Since I’ve last blogged, I’ve vis­ited two major cities in Europe. The first was Budapest in Hun­gary, and the other was Ams­ter­dam in the Nether­lands. Both amaz­ing, and both very, very dif­fer­ent experiences.

Budapest

The city of Budapest was never one of my pri­or­ity cities to visit in Europe, but the deci­sion to go was largely based on the fact that our bus ride was $40 CAD, and the hos­tel for $50 CAD. Thats a price we couldn’t pass up, so Hora and I fig­ured we might as well, and also brought along a friend from the dorms, the more the merrier.

Hora and Greg at a Prague Metro station

I knew very lit­tle about Budapest before going to the city, the extent of what I knew about Hun­gary is that I have a friend from Van­cou­ver who immi­grated from it. For­tu­nately, we found a great walk­ing tour of the city, which taught us a ton of cool things. The city of Budapest is actu­ally split into two, Buda, and Pest. We stayed on the Pest side, where most of the main part of the city lies. The tour was not only one that showed us build­ings and mon­u­ments, but our tour guide gave us infor­ma­tion on the his­tory of the city as well. We were told that the coun­try of Hun­gary has long been a coun­try that has been con­trolled by a major power for the major­ity of its his­tory, always a pawn in the long his­tory of Euro­pean wars. It had been occu­pied by the Turks for many years, and only shortly after to be sucked into the Haps­burg empire. Later on there was a strug­gle for Hun­gar­ian inde­pen­dence, in which they were even­tu­ally defeated and turned into Austria-Hungary. When World War I came about, Hun­gary was finally inde­pen­dent, but only for a short while as World War II caused the destruc­tion of a large part of Budapest, and which even­tu­ally lead to a com­mu­nist takeover for the next half of the cen­tury. But I think that’s enough of a his­tory les­son for now, and if I’m wrong, don’t get angry, I have a ter­ri­ble memory.

Our awe­some tour guide

When it comes to what I enjoyed most about the city, I’ll actu­ally admit that it had less to do with the city, and more to do with the hos­tel we stayed at. We stayed at Carpe Noctem, and the peo­ple who ran the place gave us an oppor­tu­nity to expe­ri­ence the nightlife of Budapest much bet­ter then I ever could have pos­si­bly done on a week­end stay. The hos­tel was called Carpe Noctem, and was run by Brits and Aussys, and it was def­i­nitely the best, and most infor­ma­tive hos­tel I’ve ever stayed at. Not only did they help us expe­ri­ence the nightlife, but they told us what sights to see, places to visit, and where to get the best food.

A view from Pest, taken on the walk­ing tour rec­om­mended by the Hostel

The first day we arrived, I had the flu, so I didn’t go out at night, but dur­ing the day we went to get some real authen­tic Hun­gar­ian food. We were rec­om­mended to one of the restau­rants across the street, and since we men­tioned that Carpe Noctem told us about it, they gave us a free beer (the woman from the hos­tel said Hun­gary has the best beer, but so far, Prague wears the crown for me). We started off with an onion soup, which I found to be very tasty, but Hora was def­i­nitely given too many onions. Next for me was the beef stew, which was very dif­fer­ent, but very good at the same time. There ended up being too much for me to swal­low, so I packed the rest and eat it later. Hora and Greg were also very sat­is­fied with their meals. After that, we took a walk around the city and headed back to the hos­tel to rest so we could pack in a full day of explor­ing for the next day.

Free­dom Square

One of my favorite places that we went in Budapest was the Szechenyi baths, which are pools that are both indoor and our­door, but both are heated by the under­ground caves. It was really relax­ing, I haven’t gone swim­ming for a while so it was really uplift­ing. Oh, and yes, I was def­i­nitely the hairi­est one in the pool, by far.

Chillin’ with my homeboy

The nightlife in Budapest was great. I’m not so sure how great it would have been if I wasn’t with the guys from the hos­tel, but because of them, I had a great time. On the sec­ond night we were their, they took us all on a pub crawl of the most secret, cool under­ground places of the city that reg­u­lar tourists would have a hard time to find. The sec­ond place was my favorite, with 400HUF (the hun­gar­ian cur­rency, comes out to about $2) tequila shots and foose­ball tables. I think after that, most places were a blur, but I dis­tinctly remem­ber hav­ing beer spilled all over me by a Hun­gar­ian at one point.

First pub of the night

The next night, they took us all out to a restau­rant for din­ner, but the amaz­ing thing was, they knew the owner, so we were giv­ing 50% off on all of the food, and this was a night end place, so you can imag­ine how happy I was. I had a salad to start, a steak for the main course, and pie for dessert, and with drinks the whole meal came to about $12CAD, a meal of that cal­iber would have eas­ily cost upwards of $50CAD. Some of us then went on to a local pub where we drank beer after beer, only to go to another local pub to have shot after shot. That night, we hung out with some really cool Aus­tralian girls, and an Amer­i­can guy who’s job was to go all around Europe to every club and basi­cally rate as many clubs as he can. We also ended up hang­ing out with a Hun­gar­ian cou­ple, and half the night con­sisted of play­ing the clas­sic drink­ing game “never have I ever…”.

We had three of these between four girls and two guys

All in all, I had an amaz­ing time in Budapest, thanks Carpe Noctem! For those of you con­sid­er­ing vis­it­ing, I would highly rec­om­mend it.

Ams­ter­dam

Now, Ams­ter­dam is the com­plete oppo­site of Budapest in terms of how we had to have our fun (not to men­tion that it is a com­pletely dif­fer­ent city over­all). This time, our hos­tel was ter­ri­ble, but there was enough to do in the city that I didn’t mind. The city itself is quite beau­ti­ful, with the canals in almost every street, and with its unique Archi­tec­ture, although its not as clean as Prague; I’ve yet to find a city that is. Ams­ter­dam is one of the most lib­eral cities I’ve ever been to, and it would be the last place I would rec­om­mend to my Dad. The thing that I found about Ams­ter­dam is that the bars and clubs aren’t very good, I wasn’t very impressed, but I wasn’t at Ams­ter­dam for the nightlife, I was there for the bik­ing. It is a very dif­fer­ent, but inter­est­ing city, Austin Pow­ers was right to call them the “freaky deaky Dutch”.

Canal of Ams­ter­dam

One of the first things we did in Ams­ter­dam was going on a Heiniken tour. Heiniken is the most famous brand of beer to come out of Ams­ter­dam, and while in my opin­ion, Heiniken isn’t the best tast­ing beer in the world, some­how it is one of the most famous. After going on the tour, I real­ize its due to its superb mar­ket­ing, not not nec­es­sar­ily the taste of the beer itself. It cost us 15 EURO to get it, but I wasn’t com­plain­ing as I was given about five free beers through­out the tour. Most of the tour was in Eng­lish, which doesn’t seem to be a prob­lem for the Dutch because it seems like most of them know Eng­lish as well as their own language.

Taken on the Heiniken tour

One of the most inter­est­ing things about Ams­ter­dam was the fact that you could go to a shop, and look at a menu of what type of Mar­i­juana you wanted to buy. Peo­ple call Van­cou­ver the weed cap­i­tal of North Amer­ica, but it doesn’t even come close to how well weed has been inter­wined into the cul­ture of Ams­ter­dam. Cof­fee shops are the places that sell weed in Ams­ter­dam, and they are reg­u­lated by the gov­ern­ment, and taxed accord­ingly. The phi­los­o­phy is that peo­ple are going to get mar­i­juana whether the gov­ern­ment allows them or not, so the only prac­ti­cal solu­tion us to reg­u­late and tax the drug so that it elim­i­nates any crim­i­nal influ­ence. I’m sur­prised these set of laws hasn’t been tested out in other coun­tries across the world.

A menu at one of the cof­fee shops in Amsterdam

Pros­ti­tu­tion is another big part of Ams­ter­dam, some­thing that is legal and reg­u­lated here. The area that is most famous in Ams­ter­dam is arguably the Red Light Dis­trict, where there are hun­dreds of doors made of glass with women stand­ing wait­ing for men to approach them and pay $50 EURO for their “services”.The Red Light Dis­trict is the only place in Ams­ter­dam that I’ve seen that kind of stuff go on, and so if my dad ever had to Ams­ter­dam, I’d know which direc­tion not to take him to pre­vent a heart attack. It is def­i­nitely not a con­ser­v­a­tive friendly city, I can tell you that much.

Not quite the Red Light Dis­trict, but close

On one of the nights, we went on the most famous pub crawl in all of Ams­ter­dam, and I would like to rec­om­mend all of you not to go. It was 15 EURO, and while I got my mon­eys worth in drinks, the pubs were ter­ri­ble. They played mad music, all of them were way to crowded and small, and the peo­ple weren’t nearly as inter­est­ing as the peo­ple in Budapest and Prague (although maybe that was just shitty luck, but maybe I like East­ern Europe more, your call). Oh well, what Ams­ter­dam lacked at night, it made up for dur­ing the day.

Dutch pizza pan­cake, delicious

The food in Ams­ter­dam was great, and the bik­ing was even bet­ter. We rented bikes for three days in Ams­ter­dam, two of the days we used them to get around the city, and one of the days we spent on a Bike tour that we fol­lowed from a brochure. The city of Ams­ter­dam is one of the most bike friendly citys in the world, quite pos­si­bly the most. The bik­ing trip was one of the funnest things I’ve done in Europe yet, the tour was sup­pose to take us to many his­tor­i­cal sights, but really, we only saw one, which was a wind­mill, and the rest of them time we spent going to two dif­fer­ent cities, Oudek­erk and Amstelveen. Oudek­erk was a small vil­lage with lots of smaller houses, it was exactly as you would pic­ture “Dutch” with­out think­ing of Amsterdam.

Now enter­ing Ouderkerk

Then we decided to keep ven­tur­ing, and we landed in the city of Amstelveen, which was much larger and more res­i­den­tial, but very dif­fer­ent from Ams­ter­dam. We stopped to get food at a restau­rant we found at a shop­ping dis­trict, and it was very wierd to have real ser­vice again, some­where that I could actu­ally get a cup of tap water. We also ended up bik­ing by a church that was in ses­sion, and tried to get in but the doors were locked, I guess in the Neather­lands, if your late for church, its game over. The bike ride was incred­i­ble, we biked 25–30 KM of pure flat lands, rid­ing by canals and mead­ows, it was a great expe­ri­ence, my favorite in Ams­ter­dam by far.

A man and his windmill

I had a great time in Ams­ter­dam, and although it blew a big hole in my wal­let, it was def­i­nitely worth it. Ams­ter­dam is a beau­ti­ful city, there is a ton of things to do and see, and even if you are eas­ily offended, avoid look­ing at the Red Light, grab a bike, and have a great time.