Budapest, or where we were hit on by vomiting men

The following day, it was supposed to be very very hot, so Lilly, Allison, Adrienne, Anna and I decided to have a relaxing day by going to one of the pools in the area, a little outside of Budapest. We took the tram, then a bus, then a train in order to get to the pool. We then walked down the street in the neighborhood in order to get to the pool.

We dragged various towels and beach mats and shoes along with us.

There were a few different pools in the pool area. Various temperatures and sizes. We chose the non-kiddy, semi-deep pool.

Adrienne was horrified by the speedos.

To the right is a building near their house.

Here is a picture of the train tracks near the pool.

While at the pool, there was a man who decided he needed to stand out of the pool, with his leg perched inappropriately while still wearing a speedo, sideways on the ledge staring at everyone.  Lilly ran into his feet and we were all horrified.

Then, Allison and I were swimming about when we noticed another man staring at us (me). He was definitely staring at us since his eyes followed us continuously. We referred to him from then on as Starey McStare Stare. Another one.

At least this time, Starey McStare Stare was very attractive with his sunglasses. We may or may not have occasionally looked over at him.

After swimming for a while, we moved up to the hill to lay down and rest from our swimming.

As we laid down, Allison began to say, "There's another Starey McStare Stare." However, she was unable to finish her sentence because he had immediately come upstairs to continue his staring. So, instead she said, "There's another Starey Mc--AHH! He's here!"

He walked up the stairs before we even finished joking with each other about him coming up the stairs. We all looked at him in surprise! I'm sure we weren't obvious. He laid down within staring distance and continued to stare. We occasionally glanced back.

He sat in a Greek god position for much of his time staring. We were thinking about how attractive he was. Then he took off his sunglasses and suddenly he was no longer attractive.

Then, he started smoking and he really wasn't attractive anymore.

I accidentally fell asleep while laying on my mat and snored really loudly, again, which was just one of the many snoring incidents on the trip. I realized after I wrote about the Great Snore that I will need to write a Great Snore Part II blog.

Allergies are the worst.

After hanging around the pool, we headed to the next train station to get Greek food, which is pictured above. It is extremely delicious.

We then headed to the small town of Szentendre (St. Andrew), where Nora lives now. I went there 4 years ago and walked around the town a bit with Judit and their aunt Zsuzsanna. We also went to the open air museum which features a bunch of traditional Hungarian buildings.

It's a beautiful little town. We thought we might meet up with Nora when she got off work.

She warned us earlier about the mosquitoes. Apparently, due to the flooding the month before we got to Europe, there was an excessive number of mosquitoes along the Danube/Donau. We thought, "Oh I'm sure it will be fine."

It was not fine. We were only in the town for approximately 10 minutes, but good heavens, it was a bloodbath! A bloodbath!

Allison immediately had about 20 bites, Lilly had several, including one very large one on her forehead. I had several on my arms and legs.

We flailed around Szentendre and took refuge in an ice cream shop (of course).

We asked the woman working at the shop where we could find bug spray. It was still light out but all the shops were closed, so she very kindly let us use her bug spray.

While flailing through some bug spray dramatically, Lilly ran into one of her classmates. Oops.

We decided to escape town quickly and headed for the train.

It really is beautiful!

This was a nice door!

A very cute town.

An almost normal picture, except it's a bit blurry! The rest will be in the photobomb album!

There's the ice cream shop we used as our refuge.

So cute.

While in the ice cream shop, I witnessed this.

Lilly covering up her bug bite. It was very unfortunate.

Just some umbrellas.

The center.

We basically immediately got on a train back into Budapest.

Once on the train, a man sat down and was asleep within seconds, snoring loudly.

There were mosquitoes on the train. A lot of mosquitoes on the train.

Allison, who is allergic to mosquito bites, had the crazy eyes going due to all the mosquitoes.

Adrienne is imitating Allison here.

And again. Allison is not amused.

Here are the crazy eyes in action.

A mosquito landed on the wall next to me. Allison saw it with her crazy eyes and said, "Lauren kill it!"

So I hit it with my pool mat.

It had clearly just bitten someone.

It exploded with a lot of blood.

Lilly, Allison, Anna and I all yelled due to the bloodshed.

Adrienne didn't notice. She said, "Why are you yell-AHH!"

The entire train stared at us. It was embarrassing.

It then continued to twitch on the wall, not dead but with the blood squirted out of it, for the rest of the train ride.

For the rest of the night we were saying things like, "Remember the time before the mosquito took our innocence?"

"Hey, remember when Lauren killed the mosquito and everyone stared at us?"

To the left is a very clear example of Allison's crazy eyes.

Allison going after a mosquito.

We headed into Budapest to check out the Ruined Pubs, Szempli Kert, Instant and another one. they are pubs built into old houses and factories, which are pretty cool looking. They are decorated with old furniture.

Before we made it, we witnessed the steepest escalator I've ever seen.

Then, while waiting for the subway, we saw an adult woman pouting like no woman has pouted before. Arms crossed, facing the wall, sad face. Her boyfriend attempted to make her stop pouting. Then, on the subway, was turning the pages of her book for her. We saw them the next day. She was slightly less pouty, but good heavens. Who wants to put up with that.

We walked by the Dohany Street Synagogue, which I visited on my last trip to Budapest. I'm copying most of what I'm saying here from this blog from 4 years ago. This is the part of the blog that doesn't quite fit with the funny part of my writing, but I think it's important to learn. It's very sobering.

While there the last time, I learned that it's the third biggest synagogue in the world, second only to the one in New York.  It was designed by Christian architects, so it looks like a cathedral. It survived WWII because it was inside the walls of the Ghetto in Budapest, so the Allies didn't bomb it. The Nazi's didn't bomb it either because the Gestapo was stationed inside the synagogue. As a result, very little damage was done to it during the war. I also learned that 600,000 out of the 800,000 Hungarian Jews died in the Holocaust, even though the deportation of Hungarian Jews didn't start until 1944! But that number means that out of every ten people killed in the Holocaust, 1 was Hungarian. Our guide said that 25% of the people killed at Auschwitz were Hungarian. There's a mass grave in the gardens of the synagogue because they had to bury those that died in the ghetto (about 2,000 people.) somewhere but the Jewish cemetery was outside the ghetto walls. So they buried them in the gardens, which was against anything they would have done in normal circumstances. There's also a memorial garden that has the names of people who saved Jews during the War. Their name's were on the wall if they saved anyone. If they saved 1 person they were in the wall next to someone who had saved thousands. It was quite the wake up call to see all of that in person.




I took this picture 4 years ago, which is still one of my favorite pictures I've ever taken. It's an art piece in the shape of a Weeping Willow. On each small metal piece is the name of a Hungarian Jew who was killed in the Holocaust.

Ok, back to the ruined pubs. Some of them are in the Jewish Quarter.

This is the entrance to one of them, Szempli Kert.

This is the inside. I liked the buildings for the architecture, but since I do not drink or dance, they were not really my thing. We moved to a second location and there was a lot of dancing, which I hate a lot. As Johnny Depp once said on Ellen, "I'd rather swallow a bag of hair." (The quote is at 15:30). I spent a lot of time being annoyed that people were purposely touching my butt and arms.

At one point, Adrienne was accosted by an Australian man. We joked later that, in order to make him go away, when he asked, "Where are you from?" She should have answered, "THE EAC MATE! The East Australian Current!"

After leaving, we waited for the bus nearby.


While waiting, we witnessed a man vomit, then immediately come over to talk to us.

It basically went like this:

"*Vomit*...LADIES!"

He was quite drunk. He claimed to be an professional Irish Step Dancer, which we didn't believe, until he actually performed for us. He was extremely good, while drunk, so it's possible he was telling the truth.

Adrienne asked me later why I was being so short with the drunk men.

I felt it was obvious

A statue. Anna creeping behind the statue. As usual.

This room in the club had a toilet in it.

We caught the bus back to their house. Elice, Judit and Kosztya had just gotten back from a trip to Eger, so they were up. We all chatted a bit and then headed to bed! Another successful day.