When our exams ended on the the 13th, the first thing Charlotte, Anne, and I did was hit the market in town to have French fries with mayonnaise. It wasn't really our fault, we'd all staying up later studying, got up super early to bike to the other side of town for our three hour exams, and then had to bike home right past the fry place. Really, if you think about it, we didn't have a choice. Anne's from Belgium and she taught me that French fries are too. I'm not sure why we call them French, but that's just how it is. The whole mayonnaise thing still perplexes me though, because I don't really understand whose idea it was to lather greased up food in even more grease, but such is life. It seems to be a bit different type of mayonnaise though, but I'm still surprised that it's the condiment of choice across a lot of Europe, and especially in the Netherlands.
The whole reason for the stream-of-consciousness blabbering was to lead up to the next item on our agenda to celebrate the end of the semester: one last traveling destination for Charlotte and me.
We chose Budapest, Hungary because we wanted to explore more of Eastern Europe and I had been taking a Hungarian history class where they all kept telling me how I really needed to go check it out for myself. It also didn't hurt that the plane tickets were 20 euros round-trip. But, like with the Rome excursion, it was a really cool and beneficial experience to witness all of the things I had spent the previous five months learning about in the classroom.
Although Charlotte and I went by ourselves, we had plans to meet up with another friend from Blekerslaan and her friend from home when we got to the city, because it was in the middle of their longer traveling plans. We also, completely randomly, ran into two other people we know from Groningen in the metro station, so we spent some time with them too.
It was soooo hot in Budapest. It was about 100 degrees with an extremely high humidity level. Luckily, we were in a city famous for its baths. We went to the Széchenyi Thermal Baths in the city park. It is the most famous one and the largest medicinal bath in Europe. The baths were supplied by thermal water that are 160-170 degrees Fahrenheit but there were three different pools- a cold one, a hot one, and a medium one. There was also a whirlpool and various jets throughout the pools. There were quite a few people there, because it was so hot, but it was a really cool and beautiful place that was great to experience.
Here's some snapshots of the rest of the adventure...
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| Szabadsag Bridge at night, one of the bridges that connects Buda and Pest. |
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| Hungarian Parliament Building- the largest building in Hungary. |
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Vajdahunyad Castle in the city park
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| Dohány Street Synagogue. This is the largest functioning synagogue in Europe and the second largest in the world. |
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| Buda Castle |
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Near Buda Castle with the Parliament Building across the Danube River.
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| Central Market |
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| The Applied Arts Museum. Check out that roof! |
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| Szabadsag Bridge during the day. |
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| St. Stephen's Basilica |
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| This is the Liberty Statue on Gellért Hill that we climbed. It's a rather large hill to climb and it seemed like quite the hike after eating dinner. But it was well worth it as it provided an amazing view. Fortunately, we did the climb at night so it was only about 80 degrees out. It really seemed to be super hot day and night in that place. |
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| Matthias Church, next to Fisherman's Bastion. A handful of the buildings in the city had this same type of roof. |
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| Fisherman's Bastion |
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| View from Gellért Hill at night. |
The city had a lot of really pretty components but I don't think it was quite as beautiful as Prague. The major reason for this was that 80% of the city was damaged or destroyed in WWII, so a lot of the buildings, even if they look old, are fairly young or have been fixed after the 40's.
As sad as I was that this was our last trip, it was definitely a very good note to end on. The beautiful city, the beautiful weather, and a lot of fun people made for a wonderful time. It was also really cool to realize how much I've retained from my Hungarian history class and to see some of it firsthand. I kept seeing posters with the musician I did a paper and presentation about. I also saw a lot of movie posters with some of the famous actors from other Hungarian films my professor had me watch for class. I'm not sure how much Charlotte appreciated me rattling off the tidbits I remembered, but it definitely allowed me to look at the city differently than I would have before this semester.
