night train to Budapest

You haven't really lived - in that scary movie, is this really happening kind of way - until you have taken a night train in Eastern Europe. (Wait, didn't I say that last week about going to beer gardens? Well....) This is the story of my roommate, Kate, and my weekend trip to Budapest.

We boarded this dingy red, dusty train at about 11 p.m. Friday after paying an extra few hundred crowns for a sleeping car. Not that much sleeping happened, but I am getting ahead of myself. We were given a set of sheets, a pillow and a danky orange blanket. After chatting for a bit, and finally relenting to the train conductor's repeated reminders to close and lock the glass door to our cabin (we were lucky and didn't have to share the cabin, and I am still not sure how four other people could have fit in a car the size of my kitchen back in Chicago), we tucked ourselves in for the ride.

Before long we were careening down the tracks at what can't be regulation speeds and I was secretly wondering if we would jump the track. Turns out Kate was wondering the same thing - and she has done this before.

A few hours into the trip, after several screeching halts at various stops for more passengers, we reached the first border crossing with Slovakia. This means that border guards dressed in eerie, dark green, Communist era uniforms complete with leather satchels and elaborate mustaches come on board, knock coldly on the glass door and say something in Czech or Slovak or Hungarian or perhaps all three, since there did seem to be an inordinate amount of them. Assuming it was a passport check, we handed them over, and then shut off the light again. This happened a few more times, each visit jarring us from sleep. Part of me couldn't help think that at any moment, the guards would start yelling and drag us out of the train, leaving us for dead on the side of the road between the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In fact, we watched at about 4 a.m. as one older Indian couple was taken off the train with their bags and left to figure out what to do next. We overheard it might have something to do with them not having visas to cross through Slovakia, but it was a disheartening and frightening sight.

The whole ride - 9 hours total - felt like a strange dream. I was a mix of scared, sleepy, exhilarated and generally baffled by the entire experience.

Once we arrived in sunny Budapest, we were greeted by Kate's friend who toured us around the historic sights and bars before we settled at an authentic Jewish/Hungarian restaurant for goulash and cucumber salad. Budapest, which straddles the Danube River and is split into Buda (rolling hills and expansive castle) and Pest (flat land and urban grit), is gorgeous. Although the buildings were run-down, likely having never been refurbished and still showing bullet holes and cracks from mortar fire from the many battles, they offered a unique personality - a realness - to the city that perhaps Prague lacks. Facades were cracked, balconies missing, windows broken out, but the architecture was telling a story, revealing the character of the place.

On Sunday morning, we went to the baths. Smack-dab in the middle of the City Park is this ancient spa and thermal bath where people don bathing suits and sit around in various pools of warm water. I think these particular baths we went to debuted about 100 years ago, but some in the city are thousands of years old, having been built by the Turks.

So you walk in, scan you're card, change in the locker room and head outside for the largest of the baths. Two massive pools of various temperatures are packed with people of all ages - including a group of six men intently playing three pensive games of chess, while partially immersed in water. There are also smaller tubs inside, a sauna, steam room, showers. It's basically a water park without the slides and screaming children. It was fun (wading in a pool with a current that spins you around with other smiling Hungarians) and relaxing (sitting briefly in the eucalyptus sauna before standing under the massaging jets in one of the tubs.) Really, the place was unlike anything I have ever seen before, and I am sure I am not doing it justice with my description - it is begging for a photo spread and maybe there is one somewhere - but I highly recommend it.

My muscles were jello when I settled onto the afternoon train - this one much, much more modern - back to Prague.