Week 5

Last weekend I spent in Budapest with my cousin Marcus. But before I go into Hungary, I will deviate for a short while to comment on my weekend with Marcus and Wan two weekends ago (ie prior to Brugge, Belgium).

For the first time I was able to explore Birmingham city – and what better company that two tourists as well!

I have picked up some colloquial language which I may use in this email:

Brum = Birmingham

More colloquisms that are difficult to get used to:

Hiya = common salutation

You right (?) – in a whiney tone = Common salutation, means hello.

After a photo shoot in front of my office, followed by one 5 metres later at Victoria square, then 50 metres in Chamerberlain square…. Just kidding. Well almost. I am rather impressed with the number of photos Marcus takes and the subjects.

As they were staying on Broad Street (the main restaurant/bar/dining area) in central Brum we wandered around Brindley Place – a commercial and dining complex by the canal. Modern and quaint.

Trivia: the length of the canals in Brum is longer than those of Venice itself.

We visited St Philips Cathedral – England’s smallest! It is very close to work and a common thoroughfare. In fact I had passed it many times but had not the opportunity to go in. Quite lovely.

We enjoyed a brief stroll down New Street (Brum’s High street aka main mall/shopping area) through the drizzingly rain towards The Bull Ring. We took in the sights of Victoria Square and Town Hall. It is quite charming and right next to work. I do enjoy walking through the area.

The Bull Ring is the major shopping mall in the city. It’s only about 1 1/2 years old and quite modern for England, especially Selfridge’s. We wandered around a bit. The Selfridge (major department store, like David Jones) there has a reknown architectural outside. I did not know it was reknown until Marcus quite excitedly told me about it. I had thought it to be a queer bit of architecture though.

Then we had a photo shoot back at my place before we headed back out for dinner at The Mailbox (a boutique complex of shopping and dining) which is located by the canal that leads to Brindley Place. We enjoyed good decent priced Indian in a very contemporary funky restaurant.
We tried out the clubs on Broad Street but found little luck in anything exciting or indeed open past 1am. Which is probably fortunate.

The next day after a rush for the train we arrived in Stratford Upon Avon to discover Shakespeare in his home town.

Much to our disappointment all the replica houses and exhibits plainly stated that the only facts about Shakespeare that is documented is that he was born, married and died. Everything else about his life is conjecture. There is even controversy as to whether he even wrote the grand plays and sonnets authored by him!

Stratford was a lovely quaint town with plenty of 16-17th century typical buildings and I learnt a fair bit about life in those times (or at least what the tourism board will have you believe). J
Alas the weekend ended too quickly and Marcus and Wan were off on a bus back to London.
I went home and proceeded to tell my housemates and visiting friends what a load of bollocks Shakespeare & Stratford is when they enquired as to my visit. As you can imagine I was greeted with a lot of disbelief and comments that I was speaking nonsense.

Budapest

Budapest is cheap, beautiful and interesting place to visit.

Marcus (my cousin) and I became tickless tourists for the weekend. Being armed with many maps, photocopies of lonely planet and print outs from the Hungarian tourist website, we hit the tourist sites.

Starting with the Opera House which was quite a magnificent structure inside and out. Paris Opera (Garnier) has always been my favourite, but what I could see of Budapest’s was quite impressive. As well as their modern flat screen monitor in the foyer where we could purchase tickets for that evening’s performance for 500 Forint = £2 = AUD $5. Very cheap in otherwords. The Opera was Lady Macbeth (…) so was something unusual. But we didn’t.
We then went to see the other Opera House which was more modern and very strange architecture. There were a great deal of very old buildings and very modern buildings intertwined with each other.

Well you may recall that last week I saw the alledged holy blood of Christ. This week I saw the hold right hand of St Stephen – first King of Budapest (c 1000AD) in none other that St Stephen’s Basilica. An amazing massive basilica constructed in the late 1800 completed early 1900s. It really gives the Vatican a run for it’s money in it opulent marble, gold and domed interior. And of course the eloquently decorated and secured right hand of St Stephen. It is apparently quite revered by the Hungarians.

We then ventured to the next amazingly large structure – Parliament. It is truly an impressive gothic styled building with steeples everywhere possible. Incredible.

After looking at a map for a few minutes and trying to figure out how to get to Buda (we were in Peste on the west side of the Danube River) I looked up and noticed we were directly across the road from the metro station we were so conscientiously looking for on the map. :)

We were well on the way to completing the lonely planet guide for a day tour in Budapest. Our next stop was Buda where Matthias Church (Gothic), the panoramic Fisherman’s Bastion and of course the Royal Palace/Buda Castle lay. The views were spectacular and the set up reminded me much of Edinburgh and the Royal Mile situated across from the city.

We also ventured into the Buda Labrinth. An elaborate underground labrinth that has been constructed from the remains of the tunnels and underground passages once used for the Castle as well as military operations in recent times. For theatrics they had eerie music playing which did nothing to abate my natural fear of dark spooky areas, which Marcus fortunately missed out on the opportunity to play on but indeed wanted to do so to me and perfect strangers!

Next we took a tram intending to get across to Capital Hill where a massive statue stood representing freedom. However, we had an interesting incident along the way.

Having arrived at the airport the night before I bought myself a tourist card entitling me to unlimited travel for 48 hours and allegedly many discounts and free entry into 60 museums. I would not recommend getting it as it was not worth the money, but was convenient for travel. However I was not explicitly told and did not sign and date the card as was required to be validated. Having caught a few trams and trains/metros and buses already, there did not appear to be anyone or machines checking the cards or a means to validate them for each trip.

Marcus had read up on the hefy fines imposed for not having a valid ticket, ironically he had mentioned it to me already You can guess where this is going.

So while minding our own business on the tram, two stops away from our destination a rather large/bulky young man in a tracksuit approached Marcus and muttered something. Which we both assumed meant drugs and we weren’t interested.

So then he said in English ‘tickets please’. Hurriedly we both produced our tourist cards. While he was inspecting Marcus’ card, I noticed he was wearing a velcro arm band with an ID badge. Possibly fake and I was highly suspecting that he was fake and going to try and mug us. He then turned to my card and quite clearly was indicating that mine was not valid and needed to be signed and dated. Marcus being the diplomat tried to reason with him and asked for a pen to fill in the details however he declined and said we had to hop off at the next stop.

At the next stop he was still holding my card and as we hopped off he waved over another large man in plain clothes and said something in Hungarian. At this point I really thought we were about to be mugged. I tried to get my card off him and leave quickly but he started flashing a wad of presumably fines with 6000 odd Forint at the top being the hefty fine. I still thought it could be replicas and he had taken off his velcro arm band.

Now 3 large men were ambling towards us. I panicked, tore the card from his hand said to Marcus that we were going. Marcus was bewildered, I got 3 paces away and the young large men stopped me I turned and was now backed against the railing by 4 large hungarian men, one waving some sort of ID authority card and my cousin.

I must have looked panic stricken and was thinking how to escape and which man to injure in the groin first. J One of the guys that came over was trying to be nice and speak english to me. I was not responding well and he just repeatedly said, ‘no date no good’ pointing at the card. So he finally dated the card and let us walk. Much to my relief, we walked away without having to pay a £25 fine (AUD $75). I didn’t even have that much cash on me.

So Marcus & I had a good chuckle about it afterwards, but it was a scary experience at the time. Very funny now. I think I live a charmed life.

We made it to Capital hill, saw even more breathtaking views of Budapest and the Danube river. Visited a war exhibit. Budapest held one of the longest and bloodiest sieges during WWII. The documentation in the exhibit was quite sobering and depressing. So I’ll not talk much of it. But the recovery the city has made in 50 years I think is amazing.

We dined and had traditional food at lunch and dinner. Paying only £6 or $15 for a meal and drink at decent restaurants. Dinner we even had dessert too.

On Sunday we comfortably enjoyed a promenade down Andrassy avenue to Heroes Square. Wandered the small castle there and saw the outside of the Spa/Baths there too. All quite lovely. We didn’t go to any spas although Budapest is reknown for them and medicinal thermal baths at that too. We also rode on Europe’s oldest metro line which had disney like tunes when annoucing the stations. There wasn’t much open so we were just enjoying Peste and a bit of Buda. Quite an enjoyable weekend. We lunched at a very funky restaurant that was again very cheap.

So Budapest was very interesting and pleasant to visit.

Last and this week I have been working about 10 miles outside Oxford and have been able to enjoy 2 hour commutes (each way) through the Cotswald hills. It is a very picturesque drive that I quite enjoy, except that the days are very long due to the commute.

This weekend I’m off to Gothenburg, Sweden for a Salsa weekend. I have finally been dancing this week in Brum. Met some lovely people and enjoying getting back into dancing after over a months break.

Glad to hear all your news. To all the families expecting babies in the next month – I hope that it all goes well – I’m sorry I haven’t written a personalised message yet.
Thanks again for reading (if you made it this far).

Oh the weather is still cool but manageable – I’m quite used to it! Budapest wasn’t as cold as expected but still ice and snow around the place. Not much in England.