A perfect 10 in Budapest

"Sto lat, sto lat, niech żyje, żyje nam. Sto lat, sto lat, niech żyje, żyje nam. Jeszcze raz, jeszcze raz, niech żyje, żyje nam. Niech żyje nam!"

Those are the words to the Polish equivalent of "Happy birthday". It basically wishes the recipient of the song to live 100 years of a great life. It took me about a year to learn the words, and most of the time I would just mumble everything except "sto lat" because that's what it sounded like everyone else was doing (one question I've always had about the song is until what age do you sing it to someone? What if they are 98 years old? It's a bit sad if you sing to them to live only 2 more years).

This song became the theme of the weekend in Budapest for Chamea's fifth 26th birthday. We sang it so many times that in the end, Lindi knew the words, or at least something that more closely resembled the words than my early versions. We sang it at least 10 times in various bars, restaurants, apartments, and alleys. Because of our (not so beautiful) singing voices, I guess one way you could describe us on this trip is "entertaining". Maybe others would consider it "annoying". But actually probably everyone loved it because we were so awesome.

Beautiful weekend in Budapest

Antoine teaching Lindi the words

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Chamea promised to visit me the day I decided to move to Poland, and finally she made it happen, coming along with her extremely boring and anti-social friend Lindi (today is "opposite day"). They live in Portland, and I live in Poland, and since the names are so close, they had to visit (it's only one "r" difference, but over 5000 miles difference).

Lindi is so boring, she does cartwheels around Europe

They spent a few days in Warsaw, meeting my friends here, becoming better friends with my friends than I am, showing off their vodka drinking skills, tree climbing skills, and basically finding ways of "figuring it out", as Lindi liked to say (even when there is no possible way to actually figure it out). They even came to watch our swim training video session (presumably to look at guys wearing small Speedos), and to Cristina's party with me straight from the airport. This was even though they had taken a friday afternoon flight from Portland, then spent the entire Saturday in Amsterdam, before arriving in Warsaw at 11pm. They basically hadn't slept at all and totally reeked from not showering in 2 days, but were still ready to make a good impression.  You know the saying: "When in Warsaw...".

They also visited Krakow, Berlin, Prague and Budapest on their Mid-life Spring Break, and since they planned to be in Budapest during Chamea's actual birthday, I decided to go with them (flights were about $55 on Wizz Air so it was hard to say no). And I decided to bring 7 friends with me.

In addition to the 3 of us in Budapest, the rest of the crew of 10 was Mark and Julia (known as "Mulia", who you know from the Riga and Lviv trips), Ola and Antoine (Antoine is French, but I still like him), Basia (also from the Riga trip), and Jeff and Jen (Jen was my intern in Seattle, and we have been to Oktoberfest and skiing in the Alps together, when I got a concussion).

Group picture.  I hate when people wear sunglasses inside.  At night. 

8 of us stayed in a giant apartment in the center of the city, while Jeff and Jen stayed in a hotel down the street. I think they were scared of the bad influences in our crowd (not naming any names). The owner of the apartment, Attila, was very friendly and accommodating (some could even be heard whispering that he had a crush on a certain Asian guy in the group, but we won't talk about that). The location was great, the rooms were huge, and it was easy to walk everywhere. There were 4 rooms and 4 bathrooms so we could get ready pretty efficiently, but you know how it's always a bit slow with 8 people with different sleeping/getting ready habits (i.e. 5 girls, or in the case of Mark, someone who doesn't need sleep - or sobriety - at all).

The Szechenyi thermal baths were definitely the highlight for me. If you didn't know, Budapest has several amazing thermal baths. The water in all the pools comes from hot springs, and you can spend the day moving from one type of pool, to a sauna, to a another type of pool, and so on. They even have therapy stuff like massages, aerobics, and other treatments.  When we got there in the evening they said that most of the special treatments were closed, but we could go to the outdoor pools til 10pm. That was fine for us actually, because it was very warm and we were looking forward to it all day (and it only costs about $15). The water was great, it was extremely relaxing, and I even did a few laps to keep up with my triathlon training. At the end of the evening (after 4 hours), we found another pool with a small circular pool in the middle of it, where they turn on some jets to create a current. The current actually pushes you in a circle around the inner pool! It was amazing and we were giggling like school children when we went in.  Our moms had to bribe us with ice cream and video games to get us to leave the pool.

Hanging out in the thermal baths

Enjoying the whirlpool, like 8 year old kids

Please watch this video of us in the pool!

Of course a trip to Budapest means goulash soup. It was so great to have it again, but there was some other really good food as well, like steak tartar and veal stew with Strapachka (potato dumplings with sheep cheese). We ate on Liszt Ferenc (a square with several restaurants with outdoor seating), and my favorite place there was Menza.  After dinners we did a bit of bar hopping, my favorite being Szimpla Kert. It's an old "ruin pub", a pub in a building that was supposed to be destroyed, furnished with old/used tables, couches and chairs...all very retro. Lonely planet even voted it the 3rd best bar in the world! I had been here my first time in Budapest but forgot all about it. In fact, I realized that I forgot a lot about what I had done in the city the last couple times I was there. Old age I guess (please don't agree with me).

I get Hungary just thinking about goulash soup (ha, get it!?)

Chamea and her veal stew with little dumpling things



Lindi doing cartwheels in the 3rd best bar in the world

We also walked along the river, around the castle (on the Buda side), the parliament (the Pest side), and a few other nice places. Budapest is a really nice city, but somehow it feels a bit grimey to me. I can't really explain it, but if it got cleaned up a bit, it could be on the same level as Prague as far as attractiveness and tourism. So someone please start dusting, as it's definitely worth a visit.

View of Pest from the Buda side

The nights were actually pretty "calm" compared to our other group trips, but we had a really fun time. Having Chamea and Lindi here was a lot of fun. They got along famously with all my Warsaw friends, and it felt like they were "moving away" when they left. I hope they'll come back soon, and I hope anyone else who hasn't visited will make a trip. My wonderful friends in Warsaw will make sure you'll have the best time.  And I guess I'll also try a little bit.  :)

I can't tell which is the real statue