament building.
In October 1956 students gathered on the square here
waiting for politicians to address their concerns about
communism. Instead, the students were slaughtered
by snipers, sparking eventual armed revolt within the city,
which was also brutally repressed.

View from my early-evening ride
on the Budapest Eye. That's St. Stephen
in the background, the city's
largest Catholic church
and named for the country's founder.

Our tour wandered through part of Pest and then across the Danube into Buda, where we climbed up the castle hill and ended on the fisherman's bastion. While wandering through a nearby Easter market, I had a lunch of Budapest's most popular street food, then briefly checked into my room and ducked out again to do some shopping before taking a ride on the Budapest Eye, enjoying a nice dinner and resting my weary feet for the night.

Looking across the Danube from Buda into Pest

The main foyer of the
Hungarian National Museum
looks more like a cathedral

Easter morning was all about random exploring. I wandered in the area near the Parliament building, headed to the Hungarian National Museum to see their permanent exhibit on the country's history, and hit a couple more stores before grabbing lunch and resting up for my next planned activity.

That was an Urban and Street Art tour through the Jewish quarter. Although not as richly detailed in history as my tour the previous day, it was a fabulous glimpse into making the run-down and abandoned into something beautiful. And it culminated in a drink with some of my fellow tour-mates in one of the city's famous ruin bars.

There are two art groups working in Budapest
to cover exposed walls from war damage
and bring a vibrancy to these areas

Part of the inner courtyard of the Fogas ruin bar.
Tried my first palinka, which has an
extremely high alcohol content and
is, as one tour guide described,
like drinking flavored nail polish remover.

From the bar I wandered a bit more on my own, thinking about what I learned, what I was seeing around me, and comparing Budapest to other places I've visited.

Particularly in relation to Prague--which at one point was part of a shared kingdom with Hungary--Budapest seemed to have retained more of the "bohemian" vibe over the centuries.

I was genuinely sad at the thought of leaving on Monday morning. There was so much more of the city I wanted to explore. My trips in the past have usually focused on seeing as much as I can of a place under the assumption that there are so many other places in the world to see that I probably wouldn't come back.

Yet Budapest was one of the rare places where I could understand the desire to re-visit time and time again. There were so many more museums and attractions to explore. Different quarters of the city to see. And, like in Hamburg, different seasons to experience changes on and around the river.

So, as I let Larry know, I'd be happy to make Budapest home for a while should the opportunity arise in the future! 😄

Lángos, street food traditionally consisting of 
fried dough with garlic, sour cream and cheese on top

Dinner on Saturday night was at the oldest
restaurant in Pest, and of course I ordered the
goulash. It was divine!

Words to live by! And I did, in fact, come back later when
the market was open and try one of the chimney cakes
dusted in sugar and cinnamon.

Speaking of the future and new opportunities, stay tuned for my next (and final) post for this blog...

Black Forest Boondoggle?

The Black Forest has long been on my bucket list. Contrary to popular (non-German) belief, however, it’s not that close to Munich or other “major” German cities. So, for me it was relegated to a “when I have a spare weekend” status.

Why the Black Forest? Well, for me it's the idea of seeing a dense, creepy forest in the country so famous for fairy tales. A forest that got its name either from the tall dark pine trees themselves or the shadowy realm created by them and their accompanying fir and spruce trees.

The forest itself is a 160 x 50 km area that’s the origin of the Danube river (and the cake!). Today, of course, it's not the sylvan spread it was before so much of it was clear-cut. But with that kind of harvesting a rarity these days, the silviculture first explored in the 1800s means conservation efforts and timber needs are more closely aligned.

I decided to do an early spring trip when the small towns along the Black Forest Train route were less likely to be overrun with other tourists. And because the Black Forest is also the home of the cuckoo clock, and there’s a German Clock Route similar to the idea of the Fairy Tale Route, I thought I’d also try to squeeze in a last-minute cuckoo sight or two.

Call it overly ambitious and under ambitious at the same time.

The first leg of my trip was a FlixBus ride from Munich to Villingen. I’d read about the most scenic parts of the train ride and thought I’d be best served to start in the south, take the train north, and stay in the highly recommended scenic town of Gengenbach.

Mistake number one was not realizing that the FlixBus stop was not in the middle of town, but on one side of the dual township of Villingen-Schwenningen. The bus let us out in Schwenningen and, of course, the Black Forest train departed from Villingen. Once an hour.

The buses across town were also not so frequent, so I began a mad speed-walk across the two cities to get to the train. About 45 minutes into my insane march I realized I would have to run to make the train. 

Thankfully I had paused to assess my progress at a bus stop, and before I had to embarrass myself by breaking into a trot, a bus appeared and I made it to the station with minutes to spare.

Mistake number two. I took the train to Hornberg, mistakenly thinking it was one of the towns highlighted in the Cuckoo Clock Route. Adorable town nestled in the forest, with a stream and a castle ruin overlooking everything? Check. 

Hornberg Shooting Trail markers

But it was 2:30 pm on a Saturday afternoon and everything was closed, with no signs of cuckoos anywhere. Instead, Hornberg had a “shooting trail” you could follow. Hard pass. 

What I DID find in Hornberg was
entirely unexpected--a giant sequoia!

I had planned to spend a couple of hours in town casually exploring the sights. Instead, I did a quick sweep and hurried back up the hill to the station to catch the next hourly train.

Mistake number three. When I first got off the train in Hornberg I noticed I’d lost my Internet and phone service. I’m not sure why I thought they would re-emerge once I got down into the town, but it meant that when I got back up to the station, I had no access to a schedule or an online ticket.

Praising a still-papered society, I found the printed schedule at the platform and a ticket machine. But once I was on the train (still no service in that part of the woods) I remembered I needed to make a train transfer, but had no idea where or when. 

Having studied the map I had some thoughts on a course I could improvise to get me where I needed to go. Luckily I picked up phone service again just in time to avoid an unfortunate series of detours!

If you look through the window
you'll see a house with solar
panels. There were A LOT of
these along my train route.
So much for the
impenetrable forest idea!

Building decoration in Gengenbach

Gengenbach was a welcome respite from disappointment. It was just as cute as reported, full of Fachwerk houses and a lovely town hall that becomes a large advent calendar at Christmastime. 

(OK, one disappointment not to be there at the right time of year to see that.) 

The main street and square in Gengenbach

I walked around snapping pictures before checking into my room, then wandered out again for a few more pictures and food before collapsing for the evening. On Sunday I took advantage of the early-morning sun and quiet to walk the town again and relax before breakfast and the multi-hop train ride back to Munich.

Another tribute to the sun: hillside vineyards in Gengenbach

I would love to go back to the Black Forest someday, but would do a guided tour that involved driving through the heart of the forest and hitting the highlights of the towns along the way when they’re open. 

(I’ve discovered on other trips that in many small towns the stores and some attractions close around 1 or 2 pm on Saturdays, so weekday touristing is a better bet.)

That’s not to say it was not a good experience. Any time spent seeing new scenery and exploring new towns is time well spent in my book. 

But my expectations and my experience didn’t quite meet, which I guess was a good reminder of why I usually plan ahead, and a lesson in balancing the idealized with the truth of reality.