Berekfürdő and Budapest, Hungary

Wow! What a contrast. From a rural village of 1000 people to the so called ‘Pearl of the Danube’, I couldn’t have found two more extreme views of Hungary.

Berekfürdő seems to be a popular destination for Hungarian tourists, attracted by the series of thermal pools in the area. Apart from that, it’s a quiet village of modest bungalows along with a small store and a couple of bars. I went for a run one evening and couldn’t help noticing that many of the houses were painted in bright colours. Maybe it was just my imagination, but it looked like these fenced-in, uniform bungalows had been built during the communist era and the only way to cheer up this austere village after ’89 was to paint the houses in varying shades of yellow, peach and lime green.

The other thing I noticed was how quiet the place was. There were no neighbours talking across the fences, no youths on the street corners, nobody cutting the grass. It all seemed very bleak. On reflection, I think it was all a front…actually, everyone was inside drinking absinthe and playing strip poker.

As I suspected, the language barrier was pretty big, although it did give me two nights to play Hungarian menu lottery in the hotel restaurant. It’s amazing what great food can appear from stabbing hopefully at the menu and smiling sweetly. I’m now very much a fan of Hungarian food and I’ve promised Anna that I’ll cook something Hungarian when I get home. The soups are fantastic. Every meal starts with soup and in the six or seven meals I had while I was there, I never had the same soup twice.

I flew to Budapest on Friday evening and went straight out for a five hour wander around the city. Although a few people had told me what a great city it was, I was still unprepared for the sheer number of incredible buildings and the quiet beauty of the Danube and it’s bridges.

I started to look for a place to eat and, working on the theory that you have to be at least fifteen minutes walk from the main drag to get decent local food, I headed away from the centre. Going down some side streets that reminded me of the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona, I found a suitable-looking restaurant with an interesting menu. Any place that offers gizzard stew has to be worth a try, right? The soup, again, was a highlight – wild boar soup with myrtle. I’ve no idea what myrtle is but it tasted great.

As I walked off dinner, I stumbled across the stunning St. Stephen’s Basilica (below) and decided to come back the next day to see inside. On Saturday I returned and enjoyed fantastic views of the city from the top of the basilica. Probably the strangest sight I’ve seen on this trip was the mummified hand of Stephen, the first King of Hungary (975-1038), which is kept in a special shrine in the chapel and revered by the Hungarian people. Nice!

There’s so much more to say about Budapest but I’ve rambled on long enough and you probably need to sleep. I will just wrap it up with my favourite moment from Saturday’s daytime meander through the city. I came across a five-piece Hungarian folk band playing in one of the streets and a small group of ladies dancing what I presumed to be a typical folk dance. It was all going swimmingly until an American tourist (bum-bag – dead giveaway!) decided he was up to the task and broke into their circle. Top marks to the guy for effort but he couldn’t have got the steps more wrong. The pained expressions on the other dancers’ faces were priceless!

Ps. Hungarian trivia – the Rubik’s cube, invented by a Hungarian professor, has approximately 43 quintillion permutations. If you put each of them on a cube and lined them up end-to-end they would stretch for 261 light years.