Budapest - arrival and first day

After all the excitement and buzz of Vienna (yes - it is still up there with the to do again list!) we travelled down the delightful Danube until we hit Budapest. (Hungary for you plebians!) First sight in the sunshine was - oh so much bigger that I thought! (nearly 2 million people) and then you get to pick out these buidlings with the wow! factor and the buzz kicks in again. we went on a city tour with the boat (it stayed docked overnight right by the main Chain Bridge between the Buda and Pest sides) just to mention a few main sights on the quick tour

this is the House of Parliament! (gothic style!) puts our Beehive to shame! was damaged in WW2 but put it back together - sits at Danubes water edge) and the castle on of the hill on opp bank (Buda side)

this is the Castle on the Buda side and the Chain Bridge which links the two sides. there are 4 bridges and the nasty Germans blew then up on the day the Russians took over the town to stop them coming over! rebuilt of course here are some random photos of the city. Old buidlings and statues (lots of Atilla the Hun - do you know that the Hun in Hungary comes from this nasty piece of goods when he was in charge of this city many moons ago - thought I saw some suspiciously scary types that must've been his ancestors!) the sad part about this place was that Hungary allied with Germany during the war (I didnt know that!) so when the Russians ran them out the russians werent very nice to the locals or their buildings. so after the war they became Eastern Bloc country (think cold war) with nasty Stalinist ideas and brutality. (I felt for the poor Jews, one minute they had to cope with German lets kill you all policies, then oh what a relief! along comes the Russians who under Stalin had just as bad 'lets get rid of the Jews out of our country' ideas.) Anyway it was still a communist country until 1990's and you can tell from the upkeep of the buildings and infrastructure (very little done under communist rule). slowly they are restoring their heritage sites, and hopefully will move onto the others (go off the main roads around the main city area and you see damaged decaying brick work etc) even the white lines and pedestrian crossings on the roads are worn off! our guide told us they were a very poor country now (even tho they joined the European Union 2007 I think) with average wage about 20,000 NZ a year. the prices however are comparable to ours (whats our average wage in NZ people?) so the locals are struggling. You can see the rich areas (lovely old houses on the elite part of Buda hills) and the run down eastern bloc type apartments built in 1960's with nothing done to them since (rusty windows etc) anyway here are some photos of the city - pick out the building with bullet holes in it left over from the hungarian uprising in 1956/7? which the Russians quelled rather brutality.