From Slovenia, I broke off solo again and caught a train to Budapest. Coincidentally, the weekend I got there was the same weekend as the Hungarian Grand Prix Formula 1 race, so I had to go check that out. It was the first Formula 1 race I have ever been to, but won’t be the last. The race was a really cool experience and I’ve expanded my bucket list to try to make it to every Formula 1 race at least once in my life. Partially because they are held in many of the coolest cities in the world and it gives me an excuse to do some more globetrotting, but I really enjoyed the racing component as well. It was incredible seeing those guys make some crazy turns at 200+ mph.
The race itself was incredible, with the presumptive Formula 1 season champ Max Verstappen winning his 3rd straight race, after starting in 10th position. From what I understand, it is very rare for a driver to come from that far back to win the Hungarian Grand Prix because of the design of the track, which does not have a lot of straightaways that allow the drivers to pass one another. Max was a crowd favorite and there were a lot of people from his home country of the Netherlands at the race, so the crowd was loving it and I got onboard as well.
Getting home after the race however was a complete nightmare. As is tradition, I had no plan to get home and assumed I could hang out a bar until the crowd cleared out and then hop on the train. Unfortunately about 200 thousand other people also had the same plan 😂. The Hungaroring racetrack is located about 20 miles outside of Budapest and there is only one train line that comes anywhere close to the track. I walked to the closest station, which I couldn’t even get close to due to the number of people already there, so then I walked to the next station. Same story, there were thousands of people there all jostling to get into the doors. Then on to the next station, same problem and it was even worse because there were so many people on the trains from the previous stations that nobody was even able to board. So I just started walking in the direction of my hotel (that was 25 miles away). After walking about 8 miles I finally got away from the big crowds and was able to find a restaurant to grab a pizza and a beer and come up with a new plan. It was at this point I realized my phone was about to die, which added to the complications of this adventure. There were really no good options so I just kept walking for a couple more hours and was finally able to flag down a cab that I begged to take me home. The woman driving the cab spoke zero English and so we literally negotiated the price of the ride on her phone calculator, which was hilarious. 100 euros later I finally got a ride home. At that point the cost didn’t really matter, I just wanted to get the hell out of there.
Budapest is actually a capital city made up of 2 separate cities, Buda and Pest which are divided by the Danube river. I spent some time walking around Budapest, checking out the incredible architecture. The Hungarian Parliament building is one of the coolest buildings I’ve ever seen. Additionally I checked out the Buda castle, Fisherman’s Bastion, the Basilica of St Stephens, some beautiful bridges crossing the Danube river and lots of other cool buildings I happened discover while wandering the streets. Near the Parliament building there is also a memorial called Shoes on the Danube Bank to remember the Jews that were killed there during WWII. They were asked to take off their shoes there and were then shot into the river. The memorial is composed of hundreds of pairs of cast iron shoes along the bank and was a very unique and powerful memorial.
Additionally, I really enjoyed checking out some ruin bars, which are basically old bombed out buildings that have been converted into really interesting bars and are filled with random things that were bought from flea markets. The coolest one was Szimpla Kert, made up of 15+ different rooms with bars and food stalls and all sorts of interesting junk nailed to the walls.
I spent my last day in Budapest checking out the infamous Szechenyi thermal baths. What an amazing place, imagine 3 Olympic size swimming pools that are hot tubs filled with water sourced from hot springs. Additionally there were another 15 pools located inside, with water temperatures varying from steaming hot to ice cold.
