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Published: January 25th 2008
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Lenins Boots
Famous statue that is smaller than in its previous capacity Ok I am writing this diary entry a long time after the day with only prompts to guide me, so whilst it may sound a bit vague this is what we did.
The Communist monument park is mentioned in every guidebook and in every tourist information about the city. We had seen posters advertising organised tours there with various companies but being stingy buggers we decided it'd be much cheaper to make our own way there. The park is situated just on the outskirts of the city (just near the world's biggest Tesco) which meant that we actually had to pay for one of the buses because we had officially left the city. We caught the tram that goes all the way over the waterfront which was rather like being on a sightseeing bus with all the sights it went past. From there our instructions told us to walk around the corner to the bus station where we could catch a bus to the park. We walked around the corner and couldn't see a station or the stand number we wanted so we walked through a tunnel and continued looking. We tried many routes and couldn't find the right bus
number at all. Eventually we retraced our tracks and found the correct stand with a bus about to leave. We bought our tickets and hopped on.
We got there and back cheaply and paid student entrance fee and it still was an utter waste of money. We saw more communist monuments in the Crimea and at least they had explanations about the people and the point of the statue. The park had a collection of approximately 30 monuments but a lot of these were plaques (in Hungarian). The space the monuments were in was more like a backyard than a park and it was covered in mud. The most interesting thing about the place was the overpriced gift shop where they sold mugs with amusing slogans such as Oh My God I killed Lenin! To top it all off, it was utterly freezing and we spent longer waiting for the bus back than we did in the actual park.
Back in Budapest we had some time to kill before meeting Richard for the house of Hungarian wines, so we decided to call in at the park inbetween Buda and Pest. We began a brisk walk around the exterior
of the park and stumbled across a youth hostel situated there. It looked so grubby and run down that we appreciated our choice of hostel. There wasn't much on the park because of the time of year and it was slightly overgrown and under loved. On our return to the bridge, we did find a running track which was being used by a lot of people. It was obviously a public facility provided by the council that was massively appreciated by everyone. It even had a timer at the begining and ends so you could see how long it had taken to do a lap.
We still arrived at the wine tasting too early so we had a brisk walk to the Fishermans Bastion as we had been reliably informed that it is beautiful at night. It was lit up ever so nicely and even better than that was the view of Pest. The cathedral and the parliamentary buildings illuminated the riverbanks and the bridges were all lit up as well. It was too cold and windy to stay there long so we returned to the House of Hungarian Wines. We waited a while and Richard didn't show up
so we decided to go in anyway.
We asked for two tickets and the man who served us made us feel like we were already acting drunk and disorderly. He handed us a map of the wine cellar and a little packet of cheesey bites and gave us our glasses. The general gist of the place is that you pay your entry fee of approximately ten pounds and then you are free to try every wine in the cellar that is open for tasting. On most days they have about 50 wines open for you to try and there is no specification on how much you can drink. Well it is needless to say that we had a whale of time and attempted to try most of the wines on offer. Richard came and met us early on and the three of us made our way around the cellar. Obviously they didn't have all the best wines available to try so some of them were foul tasting and with prices lower than two pounds it is what we expected. Hungary really doesn't do nice white wines in my opinion. It is famous for a certain type but none of
the three of us liked it, it was way too sweet for our tastebuds. A little time into the tasting I happened to glance at the rules of the cellar and amusingly it was against the rules to be drunk or to act in a disorderly manner. Well whilst none of us were drunk at all (ahem) we definately got merrier the more we tasted. It was an immensely fun evening and I would definately recommend it to anyone who visits Budapest.
After we left I had a desperate need for food so somehow I managed to persuade both Rob and Richard that they fancied a vegetarian at the nice restaurant we had been to before. We all had main courses and then got into a conversation with the staff that worked there. We talked for ages and then had dessert, so it was quite late before we left and we were both ready to stumble into bed.
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