When we did finally venture out to the city, we were pleasantly surprised to see Budapest is a modern, clean, and culturally-rich city with some crazy history. Not sure what we were anticipating, an old Communist country perhaps, but it exceeded our expectations by far. And this is what traveling is all about - to correct any misconceptions one has about a particular country, city, whatever.
Albert had printed out a great walking tour of the city for us, so away we went on our first full day in the city.
We never made it inside since the tours weren't until later in the day, but check out the website if you want to see more. It's pretty impressive.
Budapest is an interesting city...Albert told us the there is a ton of development going on right now. Foreign investors have been coming in an buying up old, delapidated buildings, basically gutting them and putting in 5 star hotels or fancy stores. Directly across from the Opera House we saw this:
This is just one example of many we saw around the city. Budapest is already one of the "it" places to see in Eastern Europe, but we predict it's popularity will grow ten-fold over the next few years.
St. Stephen's Basilica, Hungary's largest church, was next on the list; not technically a basilica as the Pope must give it the honor, it was given the name because of it's sheer size. It was named after (obviously) Stephen, the first king of Hungary.
A little creepy, but King Stephen's fist is mummified and has been placed in a glass case available for viewing inside the basilica. No pictures were allowed, so this one has borrowed from the web. The picture makes it look much larger than it actually is in real life.
We walked down to Freedom Square, a park with a playground area and some grass. Most notably, however, the square is home to the last Soviet monument in the city, a reminder of the Soviet's "liberation" of Hungary after WWII. The star at the top used to be red but has now been painted gold. This still angers the Hungarians as they believe it should be removed since that era is not a time most would like to remember.
We walked down to the Danube River to see the shoe monument, a memorial for the Jewish who were killed by the Arrow Cross Militiamen during WWII. The victims were forced to remove their shoes before being shot and falling into the freezing river. Fun times.:/
And that was enough serious stuff for us for the day...we spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the city before taking on another history-filled day.
The next morning, we finished the 2nd half of the walking tour, checking out the Great Market Hall and the Jewish Synagogue (2nd largest synagogue in the world) amongst a few other things.
An interesting thing happened at lunch, however. Albert gave a few suggestions and we decided on Abszint, a semi-fancy cafe located on the main street with a nice patio. We were enjoying our lunch when we noticed a homeless man had picked up a drinking glass at a table next to us and drank whatever liquid was left. Mind you, two ladies were still at the table enjoying their meals. The waiter ran out of the restaurant and proceeded to slap and kick the man. We decided it probably wasn't wise to ask the waiter about the mushrooms missing from Steven's meal.
We left the House of Terror as our last main "attraction" to see. It might have been best to see it first to really understand the unjustice and hardship the city and it's people have experienced, but it's a pretty tough subject to digest. Many, many, bad things happened in this building - more information than we could ever write about so click on the link if you'd like more info.
This is the outside of the building since we couldn't take pictures of the inside (not that we would have). When the sun hits at just the right point, the word "terror" is projected on the side. Pretty eerie.
On a lighter note, Albert sent us on our way to Vienna after an amazing breakfast of chocolate French Toast - what an increcible host! Many thanks, Albert;) And this was after we had an omelette and chocolate chip pancakes the previous days...oye.
3 comments:
i am such a poophead, because the first thought that popped into my head was:
"i wonder if the kapital inn was klassy."
and then i read that it was uber-fabulous, and all was right in the world again.
:)
I didn't know about the shoe monument. So sad. So real. I'm glad you ended with a lighter note and picture of food that is making my stomach growl.
talk about some heavy topics. :/
sounds like a really interesting city though.
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