Switzerland, Budapest and Prague

Switzerland, Budapest and Prague

From London, Lexi and I flew to Zurich, where we spent three days and stayed with another one of Lexi’s relatives.

Here’s a list of what we did:

Monday, April 6th

Arrived at 12
Walked around Zurich and had dinner at an Italian restaurant and realized how expensive everything in Switzerland was (the water at dinner cost 6.50 CHF, or around 5 dollars!)

Tuesday April 7th

Train to Luzerne (1 hr), explored Luzerne and then we spontaneously decided to go to Basel (train 45 mins) where we walked around and had dinner at a really good restaurant recommended to us by the lady who worked at a tea house we stopped at. Train back to Zurich.

Wednesday April 8th

Train up to northeastern Switzerland and took a train along a river and the Bodensee (I think that’s what it is called). We got off the train and walked around a small town called Ermantingen and then we took the train back to Schaffhausen where we got lunch and went to the Rhinefall which is the largest waterfall in Europe (although it really wasn’t that big), but it was cool to see. Then we took the train back to Zurich, explored the city some more, bought some Swiss chocolate, had dinner at a Spanish/Mexican/Exotic restaurant where I had a pineapple stuffed with chicken curry, rice and exotic fruits! and then took an overnight train to Budapest.

Thoughts on Switzerland:

1. Small, cute and people are very nice and cars always stop for you, even if you are not very near the intersection
2. People speak to you more in German, even after they know that you don’t speak German
3. Zurich is really nice and pretty, and very clean, buildings are very clean
4. Basel seemed dirtier (by Switzerland standards, so still very clean), but younger
5. Lots of strange statues in Switzerland and strange water fountains
6. Switzerland is very, very expensive, especially the clothing (I think its even more expensive than Copenhagen)
7. Mixed German and French when they spoke
8. Switzerland had the best looking pastry shops in Europe, they all looked like they were overflowing with pastries and chocolates.
9. Much more relaxing than my earlier travels.
10. I really realized how great Eurail was and it turned out to be better/easier to use and much more convenient than I originally thought. Lexi and I had bought 5 day passes (the minimum available) and were only going to use 2 days so we were able to travel all around Switzerland without having to pay extra for any of the trains. This allowed us to be much more spontaneous with our plans in Switzerland.
11. I really enjoyed traveling by train in Switzerland because it is relaxed feeling and you get to see the scenery. Also, everything in Switzerland is very close, and there were lots of things within an hr train ride from Zurich.

Budapest

What we did:

Took a night train from Zurich to Budapest

Thursday, April 9th
Arrived Budapest at 11:30, checked into our hostel which was 200 m from the train station
Took the Metro to a big market where we got lunch of traditional Hungarian food (heavy, sausages, goulash etc.). Walked down the main shopping street, stopped for ice coffee (which turned out to be espresso, cream, ice cream and whipped cream, not just coffee and ice). Walked around and saw St. Stephens, got another coffee, walked around to the Opera, down to Parliament and along the river Danube. Then we got dinner at a famous restaurant (The Geband) and back to the hostel for an early night.

Friday, April 10th
First, we had to deal with some train issues, the train reservation we had booked to Prague went through Slovakia which our Eurail Passes didn’t cover, so we had to change out plans to go from Budapest to Vienna and Vienna to Prague. After getting this sorted out, we went to the largest synagogue in Europe and then we walked over to the Buda side of Budapest, which is the older, more medieval part of the city. We walked around the Pest side more after that got lunch at an Indian restaurant and then went back to the hostel to freshen up before our train to Vienna and then Prague.

Thoughts on Budapest
1. The city itself was very different than I expected, Pest was like an old, grand imperial capital that hasn’t been important or rich in a long time (this makes sense considering its history…the Hapsburgs built Budapest up in its current grand style and then Hungary fell to Communism and is still working on coming out of it.)
2. People and the things in the buildings don’t match the grand buildings.
3. Buildings are dirtier and not in very good repair.
4. Definitely part of Eastern Europe, people looked and dressed like one would expect from Eastern Europe (more 80s/early 90s inspired).
5. Buda and Pest were very different from each other (Budapest used to be two different cities which the Hapsburgs combined in the late 1800s).
6. The Metro was very good (it was the first built in Continental Europe) but people were very strict about checking tickets.
7. The pastry shops don’t look very appealing; they didn’t have the overflowing effect of the ones in Switzerland.
8. Not many newer buildings.
9. St. Stephens was one of the few major buildings in Europe that didn’t have scaffolding – but this is probably because it was reconstructed after WWII.
10. The Hapsburg buildings have a lot of movement, depth and a lot of people as columns holding up the buildings. This is kind of an interesting phenomenon as it promotes the idea of hierarchy and servant/slave class). Also, does anyone really want a human holding a building up?
11. Budapest was cheap, but not that cheap.
12. The money was strange to get used to because $1=200 HUF, so we had lots of BIG bills, like 10,000, and it was easy to get a 10,000 bill mixed up with a 1,000 bill because each has so many 0s.
13. Our hostel was very good and very accommodating.
14. Not great service at restaurant.
14. A lot more people spoke English than I thought would, everyone I interact with spoke English.
15. The Pest side didn’t look at all what I expected Eastern Europe to look like and in all of Budapest; I didn’t really see the Soviet influence I saw in Berlin.

Prague

Arrive Sat April 11th
Depart Monday April 13th

We arrived at 3:40 am on Saturday April 11th so we went to the hostel and slept in the lounge for a couple of hours until a room was ready for us. Then we both took showers and went out to explore Prague. First, we went to the castle and cathedral (where I saw two people from Haverford!). Then we got lunch at a traditional Czech restaurant (beef goulash and beer). We then walked around the old town, to two of the Easter markets and down to the Frank Ghery house that is supposed to look like Fred and Ginger dancing. Lexi then went back to the hostel to take a nap and I did some shopping since I figured it would be much cheaper to do it in Prague than in Copenhagen. I then went back to the hostel, and Lexi and I went out for a light dinner.

Sunday, April 12th (Easter)
Today was Lexi’s 21st Birthday, so we slept in and got a later start which was fine since we had pretty much seen everything we needed to see on Saturday (there really aren’t that many sights that you have to see in Prague). We walked around the Jewish quarter, got lunch, explored the markets some more and basically walked from café to café getting beer, wine, tea, ice cream etc. until dinner time and then back to the hostel.

Monday, April 13th
Back to Copenhagen!

Thoughts on Prague

1. Not a ton of tourist stuff that I felt I had to do which was kind of nice after traveling for 3 weeks.
2. Much less Eastern European seeming than Hungary and much wealthier.
3. Prices are comparable to the US, which is cheap for Europe.
4. Not that many looking restaurants, but a lot of Czech places.
5. Even though I am as much Czech as Danish, I felt/feel a much stronger connection to Denmark than to the Czech Republic.
6. Prague was very pretty, there were a lot more classical buildings than I expected and the cathedrals and spires looked like they were straight out of a fairy tale/Disney movie.
7. Restaurants don’t have ice for coffee.
8. The air was very hazy (also like this in Switzerland and Budapest). Why?
9. Much cleaner and better kept up than Budapest.
10. Not many bakeries.
11. Money/prices were kind of throwing me off, some of the meal prices were similar numerically to the prices in Copenhagen, except there are 20 Czech Koruna to $1 instead of 6 DKK to the dollar!
12. People didn’t seem that friendly.
13. Service at restaurants was not very good.
14. Prague very picturesque.
15. Very cheap and easy to use the Metro and getting to the Prague airport was very easy and cheap.
16. Beer very cheap! (Kozel dark was really good!)