Crossing the Drina river brought me to Bosnia-Hercegovina. I ended up holding up the bus for an hour as the immigration officials were confused with the legitimacy of my supplemental pages taped into my passport.
I arrived in Belgrade (Beograd) stiff from the dry crust of brine on my skin from the days long sweat at 2230h. It was not what I expected. It is modern, clean, and safe. There is a good night life here everynight of the week.
The train stopped for about two hours at a small town. I don't know what was wrong, but everyone lounged around on the tracks. I decided to change seats and moved to a different train car. It didn't have air conditioning, but it had windows that opened, which was much nicer.
After five nights in Budapest, I headed south for Belgrade, the former capital of the former republic of Yugoslavia. The weather has been in the 90's all week, and the broken air-conditioning unit in my car didn't help.
Thermal springs are everywhere in Budapest. This one in Varosliget (city park) is one of the more famous ones. They offer medicinal massages, thermal baths, and swimming.
Constructed to honor the millennial anniversary of the Magyar (Hungarian) conquest of the Carpathian Basin in 1896, it sits between to museums and the entrance to the city park.
No longer a palace, this place has a few museums. At the time, they were preparing for El Jefe's visit.
Budapest, the capital of Hungary, is actually two cities, the hilly western city of Buda (with it's two hills of Gellert and Varhegy) and the flat downtown section of Pest. It huddles around the Danube. Remarkably it has beautiful buildings that are not reminescent of communism.
