To Budapest!

We took the overnight train from Bucharest to Budapest, bypassing both Buchapest and Budarest.   I have fond memories of overnight train rides, of looking out the window at 3 AM and seeing a deserted train station in the middle of nowhere.  I love the sensation of lying in my couchette as the train speeds through the night, with all the sounds and motions buffeting you.   Unfortunately, I usually can't sleep because of that.   The trip took 16 hours, and at the beginning we had a wonderful view of the Carpathian Mountains, and at the end a view of the extensive Hungarian plains.

I took this picture through the train window at the train station at Ploiesti, an oil town.

My first impressions of the streets of Budapest were that the city seemed much more in the in the European-Americam mainstream than Bucharest.   You see the same shops you see everywhere.   I also didn't realize how much Budapest is a tourist attraction.   There are many souvenir shops and signs in English everywhere.   Because virtually no one besides Hungarians speaks Hungarian, English is the defacto language for signs and retail transactions wherever foreigners might be.

As always, we walked the streets to get a feel for the city.

I realized I haven't mentioned the food in this trip.   We ate extremely well in Romania, focusing on the traditional dishes such as stuffed cabbage, sour soups, and grilled spiced meats.  There are interesting things happening in Romanian cooking now, as people are reinventing the more obscure peasant dishes and others from the past.   I had a dish of minced goose meat stuffed in vine leaves that was extraordinary, and we ate other things that our daughter doesn't want to know about.   In Budapest, we were taken to lunch at a superb Hungarian restaurant by our friends Louise and Attila.   Hungarian cuisine is excellent, beyond the usual goulashes, etc.  We had several extraordinary meals in French influenced Hungarian restaurants.   And dining out is very cheap, because of the low exchange rate.   Foodies should go to Hungary!   (And, of course, there are Hungarian pastries!)

By the end of our stay I was absolutely won over by the city of Budapest.   There are many fascinating neighborhoods to explore, and the overall streetscape looks something like a cross between Vienna as it was, Paris, and something which is uniquely Budapest.   In 1867, the Emperor declared Budapest the equal of Vienna, and he might still be right.

Posts to follow with pictures.