picturific budapest

hmmm...what does budapest look like, you wonder...first, let's discuss the public transportation. the trams looks like this.

though there are more updated ones in existence these days, i prefer these old timey ones.

there are cute streets like these that aren't accessible by tram - we saw these riding bikes. notice the jesus bookstore in the first picture.

these last two are of ráday utca where my apartment is. doesn't it make you want to buy my place? doesn't it??

or if you are in the mood for getting married, there are parks where people take their goofy wedding photos like in central park.

mike wasn't getting married here. he already got married in new york in a wedding some "friends" were too busy to attend.

and then there’s my favourite girl on dózsa györgy út near where I once lived for a few months a long long time ago:

and, finally, there are turkish baths we swim in at night that do hideous things to my cheap jewelry.

i have about a hundred thousand more pictures i could've uploaded, but i didn't want to bore the bejesus out of you. here's my attempt at a video of the big indoor market a few blocks from where we sleep at night...

A kis lakásom

Some people have requested to see more of my little apartment and know how we’re living. Since we’re a couple of slobs, I’m only going to show you the cleaned-up pictures I’ll be using to sell this tiny place.

The living space...complete with Ikea furniture.


A (not quite) bird's-eye view.


This is a kitchen.


Here is the bathroom. (I don't claim to run a five-star hotel.)


This is the upstairs gallery. It's actually bigger than it looks here.


Soon, I’ll have another blog just for selling this. Feel free to buy my apartment from me. It would make my life easier…well, easier than it already is.

food, please!

my favourite market in all the world in walking distance from my little apartment...

sweets or alcohol? take your pick.

i think this man was posing for me.

this is what a very touristy stand in the market looks like.

and this is the part that scares the tourists.

but not i! that stuffed cabbage in the lower right-hand corner is one of my favourites...but only when it has sour cream on top...mmmm....cream.

is vienna racialist, or is it just my imaljanation?

take a look at this picture:

nothing racialist about it, right? this is the secession building that austrian artists erected in 1897 in contempt of the conservative artistic establishment already in effect. so where does the racism come in? after it was built, it earned these disrespectful nicknames: temple for bullfrogs, assassination on good taste, crematorium - and now for the racialist ones - mosque, and assyrian lavatory! assyrian lavatory?!? my grandfather would be slightly offended by that last one, i think...

it doesn't end there. on the danube river in vienna, there's a place where viennese go to drink, sunbathe, smoke hookahs, and feel like they're either in brazil or in the caribbean...it's also the only place in the city we found a large population of dark-skinned people working in full force. and when i say working, i mean performing, because they were clapping and hollering and being way too friendly for mankind on the streets. we felt bad taking pictures of them, so we took pictures of these people instead.

and there's one more instance of racialism at a chinese food stand, which i won't bother explaining for fear of insulting your intelligence.

i know some people who probably approve of this one.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

on a completely different note, we finally made it to budapest monday afternoon to see the disaster that is my apartment. it is in a bad state. it is not going to be fixed. it is going to be sold instead. any takers?

let's talk about something more fun. these thermal baths, where we spent all afternoon yesterday, are called széchenyi fürdő, named after some guy called széchenyi. they are located on the pest side of budapest in a park. these are two of the three outside baths.

the largest pool is the coldest at about 24 degrees celsius, and the one closest to you in this picture is the warmest at about 37-38 degrees celsius. that one feels like a giant jacuzzi.

our favourite, though, is the one that has a whirlpool in the middle. it's about 34 degrees celsius.

every other ten minutes, jets turn on that force swimmers to whirl in a counterclockwise direction super fast (around the spa at the very center) depending on how close to the jets you are. people usually knock into each other out of lack of control of their own bodies, and some dirty boys use it as an excuse to touch strange girls in strange ways.

there's also an étterem at the baths, where the lady behind the counter let me cut in front of other tourists because of my awesome hungarian-speaking abilities, and that's no lie. here is the "delicious" food we ate...(click the pictures to see detail)

Wien, Österreichs (that's Vienna, Austria, rociel...in case you couldn't tell)

people who know me well know that i do not have a working memory. i think the only thing i've ever actually remembered in my life is how to get to the ice cream place near vienna's westbahnhoff train station ...i went during my fat (phat?) summer in 1997, again to take killer in 1999, and again yesterday to take mike...

this place makes me way too happy. and the melty walnuss gelato makes me even happier...

i worry that one day my bad memory will take hold and i will forget this place forever, so i made sure to take a picture....this is for me - not you, my trusty readers...

on a completely different note, it is time to discuss the abszurd hotel we're staying in. (mike has dibs on the awesome bratislava hotel that i booked, and since it fits the red corndog theme better, i will leave it up to him.) the abszurd hotel i mean is the le meridien right on the main ring in vienna. good lord. i already mentioned it had a pink tub, but look!

look again closely. do you see that magnifying mirror jutting out from the wall? that stupid thing has me plucking hairs i never knew existed. there's no reason a human bean should look so closely at its own face. the inside of my nose looks like a forrest. wth?

as for the pink lights i mentioned before? not sure if you can tell from this just how pink they are, but trust me, they're pink...my mom would enjoy this place...

and the dumbest part of all? the shower. it's a tad incomplete...can you figure out how?

that's right. the flipping door is missing! where did the door go? i don't know. was it ever there? i don't know. i do know it's not there, which means after we take showers, the whole flipping bathroom becomes a lake. perhaps that is why mike is sitting in the pink tub as i type. i will gladly give mike credit for booking this room.

i'll post pictures of more interesting things when we actually take some...when we're not so busy riding free city bikes around town in our tipsy state at night because the public transportation has stopped running...did i mention vienna is fun?

what happened to budapest???

vienna happened. that is what. after bratislava got a little better with live music and a bikinified lake and whatnot, we left. here is what we saw our last day there...

bratislava only offers two slow buses a day to budapest, but we missed the early one. we had hours to wait for the late one, but we noticed that buses left every half hour to vienna...soooo....we went. and it's summer! and summer in vienna is fun!! there's food everywhere and classical music playing on big screens and food and drinks and music and drinks and food and people and music and food and and and...

anyhow, it didn't make sense for us to get to budapest before monday anyway, since we were too late to get the keys to my apartment for the weekend. it did make sense to get a room in a super swanky hotel with pink neon lights and a pink bathtub, though. thank you, le meridien.

on another note, mike and i were riding a tram to anywhere and we noticed there were hungarians riding with us. he decided to tell them i was attempting to learn their language, and i then proceeded to embarrass myself by speaking the worst hungarian ever. even better, i completely shut down when i didn't understand what they were saying back to me. nice. we eventually wound up at a hundertwasserhaus, so that made the ride worth it...

and now i'm abruptly ending this writing...i'm tired...

more brno & bratislava

the second day in brno was quite eventful. i walked around the city to spilberk castle that was at one time converted to the most feared prison in europe. sometimes, when mike talks too much, this is where i wish i could put him:

after my lovely, but sweaty, walk around town, mike and i took a tram far out into the posh part of the city and went to a huge, freezing swimming pool. that's where we saw these hot guys:

that picture was taken just for our friend summer. this IS what you wanted, right, summer?

next came bratislava, which many people told me would be better than prague and budapest. i disagree. in fact....what are people even thinking? it's not better than either of those two cities. is it because my expectations were too high? is it because it's too small for my tastes? when i expect to see a city, i want a city...a big one...where the whole thing is nice, or at least interesting - not one with some confined tourist area full of overpriced tourist restaurants and bars. of course, there are less tourists than in prague and budapest, but even so, we've been hard-pressed to find the places only locals go without finding ourselves in hell. anyway, the cute part is definitely cute. here's proof:

and here's one you ladies have been waiting for...

favourite part of bratislava? the 50-(euro)cent scoops of gelato....mmmm

going to budapest tomorrow to cry at my moldy moldy apartment! weeee.....here's a little something for all the hungarians in my life: mi újság? gyakorolok magyarul mindennap!

ági szerint a lakásom nagyon rossz van, de szerintem nem baj! gazdag tanár vagyok…phffftt…nem igaz nem igaz…fokhagyma enni akarok! heh....i'm sure my word order is terrible, but you'll understand me...tudna segíteni? szia, magyar!