Budapest: A Pictorial

Posted by beth on October 20, 2009

FYI, if you ever go to Budapest, I just have a few recommendations for you:

1. Make sure you have someone with you who speaks Hungarian.
2. Give yourself at least four days, preferably a week.
3. Get a good guidebook, and see everything.
4. Ask lots of questions
5. Whatever happens, just go with it (this is my rule for any and all travel situations).

So I went to Budapest last week to visit my friend/former student, Erzsebet (the Hungarian equivalent of Elizabeth). She also goes by Beth. She’d been in Hungary and Romania for about two months, and she was just in Budapest for about a week, getting ready to go back to NC (today). So all her errands were pretty much done, and she had all the time in the world to show me around. Her nephew, Gabor, who lives in Budapest, also joined us for much of the time. Here we are, Beth and Beth, with the city behind us.

We went…everywhere, so I’m not going to post all the pictures (they are on facebook if you’re interested). I’m just going to give you a few along with a couple of stories.

The day I got there, we went to the Museum of Applied Arts, which is kind of just a museum of design, but all kinds of design. It’s attached to the School of Applied Arts, and the main exhibit they had while we were there was the best designs to come out of the school last year. I guess every year there’s an awards ceremony because one wall was devoted to poster ads for that (this year was the 30th). LaurenJosh, you would have LOVED it.

And then the rest of that exhibit was the best of the best designs. They had everything from a line of maternity clothing to a ten-pound kayak that I REALLY wanted. It was awesome. It was basically made of really sturdy foam sort of half-encased in plastic. It was half-encased to support the break in the foam where, if you removed the plastic, you could fold the whole thing in half for easy storage. Like I said, awesome. And it was open on top, which I normally don’t like because there’s no back support, but this one had a little seat back that you could hook in like something you’d take camping or perhaps to a football game. You could also unhook it and lie back for a bit of sunbathing if you wanted.

There was also a tee-tiny little airplane that TOTALLY reminded me of James Bond’s helicopter, Little Nellie, in You Only Live Twice. I didn’t get to look inside, but I imagine there were homemade labels in there for all the controls.

Anyhoe, the building is this really elaborate thing (that I don’t have a picture of, sorry) on the outside, and the inside looks like it’s made of sugar. Like it was modeled after a wedding cake. And I wanted to know what the building was before it was the museum, so we asked one of the guards, who not only answered the question (it was built specifically to be that exact museum/school over 100 years ago), but took us on our own little private tour of another exhibit upstairs.

A very similar thing happened at St. Stephen’s Basilica, where I wanted to know how old the building was because it just amazes me that such incredible things were constructed without the aid of modern machinery such as you see me using in my fancy dress there. Well, we asked the guard at the church, and he took us down a secret elevator to the downstairs part of the church where only VIPs get to go.

Mary here was down there along with a dude named Leopold, who gave the money for the foundation of the church to be laid. And there was a famous soccer player (famous in Hungary anyway) mummified and buried down there. It was very cool.

Other than that, we didn’t get any special tours, but we did see a crapload of stuff. Here are some pictures:

Here we have the rose window in Matthias Church.

View of the Parliament from atop Castle Hill.

Me and Budapest. A love affair to remember. Ok, so the morning I left, I thought, Hmm, maybe I should take a jacket. This is one of the many dangers of not having the internet. I couldn’t check the weather, and while it has been in the 70s here in Naples, it was definitely in the 30s the whole time I was in Budapest. Jacket schmacket, I needed a COAT. I stole this one from Gabor’s (Erzsebet’s nephew) roommate. It was a tad manly, but it was better than freezing in the JACKET I’d so geniusly brought along.

The fattest bird on earth.

A church built inside a natural cave.

I think that’s enough for now. The next time I can get online, I’ll tell you all about Pàpa and our last-minute trip to Vienna. You can go ahead and look at the pictures on facebook, though, if you’re my friend. And again, if you’re not my friend, you are seriously missing out, but you can become a fan of Onward Hoe! if you want.

Have a great day, USA! I’m going to have some lunch and watch three episodes of The Office!!