I've been to Budapest before. Some of my readers might remember the post about my trip to Serbia when I was 12 years old, and how I got stuck in Budapest for a whole day. Well, apart from having a short walk around the city, I didn't remember too much. So I got kind of excited and didn't think twice when the other opportunity of visiting this city came up.
I took Polski Bus to get there, as Budapest is one of their international route and as most of you know - prices are super low. So I paid 26 zł (around 6€) for my bus ticket and arrived there on Wednesday afternoon.
Árthur came few hours earlier so he picked me up from the bus stop together with his friend that we were supposed to stay with. He lives 1,5 hour from the city centre so as it's pretty far away, we decided to walk around the centre and eat something before coming back home.
seems like old, yellow trams are really a thing in many European cities!
We stayed there for 2 nights. I think we've seen enough - as we both aren't really interested in museums, we walked a lot around the centre, visited castle, parliament and also took a boat trip on the river which was included in the price of public transport ticket - I really recommend it!
On Thursday night we also went to Szimpla pub which was the best pub I ever visited. Huge pub of few floors, many rooms, with amazing design. I literally fell in love with this place ! It was soo huge that there are even maps of this place! And they also organise many events during day, I saw leaflets of some food fairs etc. Really amazing place, unfortunately we didn't stay long as we were pretty tired after whole day of sightseeing, but I felt I could party there for the whole night! Our friend told us it's not really a place where locals go, as prices are higher than in other bars, but I'm sure it's worth to go there at least once. The atmosphere actually reminded me of one pub in Camden Town in London where I also went with my couchsurfing host. It's definetely a 'must do' in Budapest.
Szimpla pub
And our next destination was Slovenia. The place that I also visited but this time I was about staying there for longer than 2 nights. Our first stop was supposed to be in Maribor, where we wanted to hitchhike – it’s only 300 km from Budapest. Well, yes, we wanted to do that…
have you ever seen a map of pub before?
But we arrived in gas station only at 10 am which was already quite late. Yet, wasn’t so bad and I really believed we would do that. Unfortunately, after few hours of hitchhiking in rain and cold, only 1 car stopped but still he was going in another direction. We went to Mc Donald’s on gas station to get the wifi and contact our host in Maribor, as well as try to book some blablacar. Buses were really expensive (over 30€), and unfortunately we booked 3 blablacars, but none of the drivers contacted us – only one of them when he was already on his way… I really need to thank our host from Maribor here once again as he was really helpful and tried to find any option for us to get there on the same day, he even told us we could try to find a ride to Graz in Austria, and he could pick us up from there. We didn’t even know how to react for so much hospitality! In the end we couldn’t do any of these things, but he found us a cheaper bus, because it was 15 €, in the next morning, which meant we would have to stay one more night in Budapest.
boat trip in Budapest
We decided to try to hitchhike once again on another gas station. We got there, but it was pretty empty, and we were already exhausted, especially because of this weather. We decided to stay this last night in the hostel, so we didn’t have to commute so much anymore in the city. I don’t remember the name of this hostel, but we paid around 7€ for the night per person, the staff was really nice as well as the atmosphere and people we met there.
Maribor
So, our first hitchhiking on this trip didn’t work so well as we wanted to. At some point we were freezing, pretty mad, and running out of ideas what should we have done. But even though I complained enough, deep inside my soul I was feeling calm. I don’t know – it might have been my experience, that I always remember about all the bad situation I’ve been at during hitchhiking, much worse than this one, but in the end I always found some solution. But maybe it was the fact, that all the time I was with the person that means a world to me – so I knew that no matter what, everything would be alright as long as we were there together. When one person falls down, doubts and loses faith that anything could still work out, the other one stands up there for him/her to help to get through all the struggles. No matter if it’s about hitchhiking, or about the whole life.
Maribor
The next day we finally got to Maribor. The ride was still pretty long – 300 km in 7 hours! It’s all because the bus was going through many small, local towns. But hey, the most important fact is that we got there!
We finally met our lovely host, who took us for typical Balkan dinner. Then we met his girlfriend a lot of his friends, who showed us the most beautiful spots in the town. Maribor isn’t big, but it’s really lovely. All people are amazing, everybody speaks great English, people have a lot of knowledge about whole the world, and the country is so small but has so much to offer! Mountains, sea, lakes – everything you can think about! The food is also amazing and prices are low – and it’s ice cream paradise. You can get 4 big scoops in the price of 2 (1 scoop - around 1,20 €). We got great connection with all these people, who treated us as we had known each other for years. On Sunday we even had a barbecue together – just before we got a ride by blablacar to Ljubljana.
Maribor
Next story about Slovenia and then Austria coming soon!