This was a very busy day. We got up and headed for the train station to board the two and a half hour train to Budapest. We got there at about 1 pm after a beautiful ride through the countryside. We dropped our bags off at the hotel and then headed to lunch, where I had a spätzle goulash dish that was excellent. We then walked around Budapest, which is an amazing city. It is very unique, just like Vienna and Berlin are. It resembles Vienna but it is different though. It’s hard to explain. We went to the top of a hill near the Danube and saw the entire city next to the river, and it was absolutely gorgeous. There were so many colors and so many varieties of buildings. It was the picturesque European town. Then, we walked by a building that still had war damage from the shelling as a reminder of what happened in those years. While walking to our next destination, we saw a 30 to 40 year old Trabant, which is an east German car built in the communist period. You can google Trabant and see them. They are very distinctive and quaint. Our next stop was the cathedral. I can’t remember what it is called and I can’t look it up because the internet is down, but it looks nearly identical to Stephansdom in Vienna except smaller. In the Austria-Hungary empire, everything in Vienna had to be the most grand and everything else had to be second. Budapest is somewhat like a miniature Vienna in several ways. At the cathedral, we were able to look off an even higher hill at the city and river, which was again amazing. We rode a 1970’s trolley back down the mountain to the river and saw a wonderful Holocaust memorial. Near the end of 1944, many Jews were shot on the edge of the Danube in front of the Parliament building. The memorial was a row of metal shoes near the edge of the walkway right in front of the river. It was very moving. We then went to dinner and I had a noodle dish that was very good, as well as goulash soup. I love the food here!

Hungary is very different that the other countries we visited. First, the language is very very different. It is an Asiatic language and has many accents on letters. Also, the pronunciation is very difficult, so I have had to get used to that as well. Finally, this has been the only place that has not used Euros. Euros are close to dollars, so not much thinking is required when buying things. Here, they use Forints, and it is 220 Forints to the Dollar at the moment. Every purchase is a very large number. For example, a bottle of soda might be 350 Forints, and a lunch can be 1500 Forints. It is very strange!