Europe. Hungary. Budapest: Aloofness gets the girl

Tuesday, October, 17th, 2006

We decided to spend today walking about Pest (the area across the Danube) and eventually go try to get ballet tickets for the next night since we weren't able to get through on the phone or the internet. It was quite hectic getting over to Pest since I (Jenny) was leading the way and dind't realize that I led us right onto a HIGHWAY!!!! It was crazy, the cars were SO close to us. We tried crossing to the other side but with 4 lanes it was tricky (and I'm naturally nervous about crossing non-busy roads). Tyler and I ended up on opposite sides of the highway because of my cowardice. It was a very stressful situation but everything worked out all right. I learned my lesson about following the "pretty path" (we had been following the river)... there is always a catch!

We walked to St. Istvan's Square and saw St. Stephen's Cathedral at the centre of the square. It was very fancy. There was a young girl in front of the church selling tickets to a Folk Festival that night and she convinced us to go see it. We wanted to take in some more Hungarian culture. Tyler was thrown for a loop though because the tickets in the front rows were the cheapest and the ones in the back were the most expensive, it just defied all logic. We're pretty sure that we were scammed in some way but the tickets weren't super expensive so it's okay, just odd.

We ate dinner at a restaurant near the church where the Folk Festival was being held. The waiter actually understood us when we ordered tap water (that was a first). Tyler's pasta was very good & filling whereas my "turkey stew" was really turkey with gravy... falsely labelled on the menu. If you go to Hungary remember that "stew = gravy".

The folk Festival was really cool, it mainly revolved about 2 groups of Hungarian dancers. The guys did the more complicated foot banging/tap dancing and the girls got hurled around and made "yip"s on occasion. There was one dancer who kind of looked like the actor Adrien Brody and he was so serious he wouldn't make eye contact with any of the girls who were his dancing partner and all the girls were just trying to catch his eye. I think his aloofness made them all want him. :)

-Jenny and Tyler, cultured by the Hungarian folks

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