Forget the Sziget

We got up early, grabbed a map, and headed out. I had the address of a church of Christ in Budapest, and it happened to be on the Buda side of the river, whereas we are staying on the Pest side. We took a bus a short distance to the train station, got off and went down to the Metro line, and took it across to the other side of the river. On the metro, I got into a "silly faces" fight with a little girl sitting across from  me. Not many people are willing to pull their ears, cross their eyes, and stick out their tongues in public... but, that's me!

We walked a good mile and half before finding the address of the worship services. It was in Hungarian, but there was a guy sitting next to us translating, and the preacher paused after each statement to give the guy time to translate it for us. He did a wonderful job, and we were very thankful for his help!

Our hop on/hop off tour included a second day, as well as a boat ride on the river. MaryAnn wanted to go on the boat, so we set off to find one of the bus stops. We walked for what seemed like an eternity, before coming back around to the place we started from. There was a bus stop RIGHT THERE. Want to know why I missed it? Well, as we were exiting the metro station, a beggar said something in Hungarian to me. We've been told to ignore these people, so we just kept walking. He started yelling at me, and following me, so I turned around and told him I speak English. He yelled, "Give me money!" My day wasn't going so well at that point, and his yelling at me did NOT help. He chose the wrong day to harass a young American. He had a cigarette hanging from his mouth, one behind his ear, and a whole pack in a grocery bag. I turned to him and said, "I'm not going to give you money for more cigarettes" and walked away. He commenced to screaming at me, and a Hungarian lady stepped in and started yelling at me. He was cursing and calling me all sorts of names, and in my irritated (and non-rational) state of being, I just kept walking, threw up my arm in a wave good-bye, and said, "Love you too!!"

Needless to say, with all that excitement, we were just walking AWAY from that guy, whether that route took us to a bus stop or not. After finally finding one, we hopped on the bus and figured we would just ride it until we got to the stop for the boat transfer. Of course, as was my luck for the day, we got on the bus at stop 14. The boat transfer is stop... you guessed it... 13. We were on the bus for over 2 hours before coming back around to the boats. On top of that, the boats leave on the hour, and we got there at 3:15. After waiting for awhile, we boarded the boat, and took a one hour tour down the river. If it wasn't for the impressive view of the Hungarian Parliament building, the tour would have been a total flop.

After finally finishing with the, what I was continually called the "stupid", boat tour, we headed back to Gellert's apartment for some rest. We had a music festival to attend!!! The Sziget music festival has won awards as the best European festival. I suppose for some people, it is great... but the alcohol, drugs, cigarette smoke, and the band screaming the F-word multiple times, just wasn't for me. Time/money, down the drain. The boat tour might not have been a total flop, but for me, the festival was!

Budapest sign at the festival

 Due to the colossal disappointment called the Sziget festival, MaryAnn and I decided to go eat at a nice restaurant. This is what we told our taxi driver, and he decided to take us up and around to the top of the world, to the Citadella Panorama. We were provided with an excellent view of the city at night, along with an expensive meal. It was worth it though! We ended up enjoying the evening anyways.