A Budaful Weekend | Dutch Diaries Week Fifteen
There came a point in my travels where the idea of spending hours on a train, bus, and/or plane to end up somewhere that I once could have only imagined visiting for just a couple days became a lot less compelling. I’m well aware of how spoiled it sounds when I say that the appeal of staying in one place for a while started to overshadow the excitement of exploring a new city or a new country, but this particular week was when that started to set in. While everywhere I’d been so far had left a lasting impression and had exposed me to cultures, ideas, and histories I never would have known, the trains, buses, and planes that got me to those places and the hostels, and cheap AirBnBs that housed me when I was there were all starting to lose their romantic, exotic excitement, and I started to crave the stability that I hadn’t seen for months. It’s not so much that I was homesick but rather that the upcoming holidays and the lack of predictability had me wanting to spend some time in one place.
The conflict between that idea and the persistent feeling that I was running out of time to see everything that was on my European-adventure-bucket-list left me conflicted. In the end, during my fifteenth week, when I could have stayed home in Maastricht to catch up on life and revel in that home-away-from-home coziness and comfort, the fear of missing out won out and I found myself, along with Gabby, my travel buddy and partner in crime, back on those trains, buses, and planes, headed to the city (or rather, cities) of Budapest for a weekend we would never forget.
The Weekend | Het Weekend
As it turns out, my ridiculously potent FOMO didn’t lead me astray, instead steering me toward the one thing that can be counted on to reignite that travel-bug fire, especially during the holiday season: the great Christmas market. Budapest greeted us with both one of the earliest, largest, and most impressive markets in all of Europe, and we found ourselves spending hours marveling at the individual wooden cabin shops, all decked out in pine bows, red ribbon, and twinkle lights, and the intoxicating smell of festive foods, mulled wines, and sugary gingerbreads.
Mariah Carey and Michael Bublé played in the background, as people bustled through the city center on the Pest side of the river, the whole scene lit from all sides by string lights. While we didn’t know it at the moment, Budapest would be the first of many Christmas markets we would visit in the coming weeks, and would forever be one of our favorites. Budapest’s Christmas market certainly gave us a high standard and was the perfect way to start our first night in a new city.
Following the market, we joined in on the hostel’s weekly pub crawl, quickly breaking away from the group to go our own way and to meet a friend from Maastricht at one of the city’s legendary ruins bars. As the story goes, after the war, the Hungarian government lacked funding for cultural enrichment, and instead helped in the conversion of old industrial and public buildings that were left in ruins into bustling bars that would serve as the basis for a colorful and unparalleled nightlife. While our night on the town took us to a few of these, including a bar that was once a prison, one of our destinations stood out among the rest: Szimpla Kert. Once an old oven factory, it had been converted into a multi-story cultural experience with an eclectic collection of knick-knacks adorning the walls and upwards of fifteen rooms, all with their own unique theme and atmosphere. We were excited to find out that in addition to being home to many wild Saturday nights, the bar also hosted a Sunday farmer’s market. We found ourselves there twice that weekend, Saturday night with a taste of the nightlife scene, and Monday morning before our flight with a stroll through the market.
In between visits to Szimpla Kert, we ventured to the Buda side of the river, finding ourselves enamored with the gorgeous architecture of the Fisherman’s Bastion and the calm, serene feeling the streets had when compared to their Pest counterparts.
We indulged in the gorgeous sights and walked until our feet didn’t want to carry us any further before crossing over the river one more time to climb the historic church tower for a panoramic view of the city that could only be described as absolutely breathtaking.
For two girls exhausted from months of traveling, I’m still amazed at all Gabby and I were able to fit into those two and a half days. We made appearances at all of the city’s landmarks and classic attractions, even spending a few hours soaking in a communal bath (honestly, not something I want to repeat anytime soon) and revisiting the Christmas market, our favorite part of it all. By the time Monday afternoon rolled around and we had to embark on the latest challenge raised in the saga of Gabby and Lynne vs. Public Transportation (the bus back to the airport), we found ourselves both exhausted and with new memories that would stick with us for a lifetime.
The Week Before Thanksgiving | Het Week Voor Dankzegging
The week we were returning to in Maastricht wasn’t any normal week, and even though Gabby and I were both bracing ourselves for what we knew would be a particularly difficult Thursday to be spending away from our families, it was strangely easy to forget about the thing that made that week special. Instead of hand turkeys and pumpkins, Maastricht had Sinterklaas and Black Pete (a more than slightly problematic Netherlandish Christmas tradition) and I had mountains of papers to be read and impending finals to start preparing for.
My chores had piled up over my many weekends away, and by the time the day before Thanksgiving came, I was so absorbed in everything that I had to get done that I nearly forgot about the dinner our study abroad program had coordinated for us. A day that is usually so important to me had slipped my mind almost completely, and instead, I was preoccupied with planning how I would spend my weekend in Maastricht.
