The day we arrived in Budapest, we were very disoriented. The East train station was a bunch of rails, a roof, and not much else. We couldn't find a map anywhere. We ended up navigating using google maps over Lauren's phone. After a false start in completely the wrong direction, we finally started heading towards our hotel.

It was a long walk, and a very hot day. The walk was really fascinating, walking through a city we've never seen before without anyone to show us the way. But the incident that sticks out most in my mind is something that happened pretty close to the beginning of the trek. We were walking alongside one of the many construction sites in Budapest, and a man in front of us walking towards us starts laughing. He came toward me, announced in very broken English that I am a good man, hugged me and kissed me on the cheek, then resumed walking past us. I was kind of shocked into speechlessness for a few moments, before Lauren suggested I check my pockets. I did, and nothing was missing, even though I did have some spare change in one of my open pockets. I guess he was just really friendly.

And that kind of set a tone for the whole excursion. Budapest was a place filled with the unexpected. Whether it was the gorgeous tiled roofs on so many of the buildings, or the giant cliffs right next to the river on the Buda side of town, or the insanely-gorgeous Parliament building.

Of course, not all was good. It was pretty plain that Hungary was hit really hard by Communism. Much more so in Prague, Budapest showed signs of just how bad things got. There were still buildings on the street that were damaged back during the revolt in 1956. We visited a Communist statue park outside of town, which was full of cool old statues, but also put into perspective just how controlled Hungary was by the Russians. There were fresh flowers on most of the memorials around town to those who stood against Communism, even the little monuments on the side of buildings in back streets. It was much more dramatic than anything I could have expected.

I really want to go back. I don't understand the language at all and the public transit system is much more confusing than Prague's, but still I was just so taken with the city and I want to spend more time exploring every corner and learning more about everything. So much of what's there is really really depressing, but the more I saw the more I was glad I went.

A few photos from Budapest

Since KC is writing about our travels to Budapest, I figured I would post some of our photos from the excursion.

Also, if you click on a picture it will become gigantic. Enjoy!

One of the really interesting things about Budapest is its lack of reconstruction post-WWII and -1956. I don't mean to imply that the whole city is in disrepair, it actually looks quite nice, but there are definitely places where you can still see the damage from these now-old conflicts. Our hotel was in the Jewish Quarter, which was once a ghetto but is now pretty bohemian-hip. This photo doesn't show it too clearly, but in that neighborhood especially there were many memorials and bits of evidence from WWII and the 1956 uprising. 

The exterior of St. Stephen's Basilica. This place is absolutely massive, and its chapel houses the mummified right hand of St. Stephen who died in the 11th Century. I found this a bit strange, but apparently it's a very important religious object.

See? We really did eat ice cream shaped like roses! And it was delicious!

KC took this photo at the top of an immense staircase leading up to the Buda Castle District. Great view, but SO many stairs! Later that day we found out that there is a funicular going straight up the hill, but walking up was actually rather neat (albeit tiring).

View of Budapest and the Danube River from Buda Castle. Buda is on the left side of the picture, and Pest is on the right. Beautiful city, right?

Fisherman's Bastion, in the Castle District. This structure is incredibly gorgeous and fascinating, but a large portion of it was fenced off due to construction. There is a ton of restoration and construction going on in Budapest, and we predict that the city will continue to become a more popular tourist destination as the years pass. I'm glad we got to see it before the rush!

Photo of KC and I, taken at Fisherman's Bastion. Budapest is really spectacular from all angles.

St. Matthew's Cathedral in the Buda Castle district. This building is also under construction for stone restoration and the like, but still looked quite nice on the outside (we didn't go in). I really love the patterned roof tiles - a lot of roofs in Budapest have bright, stunning mosaic patterns. It's too bad more cities haven't adopted this roofing style, as it's immensely pleasing. 

This is the Dohany Street Synagogue, built around 1850 only a few blocks from our hotel in Pest. According to the tour guide, who had a NY accent and was named Reuben, this is "the first and second largest synagogue in the world." It seats fewer people than Temple Emmanuel in New York City, but has more physical space. The building is really ornate for a synagogue, and actually looks kind of like a church (except for the stars of David, Holocaust Memorial, lack of angel/biblical frescoes, large number of Jews, etc.). It was quite interesting to see this place, as Hungary's Jewish community appears to be thriving today but was decimated during the Holocaust (Hungary was a German ally, and was also rather anti-Semitic to begin with). The cemetery outside of the synagogue is probably about one-fourth of an acre, but has over 8,000 people buried there in mass graves. During WWII, the small but populous Jewish district was walled off as a ghetto and no supplies were allowed in, meaning many people died from starvation and otherwise-curable illnesses. Visiting this place was yet another reminder of the realities of 20th-century conflicts in Central Europe. Although the cemetery and memorial were quite sobering, it was nice to see that the Jewish community in Budapest is thriving once again.

I guess this is a good place to add that Budapest is quite multicultural, which is cool. There is more ethnic variation than in Prague, which I think might be a product of Hungary's shifting rulers over the past millenia - Turkish, Magyar, Hapsburg, they've seen it all.

The Hungarian Parliament, as seen from the tower of St. Stephen's Basilica. The Parliament building is gorgeous, and looks like a cross between a gothic castle and a gothic church. It's spectacularly gothic and incredibly ornate.

KC and I on the tower of St. Stephen's Basilica.

On Saturday we went to Esceri, a flea market on the southern edge of town. They had a ton of interesting antiques for pretty reasonable prices, and we had a blast. However, we  forgot to eat lunch before leaving, so we had to buy this delicious fried potato dough topped with grated cheese. I don't remember what it was called, but holy cow was it greasy and delicious.

KC  has a million cameras. Ok, one of them is mine, but still - what a gangsta.

While we were in Budapest, KC and I visited a supremely strange place called Memento Park. After the fall of Communism, no one wanted Soviet statues or monuments anymore, so the founders of Memento Park collected a bunch of surviving one's from Central Europe and put them on a few acres outside of Budapest. Seeing these statues was bizarre and kind of depressing; I actually felt a bit guilty for paying money to see the imposed-idols that tyrannized this part of the world for so many years. Interesting, sure, but also quite sobering.

Silhouette of a Soviet statue.

Outside the park they had an old Soviet Trabant, which was apparently a notoriously unreliable automobile. This one was in particularly bad shape thanks to tourists breaking off pieces, but there was still enough of the car left for KC to squeeze inside and look ridiculous.

A Soviet-era radio.

I don't know what this building is, but the roof is absolutely gorgeous. This picture doesn't do it justice - the roof is a mosaic of green and yellow tiles that shine in the sun. KC was absolutely fascinated by it when we passed it on the tram, and we went back later so he could photograph it.

I really love Budapest, and I'm so glad we went. It's pretty different from  Prague, but comparing the two cannot convey the true nature of either city. I am so unbelievably fortunate to travel the way I am right now, and I plan to savor every moment of it. Everything we have done and seen so far has been amazing, and as cliche as it sounds, we'll remember this forever.

So Many Things, So Little Time

It's been a while, and a lot has happened so I'll talk about the little tidbits that stuck out in my mind. Picture uploading has been a slow process, so maybe more will get uploaded later? I dunno.

Hanging out with Veronika has been a rewarding experience. She's still a little shy but I think (hope) she's waring up to us, and can tell us things no guide book can. When we went to Troja chateau, she told us about how most bourgeois buildings survived the Communist era, but fell into severe disrepair as no one took care of them. When we were in the zoo, she translated signs and bits of random conversation around the zoo for us. We saw a group of ducklings walking across one of the paths between ponds, and a young Czech boy pointed at the ducks and loudly accused them of being spies. I wonder if all the dialogue we're missing is that awesome.

The day after that, we went to Kutna Hora. It's a small mining town outside of Prague, and it was full of interesting buildings. Our first stop was the Sedlec Ossuary, which was a building just outside of town decorated with the remains of 40,000 plague victims. It was kind of unsettling in there, but still a very cool experience. We walked through town a bit, and emerged by the Saint Barbara cathedral. This church has the same style roof as Denver International Airport, but it was designed and built in the early 17th century. It was amazing in there. But what was nicest about Kutna Hora, in my mind at least, was being in a smaller town and just soaking in the surrounding countryside. There were gorgeous views in every direction, the air was fresh, and we only ever ran into one large group of tourists.

Yesterday we woke up bright and early to head to Budapest by train. There is a lot to be said for train travel. It takes longer that flying, but it is really laid back, and wonderful to be able to stretch out and walk around the train cars. We passed through Slovakia, which was gorgeous, and we both agreed that visiting Bratislava might be a very worthy expenditure of time. Another nice feature of trains is you get to see wonderful things out the window. We saw this gigantic, incredible-looking basilica named Esztergom that we would have never discovered had we not looked out the window, and there's a pretty good chance we're going to spend Saturday there.

So here we are in Budapest, and I've finally alost caught up with the blog. This city is so awesome, and I feel like I've used that word a million times so far but I'm running out of words to describe this trip as the experience it is. The roofs on some of the older buildings here have multi-colored shingles on the to create patterns, and the effect is really nice. It makes otherwise grand buildings look just superb. We spent most of today in the castle district, looking at pretty buildings and walking up truly epic numbers of stairs. We walked around for close to seven hours, and we've still only scratched the surface of this city. We're going to do a whole lot more exploring tomorrow.

Oh man the food here is so good! We went to a Turkish place for lunch, and got gigantic volumes of high-quality food for really cheap. I got this spicy chicken that had what looked like half a cauliflower plant on top of it, covered in sauce and it came with a full plate of turkish rice, which is delicious enough on its own. Then, for dinner we went to a place down the street from our hotel and got arguably the best meal I've had in a long time. I got some homemade matzo ball soup, had an elderflower soda, with apple rhubarb pie topped with ginger and elderberry for dessert. Yesterday, we got ice cream, and the server shaped the scoops into the shape of roses (hard to explain - pictures to come). My expectations have been completely shattered.

So sorry for rambling, but there's been a lot to blog about and I've been too busy to write anything before now. There is still so much to talk about, but I didn't want to overwhelm you with a gigantic wall of text, or a more gigantic wall of text anyway. Suffice to say, this trip has been one of, if not the most rewarding experiences of my life.