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.

Photos and Such

Sorry we haven't been blogging with any semblance of regularity - I've been too distracted by being in Prague to take the time to write about it! But do not fret, gentle reader, for I will do my best to inform you of what we have done since our last post.

(As I've said before, you can see some of our pictures here, however I've reached my monthly upload limit and can't post anything else until July 1. So instead, I'll post some photos here!)

We spent today at the Praha Zoo with Veronika, which was quite fun. I'll admit my expectations were not high, since I've never been a huge fan of zoos, but this place was quite nice. It is by far the most gigantic zoo I've ever seen, and even has a chairlift to transport patrons up a big hill. On the hillside, they have a neat mountain goat exhibit complete with craggy rockslopes, as well as an exhibit of North American elk and deer (they looked rather familiar). It was such a big place that we only saw a fraction of it, but we had a lovely time nevertheless. I really liked getting to spend more time with Veronika, too; although she's kind of quiet, I really like talking to her and learning more about Czech culture. Her hometown of Mělnik sounds really interesting, and hearing about it makes me want to see a few of the smaller towns outside of Prague.

The zoo had a free photo kiosk. We used it!

And more pictures!

Czech ice cream is unbelievably delicious, and generally not as expensive as American ice cream. Hooray!

This is a view of the Vltava River from the walls of Vysehrad, the ancient castle/fortress of Prague. Beautiful place. We happened to wander over there last week, and were astounded by it's beauty and massive fortress walls.

Dining with the Hare Krishna in Staré Město. So inexpensive, so delicious! We've had a lot of interesting foods here, and a number of them haven't been traditional Czech. Don't get me wrong -- Czech food is delicious, but we want to try everything while we're here! Actually, we even went to an Afgan restaurant in Nové Město the other day, and it was great.

We thought this sign was funny. I assume whoever designed it was unaware of the American euphemistic term "Sausage Fest."

This is the National Museum, located at the far end of Wenceslaw Square. We got to go there for free yesterday because it was Prague Museum Night, an annual event where all of the city's museums are open free of charge and there are special events going on until 01:00 am. It was really crowded and tiring, but absolutely fantastic! In addition to the National Museum, we also got to see the tower at Karlov Most (Charles Bridge) and the Museum of Music. The museums in Prague are amazing, and it was cool to see all of the different people who came out to Museum Night. It looked like the majority of people in the crowd were actually locals, which makes me thing Praguers are quite cultured indeed.

I surreptitiously took this photo while KC was photographing the National Museum. Note his adorably ridiculous facial expression, if you will.

We went hiking in Divoka Šarka yesterday, which is a great public park on the Northwestern edge of the city. 

Limestone cliffs overlooking a vast green valley.

And said green valley. So gorgeous.

I don't think blogger will let me put any more pictures in this post, so I will add more in a subsequent post. The past week has been fantastic, exciting, and exhausting. We've had a few difficulties with the language (yesterday KC and I somehow managed to get yelled at in Czech not once but twice, which was extremely awkward and embarrassing), but on the whole things are going quite well.

Also, if you are expecting a postcard from me, it might be significantly delayed or may not arrive at all. Turns out I was using incorrect postage for international mail - oh no! I'm trying to send out replacement postcards to everyone, but it may take a while so be patient.

Also also, a note on the blogs new tagline: in case you haven't already noticed, the tagline for this blog is now something like "live in hot fat and deleted the pelvis." This is Google's hilariously inaccurate translation of some all-Czech instructions on a package of palačinky mix KC and I attempted to cook. Palačinky is quite a difficult thing to make, and it's pretty safe to say we failed miserably.