Let me preface by saying that this weekend has done nothing but enhanced my unhealthy and borderline psychotic emotional attachment I have with this city. Budapest is an amazing place, and I happily would recommend a visit here to anyone.
Luckily, I did not suffer a case of Jet Lag. I arrived at my hostel, Carpe Noctem (can't say enough good things about them) to discover my two extremely hungover german pals Flo and Dom just awakening from their slumbers. We grabbed a quick lunch and headed over to the Turkish Baths for a relaxing afternoon. (pictures are Dom struggling and Oktogon facing Hero's Square)
My old roomate from my Corvinus days Corey arrived around 630pm; we gathered him and the four of us headed over to one of our old stomping grounds, Trofea Bar and Grill. Trofea is basically what we would call a buffet, just with
Much nicer food. However, Trofea takes the buffet concept to a whole new level...in addition to all you can eat food, there is all you can
Drink beer, wine, and champage.
Holla.
After dominating the restaurant, we hopped in a cab to Godor Club for some more drinks with the rest of the hostel, however my night ended somewhat early because of a whiteshoegettingstuckinmud incident :(. Sadzees.
Saturday morning was a blur. Corey was pleased he found his way back to the hostel. Flo and Dom had disappeared sometime during the night but were back as well. (The picture is of Oktober 6 Utca; Claire, Hannah, and Erica's old street)
Lunch at my favorite ramen and dumpling restaurant, some sightseeing with the guys and our new pal Sabrina, and a trip up to the Buda Hills rounded out the afternoon.
Sometimes in life, I wish I was required to wear tracking mechanisms and to be followed by cameras to document how nights like how Saturday night unfolded. The hostel organized an EPIC pub crawl, 5 bars in all, four of them being some of my favorite from my time here. Well, smart person that I am, decided a liter of Vodka was a proper pregame for this crawl. Woops. I disappeared after the second bar. I'd love to tell you the details of my 2-3 hour expedition through the city that night, but some is not at all appropriate nor do I remember all of it. I was found face down on the hostels common room floor and woke up at 7am in THE WRONG BED.
I get a kick out of myself sometimes. But it was nice to let loose and realize that I still remembered how to party with the best of them.
After some more sightseeing on Sunday, I said goodbye to the German guys and Corey, and was talked into taking a ride on the Jager Train. The picture speaks for itself.
The Jager Train was at Carpe Noctem's sister hostel Grandio Party Hostel. Underneath the courtyard was a Cave Bar, and it was open mic night. Sabrina, our new Aussie, Canadien, and English friends, and myself were at first somewhat skeptical about how much fun a Sunday night would be, but those hesitations were quickly extinguished.
Without a doubt one of the funnest nights I've ever had. Open Mic turned into "lets pick four random people from the audience and have them play incredible music", beat boxing, Hungarian folk/pop/techno with fiddle/violin, and some pulsating techno to cap off the night.
6 am on Monday morning, instead of waking up for a work week which I have become oh so familiar with, became everyones bedtime and a great cap to the weekend!
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Currently, I am sitting on a bus on my way to Vienna. I have never been, but truthfully I had such an amazing weekend and it brought back a lot of good memories, I could care less about Vienna right now. I did everything I could to figure out a way to stay, but from a logistical standpoint I just couldn't get it to work out.
Too any of you from Carpe Noctem, host or guest, if you happen to come across this, you guys were awesome and I couldn't have asked for a better weekend. My new home away from home in Budapest.
Thankfully, the hostess on my bus right now is unefffingbelievably gorgeous, so I am just going to stare at her until my arrival in Vienna to lift my spirits.
