Day 4 - June 30: Prague to Budapest

At 11 pm last night we were surprised by an Italian woman (who works in Spain but was visiting Prague) entering our room to take the bunk above me.  We had really enjoyed the room to ourselves. This hostel was pretty different from last year’s – although called Hostel Mingle, we never really spoke to any other travelers.  Didn’t seem worth investing much in this new person at that time of night, though I’m sure she is lovely. So, this morning we woke early, packed in the dark as quickly and quietly as possible to get to a few sights before catching a noon train to Budapest.  On the way we wanted to grab a very quick breakfast but were drawn in by a sit-down restaurant that claimed farm to table freshness.  This is one case where the menu looked amazing but the food unfortunately didn’t deliver.  My yogurt with homemade muesli was actually inedible.

One of the many walls covered with handwritten names

High on the list of places we wanted to be sure to see before leaving Prague was Pinkas Synagogue,  described as the most powerful of the sights in the Jewish Quarter….and it is pretty clear why.  We knew going in that the names of the 77,297 Czech Jews who had been killed during the war were handwritten on the walls of the temple, but still rounding the corner and seeing the first room of names was overwhelming.  This is certainly the clearest, most personal representation of the magnitude of the devastation.  Upstairs was an art exhibit of pieces of children of Terezin – also very powerful.  

We exited through the Jewish Cemetery which is a full of tombstones engraved in Hebrew, leaning every which way.  For thousands of year it was the only place in Prague that Jews could be buried so they are 7 to 8 people deep with close to 85,000 people buried there under the 12,000 tombstones. 

After a final raspberry lemonade from a street vendor and with only a few minutes left to see Prague, we raced over the Church of St. James to see the desiccated arm, the story goes, of a man who tried to steal the Madonna Pietatis and his hand immediately froze when he touched it.  

The desiccated arm

Monks had to cut off his arm to get it to release and hung it in the church as a warning to others. The first time we passed the Church it was closed but the thought of the desiccated arm was enough to draw us (namely Rachel) back at the last minute. And, much to our surprise we walked right into Kate Gabrielson and family!  We had no idea they were even in town!

Kate Gabrielson and Family!

Then we really had to hurry to get back to the hostel, pick up our backpacks, and catch the tram to the train station.  We hit 10,000 steps on the way to the train – a busy morning!  I had reserved seats but was surprised that our car consists of little compartments of six.  We are sitting in a compartment with Veronika – an 18-year-old Slovak girl who lives in Prague but is on her way to visit her dad in Bratislava – and 2-year-old Amir with his parents from Orange, CA.  We had a lovely time chatting with them about their lives and learning a little of the experience of a teenager in Prague.  She is studying acting, dancing and singing, so we’ll keep an eye out for her in the future!

We made it to Budapest and followed our hostel owner’s careful instructions on the metro to Adventura Boutique Hostel.  We have a family apartment (The Art Apartment) on a nearby street in a residential apartment building in the northern part of the Pest side.  They let me know ahead of time that I would have to pay cash in full upon arrival but we hadn’t gotten any Hungarian Forint yet.  We dropped our bags and went to a nearby bank.  The exchange rate is 285 to $1, so even pretty cheap things have price tags in the thousands.  Mental math is definitely a challenge in Budapest.  Once settled we were in need of dinner and found that eating traditional Hungarian food wasn’t going to be any easier than it was with Czech cuisine.  Our guide book advises to live like a local: “learn to like meat.”  So, we walked to a highly reviewed Indian restaurant a few blocks from our apartment for a delicious vegetarian meal.   It is nice being in a real neighborhood and to have so much space after our small bunk bed room.