My study tour with DIS to Budapest and Vienna left on a Friday night. We took a bus to the coast, where we drove onto a boat, got ferried across the ocean, and drove through Germany, The Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Although our bus ride was only supposed to last 20 hours (which is long enough, as is), we had frequent 20-minute breaks throughout the trip. They're very serious about how long a bus driver can drive without a break in Europe. Having been crammed into a bus for over a day, we were all pretty disgusting by the time we actually made it to Budapest on Saturday night. The next morning we went on a tour of Budapest, which was supposed to be largely by foot, but due to the massive amounts of traffic for the Hungarian marathon going on, we ended up mostly driving around the city. Despite being behind schedule nearly the entire time, our guide managed to spend over an hour at Hero Square, describing each and every statue to us in detail. Unfortunately, due to the large number of people in our group, and the loud music across the street from the marathon, most of us didn't hear a single word she said, and just stared at the Hungarian statues blankly for an hour.





















From Hero Square we took a bus to the Fisherman's Bastion, where our guide did little to no talking and mostly let us wander around.
























From there we went to see Statue Park, the home of Budapest's leftover Communist statues.


























The next day, we visited The Hungarian Theatre Museum, to hear a lecture on Hungarian politics. At this point, I came down with a delightful case of food poisoning. Even so, I can't really blame Hungary. I absolutely loved Budapest, despite the dirt. It's ridicuously cheap, a little bit scenic, and it has a real sense of unique character.

While on the subject of Budapest, I'd like to take a moment to reflect of the pearls of wisdom granted to us by our German bus driver, Thomas.
When faced with people who had packed their passports in the luggage the morning we had to leave for Austria, he said:
"What, did you not realize we were leaving today? Do you not realize we cross borders?"

When Peter was afraid he'd left his passport in his hotel room, and was searching through his luggage for it, Thomas said:
"This isn't funny."
Peter: "I know. I think I lost my passport. It's really not funny. I feel really bad we had to stop the bus."
Thomas: "Yes, you should be very sorry. This isn't funny you know."