i am sparticus: Hungary: Budapest and Going

Hungary: Budapest and Going

Up until 1988 all planes flying into Budapest airport where legally required to land like this. The sign carries over from those days.

So Hungary yeah? We flew out last Sunday morning, proper airport Sunday morning too. I think we flew at seven or eight in the morning which meant getting up around one to get the bus to Heathrow for a four o'clock check-in. Two things to observe here.

1. Don't even bother trying to sleep if you're getting up at one am. It's silly.
2. Costa Coffee is a terrible establishment. Why would you, when check in for ten or so flights is going to open at four o'clock have one person manning an airport check-in coffee shop at three thirty in the morning? And would you insist on only making espresso based coffees which take three years to make?

The flights were BA inter-Europe and typically good and consequentially there is nothing to remark about them. Disappointingly the same can be said about Budapest airport. It's the model of homogenous bland airport nothingness. If it wasn't for the fact you've just been in a metal tube that is propelled by air a few miles above the ground you'd have no idea you've arrived in a new country. Still, we got through the whole process quite fast.

Goodbye bland non-descript airport, Hello former Soviet Bloc!

Budapest itself is somewhat pretty. The buildings are large, old and embellished by large amounts of gothic type embellishments. French architectural terms abound. It has trams and a decent underground system, which always endears a city to me in my eyes. It also has a large area called the castle which contains not one castle, but instead thousands upon thousands of old fashioned buildings, churches, statues and turrets. It's rather more impressive than any castle could be so I'll forgive it it's misnomer. It's all fantastically pretty and if we all hadn't been so vastly tired I'm sure I'd have some better observations to make.

Which leads me to a further observation: If you fly out from an airport at seven in the morning you are in no fit state to visit one of the prettiest cities in Eastern Europe. Anything you take in will be surrounded by a haze of tiredness and any comments you make will come out making you sound like a complete and utter idiot. I know that comparing the part of the Castle that over looks the Danube to Minas Tirith is not a socially acceptable comment at any time, but tiredness seems to prevent that understanding. I also know that commenting on the angle of the placement of signs on the escalators leading to the subway and how they're angled to put you off balance as you read them¹ is not really a good topic of conversation to try to hold with a Hungarian you've just met, but again, the whole tiredness thing is a killer.

¹ Seriously, the adverts on the escalators on the London Tube are all positioned angled to the escalator rail but vertical to gravity and consequentially vertical to the way you're standing. In Budapest they're aligned to the escalator rails and therefore not aligned to how you're standing so if you try and align your head with them, or get in your head that as they should be read horizontally you should treat them horizontally you start to get off balance. An important issue I feel, but then again, I'm still quite tired.

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