Budapest, Day 3

Max wasn’t up for going to the Danube Bend with Ems & me today, so it was just the two of us. At first, the reason I wanted to go was so that I can mark it off in my “1,000 Places to go Before You Die” book. But then I looked at the guide book and saw that there is an open air museum just outside Szentendre, the city easiest to get to on the Danube Bend. I love open air museums, so we went there. It was a transportation adventure!

First, it was the metro to the local train station. Luckily, the train goes there and back, so I didn’t have to worry about what station to use.  I knew that our Budapest Card wouldn’t get us all the way there, though, so I had to buy supplemental tickets. I showed the lady at the ticket office my card and told her I wanted to go to Szentendre and back. She printed out 4 tickets – one for each of us for each way. We got on the train and relaxed. The ticket taker came by, and I gave him my card and two of the tickets. He pointed to Emma and expressed that we needed more by way of tickets. So, I gave him the other two. He said, “OK!”  and punched two of the tickets. I still don’t know why he wanted to see all four if he was only going to punch two. There were two adorable little girls on the train bench opposite us. I took a sneaky picture of them.

Anyway, we got to the train station and then needed to take the bus. Thank goodness, the bus station is just outside the train station. My guide book had said that the bus to Szentendre left from platform #7, and there was a bus there, so that was good. The ticket lady didn’t speak any English, but I used my guide book and showed her where we wanted to go. She printed us off some tickets, and we got on the bus.

Now came the adventure part. The bus driver didn’t speak any English, but I was again able to use the guide book to make sure we were going to the right place. I didn’t know what stop, though, and I didn’t know how to ask. I had forgotten my phrase book.  I sat up front, so I could look out the window and see if there were any signs for the museum. According to my book, it’s called the Hungarian Open Air Museum, or Magyar something in Hungarian. I know Magyar and museum in Hungarian, so I was on the lookout for those words. I saw a sign at a fork in the road. It said go right. We went left. Crap. The next stop wasn’t far away, so when we stopped, I asked the bus driver if that was the right stop. He said yes, so we got off. We walked through the fence to get off the road, and saw some museum ahead of us. It wasn’t called the Hungarian Open Air Museum, it was called Skanzen. We decided to go anyway, since we were there, and we didn’t know how to get where we wanted to be.

We went inside the museum and bought our tickets. She handed us a map, and it said “Hungarian Open Air Museum” on it next to the real name. Woo hoo! We had done it!

The place was pretty cool. It’s a bunch of buildings that have been brought from all over Hungary and put in village sets in a huge park area. It’s arranged in regions, so one village set is buildings from all over the Great Hungarian Plains, another set is from Western Transdanubia, etc. If you remember Zaanse Schaans from Amsterdam, it was a lot like that, except for all over Hungary. Most of the homes were decorated as they would have been in the mid 1800’s to early 1900’s. Different times for different houses. There were probably a lot of subtle differences that we didn’t understand, but even we could tell the difference between mud homes and stone ones. Some of the villages looked very similar, while others were very different. Most of the insides were quite similar, with differences only in the quality of goods – metal kitchen ware as opposed to wooden and ceramic, fancier linens, wood or tile instead of dirt floors – that sort of thing.

An indigo dyer's house from The Great Hungarian Plains

Houses from the Upper Tisza Region

A house from South Transdanubia

A house from Central Transdanubia

A market town from northern Hungary

In the beginning of our trip around, we stopped in the bakery and had a cinnamon roll. In the middle, we stopped and bought some gingerbread to say thank you to the neighbors watching our cats. At the end, we were hungry (but not hungry enough for the full restaurant), so we stopped at the café and had some cheese bread (and I got my Hungarian Fanta).

We were exhausted, so after a quick trip through the gift shop, we headed out. We went to the bus station, and it looked like the bus kept going the same way, and just made a loop back to the train station. We stood there for a bit trying to read the schedule when we saw a bus stop on the other side of the road, but down a bit. We made a run for it. We made it in time (luckily the people before us were slow or indecisive). It was then smooth sailing back to the train station.

Since the ticket taker on the train on the way up had wanted to see all four tickets, even though he only punched two, I was unsure as to whether we had enough to get back to Budapest. But, the train was there and about to leave, so we decided to chance it. We hopped on just as the doors were starting to close. Luckily, when the ticket taker came this time, she had no problem with our tickets.

I really wanted to go to the Ethnographical  Museum in Budapest (the one I had wanted to go to on Monday, but they were closed) before our Budapest card ran out, since we get in for free with the card. Em really didn’t want to go, but she’s a good sport, and I promised her we would only go to the section with the costumes (I had seen an ad for costumes), so she relented. The metro station is very close to the museum, so it was just a tiny walk. We also discovered that the tram that goes right in front of the museum is the same one that goes right to our hotel.The cool thing is that our tram was right next to a Google Maps car for quite a while back to our hotel. So, if you're looking at a Google Maps picture of Budapest, look for the tram that runs next to the river below Parliament. We're on that tram!

I didn’t realize that there was an additional ticket if you want to take pictures, so I had to do hip shots, and none of them turned out very well. Ah, well.

‘Twas a good day. 

Emma says - I'm pretty sure I was tired the ENTIRE DAY. The open air museum was very pretty, but some of the houses were the same in some places. I just got a new song on my Touch. It's called "Hata Futte Parade." I'm listening to it right now.