We flew from Geneve to Budapest on easyjet.com. Famous cheap international flights.....a little problematic on the times, but worth the savings.
First stop at the airport was to change our left over Suisse francs into Hungarian Forent. Crazy. The cashier handed me what appeared to be thousands of dollars. Paper bills worth 1,000 to 100,000 forent and coins that ranged from 5 to 500 forent. Problem is after conversion, the large bills turn into 1/226 of the face value, so 1,000 forent is like $5. Very confusing......after three days, I am starting to get comfortable with the money, but I did have to pull out the left over Suisse francs and Euros and put them in a different place......such a small continent to have so many different monies.
Our next challenge was getting to our hostel in this land of Hungarian and very different words and street names, but we did manage. I knew right away the country was friendly when a young girl and her mother helped Molly and I buy our train tickets in a funky coin operated machine. Upon arrival to our hostel, a yound man carried my luggage up 3 floors, as the elevator was out of service. He did it happily too.
Our hostel was in a 5 or 6 story building under renovation. It had various levels of security. Buzzer at front door. Code at main door. Code at next door. Key to hostel. Key to room. I felt very safe:) We went out and got some lunch (goulash) and took a long nap. Molly met some group from Australia she went out with that night and I enjoyed watching CNN in english and researching the city of Budapest.
