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Published: June 30th 2009
Terror Museum
The Terror HouseBudapest, Hungary is beautiful at night and it feels very much like Eastern Europe. Their local currency is the Hungarian Forinth and they tend to transfer money to the euro and then we translate it into dollars...which after all the math in your head, it was very expensive. The food was marginal at best so we relied on pizza for lunch and dinner. After 3 days of eating pizza we could not wait to board the plane to another city. We found out that the only people who eat out are the tourists and the locals never do so it was hard to get recommendations for better pizza when they all dont go out.
The city is separated into two parts: Buda and Pest and divided by the Danube River. The Buda side has the traditional cobble stone streets and from what we saw, lots of houses made in wood. The more lively side, Pest is newer buildings (within the last 100 years). When we were there, they were having lots of flooding up and down the river. When I took the pictures, the river actually had not hit it's highest point.
The city is known for their thermal
baths and we had a great time sitting in the 98 degree farenheit pools in the afternoon. Supposedly the pools are to have some healing effects and after sitting in a warm pool for a little while you might feel like they do. We saw quite a few sites of people that probably should not have been wearing a bathing suit. The European men tend to wear speedos and it was very funny seeing them!
We visited the Seycheney baths and they had three large outdoor pools of different temperatures. The "coolest" started at 90 degrees and the warmest started at 98 degrees. In each of the pools there are fountains with high pressure spouting out and numerous people were standing in front of them only for a few minutes getting a high pressure massage. Also inside the yellow buildings, there were probably another 20+ indoor baths of different chemical content and temperature. We dipped into a few and it was great, but after a few minutes the water was the same temperature as your internal body temperature.
Some of the locals would be selling their fruits and vegtables from their yards to the public. It was an
Terror Museum #3
This picture does not capture the wall very well. It is a wall of pictures of victims from the years of the regimes... odd site seeing an old woman standing by the train stations selling a hand full of currants. The currants were in the size of a cup but on a plate and the women were everywhere. It is hard to believe that families are selling things from their yards to make money. I guess it is the way after 40 plus years of communism. We also went to a "farmer's market" and so much for that. It was more like tables in a park with people selling fruits and vegtables out of their yards. Their yards were probably pretty small since most of the tables had like 2 carrots and a handful of radishes they were selling.
One of the really interesting things we did in Budapest was visit the Terror museum. The Terror museum was the headquarters of the Secret police of the Nazis and Communist regimn for over 50 years. While visiting the museum, you were unable to take pictures except the ones I have posted here. There were 2 floors of rooms and the basement where the torture really happened - so disturbing visiting it after a 3 minute video from a guard that was forced into
Budapest at Night
The Chain Bridge & Buda Castle looking over the Danube River the job. Each room was different and very moving. One room was a maze of rubber like bricks from floor to ceiling of victims names, another was a massive room with the carpet being a map of the Europe, another one of the secret police cars used during the period (all the interior was red velvet and it was solid steel, bullet proof), and this massive room that was dug out in the center to reveal a white marble cross laid on rail road tracks that was coming out of the ground. The museum was SO moving especially the outside with the detail of the words terror to shine down throughout the building.
Overall, Budapest was an interesting city and beautiful at night. Until next time...
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