We sailed all night, arriving in Budapest at daybreak. I have seen this "scene", the entrance into Budapest, at least a hundred times in advertisements for Viking Cruises. But seeing the parliament building out my window was priceless.
Ron and I left our bikes on board and immediately headed up into town on foot. The city of Budapest is actually two cities, Buda on one side of the river, and Pest on the other. We were moored on the Buda side, which is more old-town, and full of statues, ornate buildings, and a massive castle complex. We found a mall, shopped for shoes (Ron has a bad shoe habit), snuck in some American fast food, and then headed back down toward our ship. Although Hungary is in the EU, it has retained its currency, the Florint. Ron's shoes cost 59,995 Florin. We never figured out the exchange rate, but fortunately being in a major capital city, most of the businesses accepted our debit cards.
True to form, we got lost and ended up trapped in the castle complex. It was a great place to be lost and trapped!
By the time we got down to the river again, we had walked about a million steps and still had not made it over the Danube to Pest. We decided we would jump on the tram at a stop near our ship, Line 4 which crosses the river, and makes a loop around Pest. The line then crosses the river, back into Buda, where we would change tram lines and end up back at the ship.
We purchased tickets with just a tap of a debit card and climbed aboard. It was about 5:00 in the afternoon, so the street car was packed with locals heading home from work and school. From my limited observation, life is hard in Hungary. There is a sadness and a hardness on the working side, the Pest-side, of Budapest. I saw it in the eyes of its children, and on the faces of its elderly. Hungary has been slowly sliding into authoritarian rule since Viktor Orban came into power as prime minister in 1998. Now in his fourth term, he no longer sits in the parliament building, but rather he rules from the castle complex across the river, where he has converted the Carmelite Monastery into his new office (throne?) at a cost of the equivalent of over half a billion dollars.
Although Hungary and Slovakia share a similar past, each has taken a very different path forward, with very different present-day results. One cannot help but wonder what lies ahead for both countries - and their people.
Tomorrow we will be back on our bikes cycling one of the most scenic stretches of the river, the "Danube Bend", or in Hungarian, the "Hungarian Wachau".