Buda and Pest

In 1896, Hungary's 1000th birthday prompted the construction of most of its major sights. Pretty much everything that I talk about was built in 1896.
Budapest was much more like what I thought Eastern Europe would feel like. It was gray even when it was sunny, and everything seems worn.
We met Sara (Joe's friend from high school) at our hostel (very nice, we sleep up in a tree house loft thing) and she toured us around very well. She's teaching English in a nearby town so she speaks a little Hungarian which was helpful. We stolled along the major streets in Pest (BUdapest is divided in half by the Danube River), crossed a bridge, and climbed the many steps to the hill town of Buda. There we walked around the Castle Disctict (not very castley nor impressive) and admired the great views of Parliment in Pest. We also ate ice cream. Back in Pest, we walked past Parliment and the Opera House (the story goes that back when Austria and Hungary were ruled by the same guy, he gave permission for Budapest to built an opera house like the one in Vienna on the comdition that it was smaller than the one in Vienna. After it was built, he was reported to have said that he wished he had said that it had to be less beautiful than the one in Vienna because the new one in Budapest was so lovely.) We ate dinner at Sara's favorite drink place which Joe loved and descirbed as "dank." After dinner we met up with some of Sara's friend who took us on a tour of Budapest's back alleys that led us to two very Eastern feeling bars. Both were outdoors, had strange blue and red lanterns , and were visable only to those who knew where they were (unmarked doors). Sara bought us shots of some traditional alochol made from fermented peaches that she desribed as Hungarian moonshine.
Today we took it easy and walked up to City Park. There's a castle there called Vajdahunyad Castle that's a very strange mix of Baroque, Romanesque, and Gothic architecture. The park also has the Szechenyi baths which we thought might be cool, but after peaking in, decided that they were like swimming pools and not worth our money. We walked along a street lined with embassys until we came to the Great Synagogue which is the biggest in Europe, second in the world to one in NY. We ended the day by going to see the Romeo and Juliet ballet at the Opera House for $2. Our seats were so cheap that they made us enter from a seperate door that we had to exit the theater and walk to the rear to get to. We had terrible seats but the inside of the theter was pretty.
Tomorrow is Vienna and thank goodness we're back on the Euro! All of these money changes are so weird. Today I paid 150things for a bottle of water. SOunds like a lot, but it was about $0.50.