04-08-2003 : hungary

After our unladen mountain excursion the bikes once again felt heavy as we said goodbye to Victor and made our way to Budapest. The road down was the main road 2 and our drive to Budapest was pretty but uneventful. As we got closer we both got a little more excited as the name itself sounds so exotic. Shouldn’t Budapest really be in Nepal or something? As is now our usual, we of course arrived in rush hour and started what turned out to be a very long hunt for a campsite. 3 or 4 are clearly marked on our map – finding them was a completely different story! After several stops, countless u-turns and a lot of swearing we finally found our first sign to camping. 6 Km later having weaved through the city, hot and sweaty we finally found Squirrel camping (no we didn’t make up the name it really is called this). GPS: North 47°30 East 18°58. It was fast becoming dark and putting up our tent was going to be an interesting experience as Squirrel camping sits the length of a small valley where space for tents have been cut into the dusty ground of the hill face. We fitted barely (!) and by now both the tent and ourselves were black, covered in a layer of dry, brown dusty earth. With our bikes tucked away we headed for the showers, unfortunately however, we meet a detour, which eventually found us sitting at the bar instead! 2 or 3 beers later we decided to say “screw the shower, we’re bikers, we’re meant to be dirty!”.

05-08-2003
Bus 158 conveniently stops right in front of the campsite and 15 mins later drops you in the very heart of Budapest at Moscow square. We quickly realised why Budapest – the Capital of Hungary - is ranked as one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. A walk along the banks of the Danube felt like the right thing to do and before too long we had picked up a tour map and chosen some of the prime sites to see. The city is actually formed from two separate areas, which sit on either side of the Danube: Buda, a former medieval citadel town, situated amongst rolling hills and the newer Pest area with its 19th century buildings. We were only spending a day in Budapest; so choose to explore the older Buda side with its hot springs, churches and castles. In basking sunshine we climbed Castle Hill, and at the top we found, unsurprisingly, …Buda Castle (the “Vàr”). Castle Hill is one of the most ancient parts of Budapest; medieval walls fence off a ‘town within a town’ – ancient Buda. Bypassing all the normal tourist traps we stopped for lunch in Trinity square and enjoyed the cheapest goulash we could find, whilst in the shadow of the 80-metre tower of Matthias church (also known as the Church of our Lady). Lunch finished we decided not to go into the church itself, mostly due to cost and instead decided to investigate the beautiful turreted walls and the Fisherman’s Bastion – a fairy-tale like fortification which flanks the Danube side of Matthias church and which provided us with glorious views of the Danube and Pest. As if to prove that all of this ‘culture’ wasn’t going to our heads we found in front of Matthias church a wonderful statue of an imposing man astride a fierce-looking horse, not knowing who the statue was of, we spent the day referring to him as ‘CAPTAIN GEEGEE’, only later on in the afternoon did we find out that the imposing statue was, in fact, St Stephen, the founder of the state and the first King of Hungary!! We still think that ‘Captain Gee Gee’ has a certain noble ring to it! Having walked all day in unrelenting heat we once again boarded the 158 and headed back to our dusty home.
 

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