In which we bound around Budapest. Part II.

Favorite photo of this adventure: see above.

Riding the subway in Budapest felt very much like riding the subway in Prague, in that you had to take epically long escalators into the belly of the earth for a chance at risking your life by hopping in and out of speedy, action-packed vehicles. This particular escalator (see below) was a curiosity indeed in that it was a.) wooden, and b.) really, really fast. Riding the yellowy line was especially entertaining due to its silly little chime (which someone captured here) and classic decor. Unlike the other subway lines, it careeningly wormed its way through the underworld only a few meters underneath the unsuspecting streets.

A few smashing heroes... and tourists. (But can you tell which is which?)

I particularly enjoyed walking down the big, open Andrássy street, admiring the trees against its elegant facades. Later I gave it a background check in my Two-Euro Clearance Guidebook and learned that people were hanged on its big beautiful steetlights during WWII. Needless to say, that shifted my perspective a little.

Drinks! Sweets! Souvenir! ...Gooseliver? ...And alcohol.

The rest of the Amis needed to depart on the fourth evening, but I had decided to stay on another day and tackle the city solo style. That adventure started with an evening stroll along the Danube, which had many sparkling treasures to unfold and behold.

Desperate much?

Who knew that Michelangelo's hand model was actually Franz Liszt?

A peek up the basillica. Holy in a Gaud-y kind of way.

In the last moments before turning my steps toward the airport, I finally found the man I had set out to find, much like many of the GOP nominee hopefuls: Ronald Reagan. (Here you go, JB.)

...And inadvertantly also discovered Ronald Reagan's Zombie Shadow, which so just happened to bear a striking resemblance to many of the GOP nominee hopefuls.

Budapest gave me a wholehearted tickling, much more so than I had anticipated. It definitely had an Eastern European flair that I had first tasted in Poland and the Czech Republic, but it surprised me with its simultaneous mega-cosmopolitan attributes. For example, most every single café window I sauntered by was advertising free WiFi, putting it way ahead of Germany on the interweb connectivity front. The public transportation was also much more advanced than I had expected. In fact, it was downright grand. Architecturally speaking, my eyes wanted to lick every wall and polish themselves on every overly-expressive statue. I didn't even make it into a single museum or performance space, which was certainly a bummer as there were so many exhibits and concerts that I would have liked to have seen. All the more reason to go back, I suppose.

I made it to the airport without difficulty and, after convincing the nice flight attendants to let me fly without my passport a second time (somehow managed to leave it in HH, oooops-- gotta love those Schengen buddies), I snagged an almost-front seat and proceeded to feast on miniature landscapes. (1. Near Budapest, and 2. Near Berlin.)

Fully satiated, I boarded the train in Berlin and let its zenny lull sing me back to home. Where it snowed a week later. Oh, well.

In which we bound around Budapest. Part I.

Thanks for your patience (and for your most encouraging impatience) in this visitor-heavy time. After delighting in many wonderful faces, long-known and not, in the past week, I am happy to be back in a quiet place, contentedly nibbling the ears off of a chocolate Easter bunny (sadly not 14lbs, but hey, it's Lindt)-- strictly in order to better empathize with the deaf cat upon which I am sitting while her owner is away. (I'll let you think about that for a while.) And now without further ado, the long-awaited Hungary post, part 1:

Once upon a time-- or as Google Übersetzer likes to say in Hungarian, "Egyszer régen"-- a bright posse of Amis hopped from one ginormous European B-city to a slightly less ginormous European B-city in a fit of sun-craving holiday hunger. Tickets were cheap. Excitement was high. The weather forecast was promising. Why not?

I was giddy to experience this city first-hand after having heard wonderful tales from friends, guidebooks, and a certain close relation with a semester abroad on these streets tucked firmly into a corner of his big, brassy heart.  Armed with empty SD cards and full batteries, we arrived in Budapest just before the close of currency exchange booths and as the sun started deepening its glow. We checked into our conveniently located & high-ceilinged hostel, magically turned our colorful monies into colorful monies with far more zeros, and set off into the laue nacht to fill out eyes and bellies.

My delight with the visual aspect of Budapest was pretty immediate, striking within the first few steps on the city surface after a long-enough stint in a careening subway car. Each building had its own elaborate architecture and decorative flair that held in its elegance through the sophisticatedly graying grime&grit painted on by city air. Five days later, my eyes still started palpitating with anticipation before rounding each street corner and my face hurt from 120-or-so hours of excited, wide-mouthed grinning. Here are some shots from our first full day of adventuring, in which we explored an elaborate-roofed marketplace, met up with an old friend of a new friend in a prisoner-exchange-type situation on a bridge in the middle of the Danube, took a jolly jaunt up to Buda Castle and its vicinity, and in which I had the pleasure of smearing on sunscreen/smelling like beach for the first time in over half a year.

Forsythia-strewn Parliament swank.

One of the more striking memorials in Budapest was this simple line of scarily-realistic shoes by the parliament building. It was erected to honor the Jews killed during WWII who were ordered to remove their footwear here before being shot into the river by (*edit) Nazis. Many of them had tiny candles in their soles.

It was Spring Festival time in the city, which meant there were lots of cute marketplaces selling arts and crafts, alcoholic beverages, and rooster testicle stew. I'm assuming one is to repeatedly visit the alcoholic beverage stand before venturing on to the Holy Shrine of the Stewed Rooster Testicle, but I could be wrong. On a related note, I didn't have as much trouble finding vegetarian eatings as I had expected (with the exception of vegetarian rooster testicles, damn), though I assume it's another story outside of Hungary's tourist-heavy capital. Of course, if all else had failed, I would have been perfectly content to eat cake for every meal-- beautiful, wonderful, scrumptious, cheap Hungarian cake is by far the best Hungarian cake in the world.

Our second full day involved venturing to the top of Gellért Hill, a high point on the hilly Buda side, topped with fresh flower blossoms, a charming, bullet-holed citadel, statues of liberty, and a delectable view.

I'd just like to mention how appropriately I believe the two sides of the city are named, at least on a highly scientific geographic level-- Buda is softly rounded with many hills, just like a chubby, cuddly Buddha, whereas Pest is flat, like pest-y mosquitos in my vicinity.

A highlight of the trip came that evening when a few of us ventured to a fancy schmancy touristy bath roundabout sunset. The water was warm, the sky was blue, the walls were yellow, and I had a random, very-very-very-small-world encounter in which I just happened to run into two college friends on my way to the pool. Totally unplanned. Totally unexpected. Totally awesome!

To be continued.