Kylin's European Grand Adventure: Day 19 - Budapest (pronounced budapesch)

Once again,we had a great travel guide who was really funny. Some of the sights we saw today were: the Budapest champs d élysées, hero square built for the millennium celebration in the late 1800's and the surrounding park, fine art and modern art museum, zoo, a park with small palace, a circus museum, and an amusement park. The zoo looked interesting with an India style palace housing he elephants. The zoo is the only zoo in the world where baby hippos are born. They say its because of the hot springs which reminds them of home. They ship baby hippos to zoos all over the world. The park and most of the city has Japanese acacia trees or pagoda trees. They have a yellow blossom which is falling like yellow snow and makes John's eyes water and a lot of other people sneeze. The heroes square has the Hungarian heroes as well as St Stephen who was their favorite king who has been canonized. If you see a man portrayed with an apostolic cross, it is St. Stephen. St. Stephen's Basilica has a statue of St. Stephen on the altar rather than Jesus Christ.

Next to the heroes square is an avenue where the red army marched. They installed statues of Lenin and Marx which were torn down at the end of the communist regime. In 2006 some artists created a monument to peace commemorating the end of the communist regime. There were iron beams placed a little apart and then closer together in the shape of a v. At the apex of the v, the material was stainless steel. The symbolism is that separate we can do little, but together we can do much!

We next went to the Buda side pot the castle hill. I found the area interesting. At the end of WWII the hand to hand combat was so great that the buildings were mostly leveled to the ground. They were able to reconstruct most of them in their original style from the rubble on the ground. In cases where the rubble/photos were not available, they built them in the current style of the 1950's --- Stalin grotesque! (guide's comments)

We visited Mattthias church next. I found this to be the most fascinating church to date for a few reasons. The windows and roof tiles were removed towards the end of WWII and stored so they were able to be reused when the church was restored after the war -- although the church chose to buy new ceramic tiles with their state restoration $ and sell the others as souvenirs. The walls are hand painted. After fresh stucco is applied, they dust the walls with soft bread and then paint them using many different stencils. It's absolutely incredible.

Hungary was called the happy barracks of the communist regime. Because they seemed to go with the flow, the churches were not closed. On Sundays people would ride out to the country wearing hats/sunglasses as disguises to attend church.

Tax rate is either 18% or 38% based on your income. You can donate 1% to your church if you want. The VAT is 27% on everything. Unemployment rate is 11% and unemployment compensation runs for only 3 months. At the end of unemployment, you must take a state project job if available which pays about half of the unemployment compensation.

In the afternoon we took an optional tour to the country to view a horse show. We rather enjoyed being out in the country away from the crowds and buildings. After the show, we rode in a large horse drawn carriages through the woods, toured a petting farm, etc. It was a nice break from the city routine.

Doesn't seem possible that we leave the ship tomorrow. Need to pack and get addresses of new friends.

Park along the Budapest Champs d elsyees

KGB headquarters

Heroes square

St Stephen with the apostolic cross

Palace on castle hill - Buda

On castle hill -- restored vs. stalin grotesque

Beautiful restored building front

Matthias church

Ceramic roof tiles

This is all hand painted

Stained glass stored during end of WWII

Matthias church (formerly called church of our lady)

Matthias church from second level (we couldn't find the exit because we stayed longer than the guide). Finally we followed some other somewhat lost people and climbed to the second level where there was a small museum showing some of the stencils used in restoring the church plus offering some wonderful views we would have missed by going out the door in which we entered)