Brighton Sassy at Sussex: Budapest day 2: Holy Hands! and a Terrorable history

Now,just a little disclaimer: at this point of our rip a certain member of the group was getting rather cheap. So we largely stopped doing things we had to pay for or didn't at least get discounts on. So there may be a lot of wandering around parks in the next few posts.

March 26th:
The first stop of the day was St. Stephen's Basilica. One interesting things about St. Stephen's basilica is tat its not a actually a basilica. Its built on a Greek cross plan rather than a basilica plan (traditional Gothic style rectangle with aisles on the side and a transept). But one time the Pope visited and declared "what a lovely basilica!" and as our tour guide said, who are we to contradict the Pope? Actually. I think basilica can be some type f title or rank that can be conferred by papal brief. The Church was built from 1851-1905, so this is a pretty recent one. The church was lovely and very very gold. But the highlight of St. Stephen's Basilica is the Chapel of the Holy Right Hand, which houses, you guessed it, a Holy Hand. I cannot actually attest to whether or not it is a right hand. This is the hand of St. Stephen, Hungary's first christian king and if you hang around long enough someone, who has more money to spend than you, may give the attendant a few coins and they will turn the light on in the relic-box so that you can see it. Doubtless, other European travelers (especially in Italy I hear) are familiar with this scheme. Holy Hands! that was cool.

prettiness

holy hand in a box!

Having seen the relic, we headed to Parliament. On our way we saw this memorial of shoes by the Danube. We found out later that day that it is a memorial honoring Jews who were shot into the river by the fascist Arrow Cross militia group in Budapest during World War II.

The Hungarian Parliament, built between 1884 and 1902 is based on the British Parliament. But bigger. Indeed, its Hungary's largest building. It really is fantastically Gothic and delightful. Unfortunately tickets were sold out and we would have had to come back by 8 the next morning to get tickets for the next day. But we still got to enjoys its awesomeness.

After this, we wandered around the parks of Budapest vaguely looking for some communist statues and just getting a feel for he city. Not only did we find a few communist tings we wandered into a park near the US embassy which was chock-full of little statues to various Americans and was strange to randomly find in Budapest.

communists near Parliament

On a bridge wit some man. not actually a communist statue

For lunch we walked to the Great Market Hall for some Hungarian food. We got there just as it was starting to close so we rushed around wildly looking for food. It all worked out tough. We had some kind of fried greasy dough with various toppings sprinkled on it, which our tour guide the day before had told us is what Hungarians commonly eat before going out to drink a lot. Wile we ate outside the market, we listen to some Native American sounding music group playing across the street. yeah, not quite what I had expected to ear in Budapest.

After lunch we went to the Budapest House of Terror. It sounds like an amusement park ride but is actually a museum with exhibits related to the fascist and communist regimes in Budapest. The house itself ad been used as the headquarters of both the fascist arrow cross movement and the communists and you can see the prison cells in the basement. Te exhibits themselves were very weird and trippy wit strange music and very abstract displays. Although the museum had a lot of historical information printed on handouts in each room, it wasn't always very concretely (or really at all) related to the way the rooms were set up. It was cool to learn some more recent history of Budapest though and it really made us appreciate tat we were in a post-communist country.

more communist statues!

Finally, it was starting to get later and it was our long anticipated bath time! We had planned for months on bringing swimwear to go to one of the bathhouses in Budapest (mixed gender so swimwear needed). We headed back to the hostel to change and went to the bats. On the way we went by Heroes' Square. This monument was built in 1896 to commemorate the 1000th anniversary of the arrival of Magyars. The bats were great and very relaxing. Wile it was cold getting out at night the water was perfect and warm. It was just what we needed after having been traveling. Unfortunately, I completely forgot to bring my camera.