D29&30 Back to basic

1/10,11 Cloudy, cold but yet snow
Budapest

I stayed in Budapest for 3 nights, the hostel was great with friendly staffs and good location, next to the main metro station and easily to find. There was one guy or lady I ain’t 100% sure, a dude with pony tail but I could see the adam’s apple, was quite funny. It was a 8 beds dormitory, while I checked in at 11 o’clock, the dude was sleeping deeply. I wonder he’s got a hangover or something, since I saw some wine bottle next to his bed. Then I dressed up then went out for some fun. After the sunset, I came back to hostel, I saw the dude still sleeping, until I got to bed at 1am. That was nothing, the next morning, I went out at 9, he’s sleeping still. I wonder this dude is sick or something wrong with him, then all of a sudden he woke up, had a cigratte then went to bed again. The next 2 nights same thing happened again and again. Conclusion: This dude paid hostel in Budapest for 4 nights but the only thing he did in the city was sleeping and smoke. Nice! I appreciate his attitude!

The little princess

The most famous and attractive thing to me in the city was its food! Goulash! the soup made of beef, onions, vegetables, spices and ground paprika powder, that I had almost everyday. I even bought 2 recipes and 2 cans of well-made goulash for taking them back to Taiwan. Until the last moment while I was waiting for flight to Milan, I had goulash as well :P

Goulash day1

Goulash day2

Noodle meat soup for day3

Talking about the other tourist stuff, I was quite impressed by the ability of recovery of hungarian people. The war almost destroyed everything, the opera, the palace, the parliment or any big or small significant buildings in the city. But you can see the city’s healed and show its uniqle beauty to people all over the world. In comparison to Prague, Budapest wasn’t that lucky.

Hero square

There are statues scattered in the city, you can see statues in almost every corner. That was fun, you have more surprises and stories when you lingered in the beautiful buildings. Or they played important roles when you got lost.

Statue of officer

Annonymous writer

I played safe during the nights in Budapest, I means, almost after every sunset I choose to go back to warm hostel, browsing Internet or streaming some videos in the kitchen, or even lay on my bed, just wrote some article. Technically I didn’t have  night life in Budapest.

Night

Chain bridge and the palace

I was a little bit tired of traveling all around, and didn’t find the right company to the bars, either. The brazillian guy slept next to me had serious stink foot problem, I would want to talk to him, coz he stinks :/ I don’t know, I’d prefer enjoy my personal mement, taking pictures, rambling on the streets, having good stuffs or foods, sometimes skype with my parents or friends would be enough.

The bathhouse

At the moment, I am tired of SURFACE friends, I’d prefer closer or intimate friendship, rather than facebook friend.

Parliment

All in all, I like the city quite a lot. It’s a city with cheap and delicious food, spetacular buildings and tons of hidden secrets. Budapest would be on my top 10 list of fav cities.

Liberty bridge

Central market

Little princess

D28 Whatulookinat?

1/9 Cloudy, foggy
Istanbul, Budapest

After the Lyon inccident, I always stay in high cautious when I walked alone on the street or after the sunset. I don’t feel like to face that kind of situation again in my life ever! Right now I carry a knife with me in any cases. But sometimes I got frightened when somebody closes to me, maybe just ask me to take photos for them, maybe ask for time or even ask for direction. Especially when teenager guys stronger than me, I felt like they might be a potential threat.

But things is not as well as I expect. You know, during the journey, I always try to keep the good memories.

I had to catch a morning flight from Istanbul to Budapest, which means I had to get out of house before the sunrise. It was still dark at 7am, I grabbed my luggage and went to the Taxi station, asked the driver took me to the bus station. Deniz told me the taxi fee would be 5 to 7 liras, and I had only 20 liras in my wallet, nothing more.(The bus ticket is 13 lira) The damn taxi driver took some loop to somewhere I don’t really know, then I had to pay 9 liras for taxi fee.

I realized that I am running out of liras, I couldnt even take the bus. So I had to withdraw money in ATM machine. The bus was 7:30, after I put my luggage in the storage was 7:20, I got 10 minutes left to the bank. It was like 200 meters away.

Anyhow, I need to catch my flight, so that I took my wallet with me, went for the ATM. When I almost done with the withdrawing, there were 2 guys seemed like drunk, looked at me with greedy eyes. I knew something might happened, so tried not to have eye contact with him.

But the guys kept looked at me with strange face expression, I was nervous, but pretend that I am Okay. I gave them a gaze and then kept waiting for the bill. The guys passed me but one of them tried to walk back, and he kept looking my wallet. Then there were the other guys and girls walked in the opposite direction, so he gave up. I knew that he tried to robbed my wallet, I got only 10 liras and a few coins inside, almost nothing left to lose, I could fight with him, but I needed to catch my bus desperately!

Finally nothing happened. I made it to catch the flight. Great! I thought that I could have something good in Budapest!

It wasn’t the best when I first talked to the people here. The custom officer checked my passport for 10 minutes, then asked me to take a seat.

the bronze officer

I knew anything might happened when the custom officer asked you to take a seat. I waited for 20 minutes and then he came to me,

We need to check out your passport, because I don’t know what’s that sticker for.

It was the OFII sticker made the custom became suspicious about me. The officers gathered together and discussed about my visa for 10 minutes. I prepared a voice recorder in my pocket, just in case. So I recorded everything they said.

The result went out to be alright, I could travel back to European Union again! But this situation made me rethink my ability to deal with crisis. I always think of the worst situation, like at least I can buy an expensive ticket to France, re-enter European Union country again. I never expect this stuff could happen to me, actually nobody did. I claimed that I have the resident right to live in France, in the name of the little yellow sticker.

9 of January, the 29th day of my travel, bad things happened, please never make it happen again!