19:00 Sun.

11 Oct, 2020

Budapest

Finally visited all neighboring countries!

Tags: budapest, checked, christmas market, food, hungary

°C

12:00 am

Can’t believe, that I’ve visited most of the Europe before being to Hungary once. Finally, the black spot on my atlas was fixed last Christmas and I can finally say I’ve been to all the Slovenian neighbouring countries! So when deciding where to go for Christmas holidays, there wasn’t much deliberation, Budapest it is.

Budapest is about 450 km away from Ljubljana, so after checking the (bad) options for going with public transport, we decided to just drive. I think this was my longest drive in one go since Finland way, way back in 2013. Not only, was this the first time that I visited Hungary, it was also the first time that instead of going staying in a hotel (through booking.com), we reserved a small apartment near the city center through AirBnB. To be honest, the experience wasn’t much different then the one a year before at Malta. We got the key to the apartment through a “lock box” and again didn’t even saw the owner. The apartment was nice and cozy and not that expensive considering proximity to the center and Christmas time.

They projected a show/architecture to the facade of the church, it looked super awesome.

The whole trip was very nice, we avoided any museums or other landmarks where you have to go inside. I’m not entirely sure why I do this, I think I have a feeling that I’m going to find them super boring, I guess I should try to actually go inside from time to time, maybe I’m in those years that I’ll find it interesting again. But walked around the city and visited all the bridges, castles, statues and the rest, we even went running couple of laps around the island in the middle of Donava.

View from the castle hill toward the city center.

This thing looks like it came streight from the Harry Potter books.

The city center was nicely decorated although not as much as Paris.

We saw quite a few stone knights around the city. They look really marvolous.

So what else did we do, beside walking, running and sightseeing? Well eating of course! Haha, I haven’t eaten so much food in a long, long time, probably since Pierogis in Warsaw, haha. Anyway, we tried to lean toward traditional Hungarian food. To be honest, I had no idea what it was, before googling, I had a feeling that goulash has to be somewhere, but I kind of get the vibe that goulash is traditional everywhere in Eastern Europe. So yea, each day we tried to find an interesting restaurant and go eat something there, in the evenings (yea right, just evenings haha), we grabbed some delicious chimneys from the stalls and all over the day we tried some small pastries that could be found in metro stations, for some reason.

Haha, points for the name, although I have a feeling it’s not uncommon.

I forgot if this had any alcohol in it or not (I think yes) and the frozen cherries on top.

Famous goulahs #1. I think this was with beef and potatoes.

It’s actually not pizza (yea, whatever), but traditional dish called Langos. Its basically deep fried bread with some pizza toppings. We tried different ones, with mushrooms, cheeses and bacon, over the days. Definitely very good.

I don’t think I saw this many macarons in Paris! Despite looking gorgeous, we didn’t try them, pff Hungarian food only!

Chimenys, they had many different “spices” that you could have on top. From chocolate, cinnamon, just sugar, to vanilla, coconut and more exotic ones.

Kurtos Kalacs, or chimneys as I call them. I was surprised to find out that it’s not just something they eat around the Christmas but is around all year long. Although I have no idea, who would want to eat this during hot summer. I don’t think we have anything similar in Slovenia. Its made from some kind of dough (maybe like the dough for donuts) and then sprinkled with differnet kinds of spices / sugars on the outer crust. Very good indeed.

Not sure how to eat this. Ah no, just kidding, by this time, I had ate at least 5 of them already 😀

Goulash in a different restaurant, this time served in a cup made from bread, that you eat together with the soup. I actually had something similar in Slovenia, but it was with a vegetable soup.

Some very nice hot chocolate. It was quite cold during all the walking around the city, sometimes we had to warm up with a nice hot chocolate.

Soup with cheese and something that I forgot. I think I had something similar in St. Petersburg.

I think this was supposed to be some variant of chicken goulash/stew with paprika and something else.

Thę stew with paprika, but this time with beef instead of chicken.

Finally a dessert from all those goulashes. Somlói Galuska, cake sponge with walnut kream, rum and all the good stuff.

So yea, the trip was short, an extended weekend, but very fun, not even sure if there is much more that one can do, if you do not wish to go visit the therms, catacombs or some of the museums. It was a bit chilly, but I think around the Chrismas must be the best time of the year for visit, as there is so much going on all around. The prices are also not that bad, it’s even a bit cheaper than Ljubljana and for some reason wine is very very cheap in the stores. You can find several bottles of (ok) wine for under 3€.

What would I give, if we had such a large ice rink in Ljubljana.

Zurich

Yeey, Switzerland

Tags: checked, expensive, switzerland, zurich

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12:00 am

Well, this one is not entirely trip on its own, but when visiting Madrid, I managed to configure my flight so that I had an overlay in Switzerland. Since I haven’t visited it yet. Sadly there were some problems with the weather and our flight was delayed for a couple of hours, so I only had 3 hours to the connecting flight, but I said since I was there already I will take a chance.

The problems with the weather were some very very strong bursts of wind, which were still somewhat present when we attempted to land. Never in my life was I thrown so much around the plane, well not since I did my glider plane’s licence. I’m not kidding but just before landing our plane was tilted more than 45 degrees with wing almost touching the tarmac. Luckily we landed safely, but I haven’t felt so sick in a long long while. My boss, who was accompanying me on this trip said I was actually green in the face, and I believe him. Ever since then I always take anti motion sickness pills, even if the flight is only an hour long.

Disembarking the plane I almost ran to the train station, to find the train to the Zurih. The train station was enormous, and not that clear which train goes where, or it just might be that they all go to the Zurih. Anyway after half an hour ride I was in the city. It looked almost like in the story, city full of old buildings, streets were full of people and expensive cars. Since it was just over new year’s there were still some decorations around and there was this, I’m not sure how to describe it, smell of winter / snow in the air, truly wonderful.

I walked a bit around the streets, visited the lake and looked at the prices in shop windows. Yea, Switzerland, nowhere else could you see expensive watches, clothes and jewellery with prices of several thousand CHF everywhere.

Not long after I had to leave to catch my flight back, but not before I bought 3 Lindt chocolates for total of 30 CHF, up to this day these was the most expensive chocolate I ever bought, and it wasn’t even extra large, just normal large (0.5kg?) chocolate. The saddest part was that all three were a gift so I didn’t even try them in the end. :'(

Of all the extravagant and expensive stuff found in the shops go figure, what I actually managed to take photo of….

Copenhagen – Denmark

An unexpected journey.

Tags: checked, Copenhagen, delayed flight, Denmark

Copenhagen , Denmark

5 °C

Breezy

7:58 am

3:53 pm

When the time came to leave Sweden, a storm was brewing over the airport. My flight got delayed for more than 3 hours and I missed my connecting flight to Ljubljana in Copenhagen. Despite being a bit annoyed by the waiting at the first it turned out to be a good thing in the end.

The staff at the airport was nice, they booked me another flight for the next day evening, paid for a nice hotel in the city and a taxi to get there. To top it off since I was on a business trip I didn’t have to get extra vacation day but my company actually paid me extra since I was stranded there an extra day. 🙂

The hotel was the tallest building far around which allowed for great views over the city.

When I arrived to the hotel it was already pretty late, so I only ate dinner and went to sleep. The next day I had a whole day to explore the city, before the night flight back to Slovenia.

The city of Copenhagen is a mixture of modern and old buildings, full of cyclists and nice walkways to walk by. Despite being very hot, the city was crowded with tourists.

After couple of hours of hiking around I managed to get to the famous canal – Nyhavn, from where all the tourists take photos and of course why would I be any different? 🙂