Vienna Sausages: Day Four: Budapest

During our fourth day in Budapest, we visited an international business and a castle, or what was left of it. SAP, Systems Application Product, was the international business that greeted us with honors. During the presentation, given by their chief of the Hungarian office, we were thrown many facts. The first interesting and incredible fact was that after 42 years of business, SAP has grown 50% this year alone. SAP specializes in computer software and has over 250,000 customers world-wide. A few fun facts we learned were that SAP'S customers fly more than 1.7 billion of the world's passengers, produce more than 82% of the coffee and tea we drink each day, produce more than 62% of the world's movies, and helps reliably reach more than 97% of the world's wireless subscriber via text messaging. SAP currently holds the Guinness World Record for loading, storing, and analyzing big data at 34.4 terabytes per hour. A few commonly known customers of this company are Porsche, Audi, the NBA, and Skullcandy. I thought the story he shared with us about saving the company Skullcandy, a headphone production company, was very interesting. I enjoyed hearing about my favorite brand of headphones being saved. To think without SAP, a company I hadn't heard of until the past month, saved one of my favorite company's product is amazing.

For lunch, Emilee, Allison, Terri, Hailey, Taylor, and I hustled over toward the Parliament to get a closer view and grab a quick bite to eat. I've noticed in Hungary there is no such thing as a "quick bite to eat". When it comes to food, time simply doesn't exist. Every restaurant I have been to has been super slow and none of the waiters or customers seemed to be displeased with that. On the other hand, I FINALLY was able to catch a bite of that wonderful Tiramissou. After rushing through lunch, we ran back to the tram and hitched a ride to meet with Sylvia and the rest of the group.

From there, Sylvia took us on a tram and bus to a beautiful church. Standing outside the church, we were fed information of the building of the church as well as the structures around it. We were able to catch a glimpse of a Hilton Hotel, which was much prettier than the ones in the United States. After learning about the church, we hiked to the back and was stunned by the view. Hands down, the best view in Budapest was the view we were able to see outside of the church. After taking our "Forever Green Photo" we hiked on up to the castle. When we were told that we were able to tour a castle, I was thinking an enormous castle that would take hours to completely see. After seeing the remaining pieces of the castle and hearing the chilling story and seeing the pictures was enough to make you sad. The castle that we toured was the remaining parts left that had been restored after the castle was destroyed during the war. The pictures gave you the chills. The oddest thing I saw in the castle museum was a skeleton in a glass box that was covered after being found in a grave yard after the war. I find that very weird.

It's hard to believe we are approaching the end of our stay here in Budapest. It has been quite the experience. I have learned a lot during our stay here. Hungarians have no sense of time but yet are always in a rush to get to places. Overall, I've enjoyed the stay here but I don't plan on coming back to Budapest anytime soon. Now, on to the next place!