{"id":325,"date":"2004-10-26T08:49:54","date_gmt":"2004-10-26T15:49:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/archives\/2004\/10\/26\/bye-bye-budapest\/index.php"},"modified":"2004-10-26T08:49:54","modified_gmt":"2004-10-26T15:49:54","slug":"bye-bye-budapest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/archives\/2004\/10\/26\/bye-bye-budapest\/index.php","title":{"rendered":"bye bye budapest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>10\/25\/04<\/p>\n<p>this morning i set out sightseeing again.  i dont know why, but i&#8217;m super confused here in budapest.  more confused than i&#8217;ve been elsewhere on my trip.  i think a big part of it is probably the language.  i really cant decipher it whatsoever and all of it just sounds so bizarre.  so far, traveling in france was kind of easy since i knew some french&#8230; at least enough to barely scrape by.  in morocco, i didnt know arabic, but french is their second language, so once again, i kind of got by.  in spain, although i never took any spanish, i still know a handful of words&#8230; gracias, hola, uno, dos, treis, chalupa bell grande&#8230; you know, just the essentials.  but here, i had absolutely not even the slightest idea what absolutely anything meant.<\/p>\n<p>this made riding the metro quite difficult.  i&#8217;m sure if someone just explained it to me once, i&#8217;d understand it right away, but the kiosks were a bit confusing.  instead of other cities where you just buy a ticket and ride the metro anywhere you want, here they have like 5 types of tickets!!  from what i was able to decipher, i think they are:a ticket for one ride on one train, a ticket for a ride where you can transfer once, but only for a limited time, a ticket where you can transfer once for an extended amt of time, a ticket where you can transfer up to 3 times, and another ticket which i wasnt sure what it did (unlimited transfers?).  not only that, but the tickets have to be vaildated in between trains at these little boxes.<\/p>\n<p>so i bought a ticket, validated it and went.  on my way out, i was stopped by the metro police.  i nervously handed over my ticket, praying that i had done everything right. i had read in the guidebook that tourists get fined all the time, and that the police dont take &#8220;i didnt know&#8221; for an answer. the lady looked at the ticket and then looked shocked and a little disgusted&#8230; but she gave it back to me and waved me on. errr, huh??  so, did i do it right?  if so, what was the glare for?  the thing is, i would have defintely been sure of geting the right ticket if SOMEBODY WOULD HAVE HELPED ME OUT! but&#8230; nobody would.  <\/p>\n<p>everyone that i&#8217;ve tried to ask for help here, has just brushed me off and been not very nice about it.  when i ask people politely if they speak english, they usually just shake their head angrily and turn away.  even policemen!  now, i dont expect everyone here to speak english obviously&#8230; i just want them to be a bit nicer when they say no!  when i&#8217;m back home, and people on the street try talking to me in spanish, chinese, or whatnot, i usually try to shrug and make a face that says &#8220;i *really* wish i could help you, but i cant! sorry!!&#8221; as opposed to making a face that says &#8220;please go jump off the nearest cliff you filthy piece of crap&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>anyways, regardless of all this, i tried to make the best of it and just walk around and enjoy the city.  like i said earlier.. budapest is amazingly beautiful architecturally, although unfortunately, a lot of the buildings are marred and blackened from all the polution in the city. <\/p>\n<p>well, despite the beauty of the city, i knew i had to get out of budapest&#8230; and also i was excited to get to croatia, so i took the 3pm train out.  on the thrain i read this book called &#8220;the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime&#8221; by mark haddon.  it&#8217;s really good!!  if any of you is looking for an easy read that is funny, heartfelt,and a bit sad.. you should check it out!<\/p>\n<p>*v<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>10\/25\/04 this morning i set out sightseeing again. i dont know why, but i&#8217;m super confused here in budapest. more confused than i&#8217;ve been elsewhere on my trip. i think a big part of it is probably the language. i really cant decipher it whatsoever and all of it just sounds so bizarre. so far, &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/archives\/2004\/10\/26\/bye-bye-budapest\/index.php\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;bye bye budapest&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hungary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisisvlad.com\/werd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}