Budapest

***I am back from my trip to Hungary and boy do I have a lot to say and show. This is going to be an extended project so expect it to unfold in a series of updates***

◊ Where to begin? My trip was fantastic. I would say that I had more fun in Budapest than in any other city I have been to yet. First, some information. The city has a unique feel given to it by the numerous empires that have conquered Hungary over the years. Unlike the Czechs however, they do not have a history of passive and peaceful resistance. The Hungarians have violently resisted all of them. Buda is on the east side of the river and has the castle hill, the citadel, and lots of wooded parks. Pest is the more commercial and industrial part of the city. Hungary's number one export is paprika.
◊ The train ride there was decent. The train was terrible but empty so we could actually lay down. I slept most of the way there and we arrived Friday morning. We checked into the hostel, got settled in, and headed for Buda.

Across the river is the Parliament Building. We exited the subway about 10:00 and all of the church bells in the city started to ring. They did not stop for 20 minutes. We realized why later.


This bunny came right up to us, like it was expecting food. So we ate it.
No, not really.



Fisherman's Bastion



Those Turks sure knew how to tile a roof


Tourists, meet gargoyle. Gargoyle, meet tourists.



Pope John Paul II's funeral televised from Rome. At last we understood the bells.

◊ Next stop, The labyrinth.

No, not THAT labyrinth. This one is a network of tunnels, cellars, and natural caves that honeycomb the entire hill. It has been used as a crypt, a bomb shelter, and a covert soviet military post. It was a very weird place. Sometimes, I thought I could even hear David Bowie's laughter.

A four-sided underground wine fountain. Weird.







Teaching Nelson a lesson he will never forget

◊ We went to the two most famous of the baths during the weekend. One is very traditional, and one is very large. The first one we went to was the traditional one in Buda, Gellerts. Let us just call it a cultural experience. We chose the hot baths and they were great. There was a 38C pool with a hotter fountain that you could sit under and a 36C pool with a cold fountain. There was also an ice bath kept a 8C and the most intense sauna I have ever been in. It was so hot and so steamy that I could not breathe when I stepped inside. The steam was so thick there was nothing to see except gray. Between the heat and steam most of the oxygen was driven out of the air so the only way to stay there was to breathe very deeply, which was the exact opposite of what my instincts were telling me to do. It took several cycles in and out of the pools and sauna before I could stay in there for more than a few minutes. Does anyone remember that Halls Cough Drops commercial where the guy takes the cough drop and suddenly in a steamy Turkish bath with a couple of gargantuan hairy men who slap him on the back and say, "Breathe! Breathe my pasty friend! Ha Ha Ha!"? Well, this was pretty much like that.
◊ Now don't get me wrong, it was not all wonderful. Especially bad were my first impressions. The hot baths were segregated between men and women. I didn't wonder why for very long. Most of the men in there were very old, fat, and naked. There were courtesy loin clothes available for those who did not bring bathing suits, which were most of those guys, but many did not make use of them. I saw many things that day that I would have much rather not seen at all, but after a while in there it didn't seem so awkward anymore. Maybe that was because we were just so darned relaxed. None of us were willing to pay the extra money for a massage but we still came out a few hours later feeling wonderful. Nelson even commented that someone could steal his wallet right then and it probably wouldn't care. We seriously need one of those in Topeka.

After dinner we decided to return to Buda and climb castle hill to see the city lights.

◊ On the second day, we decided to start out with a cathedral and move on to the city park. This was one heck of a city park. They had everything. A zoo, amusement park, circus, castle, climbing walls, etc. The list just goes on and on. It also had the other bath house we wanted to try out. This one was much more like a public pool than Gellerts, which had all been indoors. It was not segregated so there was no unfortunate nudity on the part of any old men. It began to rain while we were at the zoo and so the hot pools were in stark contrast to the chilly air all around. This place had a jacuzzi-like place surrounded by current pool. There were pools for carbon acid baths of different temperatures. The saunas and cold baths were nowhere nearly as intense as the ones at Gellerts had been. The saunas were more like the kind we are used to at home, and the cold baths were kept at a balmy 16C. Once again I had a blast cycling through all of the different facilities. Once again I left with a big smile on my face; one with the universe.

This saint's hand is inside the cathedral and is the most holy relic in Budapest. It has been stolen by one empire after another. I figured out why they only have one of his hands though. He obviously blew the other one to bits playing with that holy hand grenade he is always portrayed holding.


Hero's Gate. The gate to the city park portraying all of Hungary's greatest heroes.



We found some friends in the park.
The scary hooded guy is a memorial the 'The Anonmyous Scribe'. Almost everything that is known about ancient Hungary came from some King's scribe who actually bothered to write things down. The only thing he never mentioned in his writing was his name.





That is a statue of George Washington. Why is his statue in the middle of Budapest? Beats me. I just thought it was really cool.


The world's largest hourglass.
It is rolled over once at the beginning of each year.


Another zoo. This one was good too, but the most unusual thing about it was that feeding the animals was not discouraged.



There were more of those 'helpful' animal infoboards.
Those monkeys were even kind enough to give us a live demonstration.



Children are feeding the hippo. Now I think I understand where so many people get the idea that hippos are cute, cuddly, and harmless. Hippos kill more people each year than any other animal in the world.


I was amazed when I saw the rhinos. There was almost no fence between them and the little children. If that thing wanted too, it would not have too much difficulty smashing though it. Safety concerns aside, I thought this was wonderful. It would walk right up to the fence and wait there for people to pet it and scratch it's back. I will probably never again have the chance to scratch a rhino behind the ears.


In the bath house lobby

◊ The best and worst experience I had all weekend came that evening when we returned to castle hill to seek out a wine tasting cellar we had seen earlier called 'House of Hungarian Wine'. You pay a fee (about $20) and are given a glass and turned loose in the cellar to try the dozens of different types of wine produced in Hungary. It started out with white wines, then red, and ended with dessert wines. Now professional wine tasters would smell each kind, look for impurities, taste, and then spit it out instead of swallowing it. We are not professionals and neither were most of the other people down there. We dug in like college guys so that by the time we made it to the red wines, I no longer could recognize any difference from bottle to bottle. By the time I made it to the desert wines, I could not longer tell which ones I liked and which ones I did not. I purchased one that really struck my fancy and was cheap. Of course, since it is Hungarian, I would expect to many times what I did to buy it at home if it could even be found. I think I might ship it home for the parents.

◊ We arrived about 18:30 and this place closed at 20:00 so we knew if we wanted to try it all we we would have to work fast. It didn't take very long before I realized that I needed to be tasting smaller portions and slowing down if I wanted to be able to walk home under my own power. Nelson and Nathan were their usual gung-ho selves and drove on with determination. By the time we had to make our purchases and leave they were three sheets to the wind. Eric and I didn't exactly have both feet on the ground either. Surprisingly, we were told that we could keep our wine glasses. After leaving we met some Belgians who had been down there with us and walked with them for a ways. Eric and I decided to carry the bottles so the other two did not drop them. At one point we stopped for a moment and a minute later I realized that Nelson had picked up my bag as well as his and was carrying them under his arms. Before I could ask him to carefully hand over mine, a wine glass fell out of one. I hoped it was not mine.
◊ We stopped at a nice restaurant which was too rich for my blood, so I just ordered a drink. Nelson asked me if I had heard something break earlier so I informed him that he should hope he dropped his and not mind. Life is cruel so of course he had dropped mine and refused to give me his as compensation. I could have just taken it and he would have never known the difference, but I do not work that way. Suddenly, Nathan slapped his hand over his mouth and fountained purple right there at the table. It was his first run-in with wine apparently. Eric took the drunk outside and Nelson and I cleaned up the wall, table, and floor all the while apologizing profusely to the wait staff. Thankfully they did not charge us for the food that was never brought to us and took it off the bill. We paid for our drinks and left a large tip. I paid my part , but in retrospect I should have counted the money Nelson gave the waiter because the next morning he could not remember how much exactly he had tipped.
◊ As for the broken wine glass, I finally convinced him to give me his as payment but somehow his got crushed before he could give it to me. Nelson now owes both me and himself a wine glass. The next day we started out with the world's second largest synagogue. It was big. Later we went to a place called the 'Statue Park' outside of the city. This part of our trip will have it's own dedicated post soon.

Eric, our crazy German thought this movie poster was the most hilarious thing. I guess it is for a German parody of Star Trek.


We ran into a group of Mormons singing at the train station. They were on their two year mission in Hungary. One of the ones that was not singing would not leave us alone. At first the conversation was pleasant but breaking off the conversation was like pulling teeth. And then later we has to explain what we knew of Mormonism to Eric.

◊ The train ride back did not go as well as the train ride there. The biggest reason would be our train car did not have any heat. This was not such a big problem at first, but as the night wore on, it got colder and colder and colder. Finally Nelson and I got desperate and found the cafe, which was more like a closet with a stove located in the sleeper car. We had some cups of hot chocolate that were wonderful and oh-so-very-warm. When we explained our problem to the woman in charge of looking after that car, she offered to come to our car and see about turning up the heat. When we arrived, she could not believe how cold it was and after a brief inspection told us that the battery was broken and that we should go find a warm car. Ours was not the only broken one, but we found a new compartment. I slept the remainder of the trip in a state of warm nirvana.