Interrailing - Day 8: Trains to Budapest

We woke up early to make our 9am train from Ljubljana, bussing to the station and quickly stocking up on some food and drinks from Lidl (which was finally open!). Mercifully, it was finally raining a little, making being overburdened far more bearable. There's only 1 direct train per day from Lubljana to Budapest that we wanted to take – while we could take another later, it would've involved at least 2 changes, which isn't very enjoyable with a bunch of heavy bags.

Our train journey already seemed a little dodgy – it didn't match the model we expected, and so our reserved seats / coaches didn't exist. The conductor confirmed we were on the right train but said confusingly something along the lines of "direct... change at Hodoš".

We headed out at the scheduled time, lumbering through the now-grey Slovenian countryside. There wasn't really much of note to see out of the window, it was all fairly average rural scenes. Inevitably however, the train stopped at Hodoš, a small station on the Slovenian-Hungarian border, that seemed to be mostly for freight. The conductors, in typical fashion, gave very little information about what to expect – they just told us to get off, and then went for a smoke. We sat around for a while, quite confused, theorising that perhaps while the route was technically direct, it had to be replaced by a different locomotive at the border for border / differing train company reasons. As it turned out this was seemingly correct, but also, the second train on our "direct" route was delayed in typical fashion.

40 minutes later, our second train finally arrived, which finally did match the reservations we had. It was a little barebones, but unlike the previous one, did at least have power outlets, so was more comfortable. This took about 4.5 hours and despite doing fairly frequent stops, seemed entirely rural the whole time it trundled through Hungary. Almost all the route seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, with occasionally a few small farmhouses, but mostly flat terrain and nothing else.

We arrived at Budapest-Déli station, which was pretty cool, with a somewhat-brutalist architecture. We then hopped on a short metro ride to our apartment, located in the city's Jewish district. This was a novel detail – I've never really been somewhere with a significant Jewish population before, so it was interesting seeing lots of different restaurants, with menus in Hungarian, English, and Hebrew, plus synagogues and memorials. We also of course had to stop at a Hungarian Tesco, which was more or less exactly what you'd expect – but cheaper than the UK!

Despite the long day, we were still pretty energised (plus very food-motivated after eating like peasants all weekend), so we headed out after a short rest to explore the city. Our location was very central on the Pest-side of the city, and so we were able to see some really pretty architecture and streets as we meandered around.

We headed to a Lángos place, a kind of fried bread with various toppings on, that felt like a good fast food option: nutritious, fast, and flexible with dietary requirements. The basis was this quite chewy bread, deep fried and then covered in cream cheese, cheddar cheese, garlic, and some combination of vegetables and meat. Then you could also add green chilli jam or a very spicy red pepper paste for some extra flavour. None of us were really sure how to eat it – knife and fork seemed too formal, the bread was a little too tough to easily hand-tear, and it was too big to fold, so we all ended up eating it in very different ways, to varying levels of messiness. But it was filling, somewhat nutritious, and hot, and so felt like divine ambrosia considering it was the first "real" food we'd eaten in days

It had started to rain again, and was getting dark, but we still had more planned. We briefly stopped at a supermarket to buy some granola bars for breakfast, and then made our way to the harbour for the River Cruise we'd booked! Budapest looked really pretty in the night and rain, and as we were so used to travelling in the daytime heat, it felt like we'd moved to another half of the world. It was quite Parisian, with the golden lights in the rain, but with a slightly edgier style of Gothic architecture.

We'd booked a river cruise for two reasons: the first being that it seemed like a cool thing to do – especially at night, and the second being that they seemed to be extremely generous with their alcohol. After our 10% Interrail discount, we paid about £17 each for a 90 minute cruise with "2 cocktails or 3 beers" included. As it happened, there was even more than the description let on – we were all given a glass of "welcome Prosecco", then the two cocktails (I had a limoncello spritz, then a gin and tonic), and could've even filled in a short feedback survey for an extra standard drink if we hadn't all been very tipsy!

The boat ride was really cool – there was a fairly underwhelming audio guide, but it was fun enough just looking at the architecture yourself. The service was great; we were made to feel like VIPs despite paying such a small amount. There was also a live band upstairs, and later in the evening, two traditional dancers. It was all so entertaining that we totally forgot that there was also stuff out the window to see.

Budapest at night was beautiful though – the bridges projected lights into the night sky, and the very spiky Parliament building was a particularly gorgeous sight. The boat itself was also lovely: an old steamer that had clearly been restored and kept in great condition, with lovely interior decoration and even a window to view the engine room and propellors.

The dancers were entertaining: an older man and younger woman both doing traditional dance. They seemed to be doing their own thing most of the time while still intertwining in a nicely choreographed way. The man in particular was definitely on something good though – he was shouting, bouncing around, and laughing with such strongly dilated pupils he was probably having more fun than we were.

Eventually, the ride ended, we were all quite drunk, and slowly wandered home back to our apartment for a great night's sleep, full of good food, drinks, and fun 😄