Buda and Pest

I left Slovenia at around two in the morning, on the same train that I had arrived on 48 hours before. My next stop was to be Budapest, but in order to get there I knew I would have to pass through Croatia, meaning that my sleep was repeatedly interrupted by men stamping my passport since Croatia is not part of the borderless Schengen Zone. When I finally did wake up for good I looked out the window and nearly panicked. I saw a lake that was clearly a vacation spot, but to my surprise I could easily understand the German writing around me. For a few moments I thought that somehow the train had turned around and gone the wrong way into Austria, but I talked myself out of that and remembered that someone had told me about a certain Lake Balaton, and a comparison between the city names and those on my map showed that I was in fact there. This was one of the major scenic routes suggested with the Interrail pass, so I sat back and enjoyed it as the train made its slow way to Budapest.
When I did get to the Hungarian capital, I finally felt like I had arrived in a decidedly different world from the furnished train stations of Western Europe. Ljubljana was at least a tiny country and that could justify its less embellished train station, but not Budapest. I also became quickly aware that there were other differences. There was a large tourist population already evident in the area surrounding the train station, so I could be assured that there were some very developed areas. Also absent here, for the first time in my trip, were Euros. There was a currency exchange station by the trains (as well as men peddling Hungarian Forints outside of it), but the prices there were so terrible that I left to find another place to switch into their legal tender.
I got a much better deal just around the corner (1 Euro=270 Forint) and set off to find a place to stay. My next stop would be Prague, and though I could take the night train, it was actually cheaper and definitely more comfortable to find a hostel and leave early in the morning. The first hostel I went to offered a place to stay for 13 Euros, so I deposited my things there and took a free tour of the city that focused on the more recent (communist) history but did include plenty of other information.
After that I went around the city alone, crossing the river into Buda to see the Budapest Castle and the church. Budapest is actually the combination of two separate cities, Buda on the west of the Danube river and Pest on the east, which were united in the late 1800s. Most of the important tourist areas are on the Castle Hill, which is in the Buda area but is often considered a separate area due to the high concentration of attractions and historical significance.
After I had been wandering around there for a while, the sun began to set. The natural light faded away and the river lit up, with the buildings and especially the bridges taking on a festive glow thanks to what looked like giant Christmas lights. The only comparison I could draw in my mind was with the Nile River in Cairo, so that can serve to illustrate how impressive the site was. I walked across the chain bridge and saw the city from even further back, and when I made it back into Pest I went into the center for dinner, where I tried the Hungarian goulash. I made it back to the hostel by midnight, which gave me a few hours to sleep before I had to get my next train.