After having an extremely difficult time finding our hotel, which was located in the nightclub, sketchy part of town, we were set on finding food and heading to bed to get an early start to explore Budapest on Thursday.
We woke up Thursday morning rested and ready to explore the city. We walked all around the city and saw the Hungarian Parliament building, the Key Bridge, and the Buda Castle.
Once again, the Castle was my favorite part of the city, this one being a typical castle structure that dates back to the early thousands. We explored the grounds and enjoyed the beautiful views of the city.
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| The tram car we took up the hill to get to the Castle |
After seeing all this, we decided to head back to our hotel and rest up before visiting the thermal baths in Budapest. After spending the day walking around, we felt like this was the perfect way to end the day, relaxing in the warm natural baths.
The baths were wonderful. They were massive, and upon arrival we grabbed a cocktail at the bath-side bar before hopping in for an hour or 2.
After the baths, things got quite a bit scary in Budapest. We decided instead of walking to the baths to take the subway system. Budapest's subway works on a paper ticket system, where you have to validate your ticket in a machine before boarding the train. When Cece and I were leaving the baths, the machine to buy the tickets was above ground and when I purchased my ticket, it came a massive downpour and my ticket got soaked when it was spit out of the machine. When we headed down the staircase, I couldn't get my ticket to stamp in the machine because it was so wet. I tried several machines and attempted to get the station manager's attention but she kept completely ignoring my request for help. As the train was approaching, we decided just to go ahead and board, considering I had bought a ticket that did have the day's date on it.
After going one stop down, an older lady hopped on our train and promptly approached us and asked to see our tickets. Having heard about a scam in Budapest where women will approach people on trains and demand to see the tickets and steal them, Cece was hesitant to hand over our tickets and asked to see the woman's identification. After showing us some sort of Hungarian badge, we handed over our tickets to be told that I was going to be fined for having an unstamped ticket. The woman asked to see my ID and as I was pulling my driver's license from my pocket, she quickly grabbed it from my hand. Trying to explain that I had just bought the ticket and it wouldn't validate because it because it was so wet, the woman called over a man, who quickly began screaming at me that I owed 80,000 in Hungarian money (which equals out to about $300). Cece continued to voice her concern that we weren't so sure that this was legitimate and again requested to see his ID, which of course we couldn't understand since it was written in Hungarian.
Luckily, a young woman sitting next to us happened to speak English and was able to translate and tell us that this was, in fact, legitimate. I asked her if she could please explain to the man my situation; that I had just bought the ticket, but I wasn't able to validate it. The man then began screaming at me and told me he was calling the police. At the next stop, we hopped off with the man following us. He said that I needed to give him cash or a check right away. After explaining that I only had cards, he said that he would walk us to an ATM outside the subway station. Cece and I began to feel entirely uncomfortable about a strange man following us to an ATM for me to withdrawal cash. At this point, I was shaking and in tears and kept explaining to the man how scared I was and asked to first speak to a station manger to try to get the issue resolved.
After continuing to scream at me, we found station managers who barely spoke English but agreed with the man that I needed to pay. Luckily the man reduced my fine, but as I handed over the cash and got back my ID, I continued to explain the situation to the man. He said that he could care less and that while he knows I didn't cheat the system, I had to pay the fine regardless.
I was terrified the entire time this was going on and was happy to have it resolved without having to go behind the bars of a Hungarian prison.
All in all, I have to say that I really hated Budapest. Not for the sites or the city itself, all of which were quite pretty. Rather, I hated Budapest because of the people. We hardly ever encountered friendly people in Budapest and left the city feeling like we were targets and that Hungarian people were rude and flat-out mean.
I'm glad to say that now I've visited Budapest, I look forward to hopefully never returning.
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