Saying goodbye to Hungary

      Final thoughts on Hungary

 

We are saying goodbye to Hungary and are on the night train to Romania, the last of the three countries comprising “The Balkans” segment of ATW70. Here’s a few final thoughts and observations.

1.  Our entire four days were spent in the capitol city Budapest so we cannot speak to the entire country ... although we are seeing the entire length of the country from a train window! Budapest is far away the largest city of Hungary. The next largest city is about 1/10 the size. Hungary is about the size of Indiana so at least from the train window we see that Hungary is largely an agricultural country. It is beautiful and lush, and appears to be mostly flat.

2. We found the Hungarian people to generally be standoffish and they never approached us to talk or start a conversation. But when we started the conversation, they immediately opened up and were quite friendly.

3.  As we saw in Slovenia and we’ll no doubt see in Romania, Hungary has been in political turmoil for decades at the hands of various communist and fascist regimes. It’s sad, but they are proud to have gained their independence through shear willpower, might and bloodshed.

4.  Budapest is right up there as one of the great world class cities of Europe. The architecture is really stunning. It was not an overly expensive place to visit as a tourist (except the public bathrooms that insist on charging an irritating amount to get in).

5.  Budapest is a very easy city to navigate using the mass transit systems. Takes a day or so to figure it out but their system of trams, trolleys, buses and Metro systems make the entire city easily accessible. As a bonus: seniors travel for free!

6.  Hungarian goulash is a real thing and every restaurant we went to had an assortment of it. It’s good stuff and it’s cheap and it goes good with Hungarian beer.

7.  For the first time ever in our international travels, we never withdrew local currency from an ATM. This was due to two factors. First the ATM ... we don’t know whether it’s the bank or the ATM system ... is now charging a 15% markup on the exchange rate. That’s huge! The second thing though is even more significant and that is that you just don’t need cash to travel. Every single activity is able to be paid for with the tap of your card.