Boring You With Budapest, Pt 2

I need to get on this - I'm starting to forget what some of this stuff was!

Budapest Castle (Or Is It Castle Budapest?) and the Chain Bridge

I should mention that Budapest is really two cities. Pest (pronounced "pesht" by the locals) is on the Eastern(?) side of the Danube, which is where the plains (or is it steppes? I don't know) start. So it's flat, and seems to be where the commerce, housing, squalor, etc. is. That's where we spent most of our time - and there's lots of modern shopping and public art and stuff like that in Pest. However, Buda's on the other side of the river, is hilly, has nicer architecture, and cooler "touristy" things to do (that is, unless you consider shopping as the be-all-end-all of a vacation, in which case, stay in Pest). We didn't really know this until late into our stay. The Chain Bridge is a neat looking bridge that a lot of people use to get from one side to the other.

This is looking from the Eastern side of the Chain Bridge (I really liked the kick ass lions...the gypsy beggars that were literally underfoot - as in I had to step over the woman - not so much).

This was at the base of the funicular - which as it turns out is NOT a slang term for a girl's naughty parts - that you could ride up to the castle. We opted for the stairs.

This peasant woman selling her embroidery was probably the most authentic thing we saw during the entire stay. And I have no doubt that she took breaks to run back the the beemer and check her text messages in between hawking quilts.

Is this an eagle? A vulture? What does it mean? Do I want a replica in my bedroom? Yes.

This is a giant fountain that depicts many scenes of hunting and manliness. Kick ass.

This was the second monk, of a second variety, that we spotted.

The chain bridge, at night, from some ritzy hotel where we attended a gala that had little food and too much drink. Not that I'm complaining, but you should see the other pictures I tried to take that night!

Heroes' Square

Heroes' Square is a great big monument in the middle of Pest that has bronze statues of...heroes. I really can't explain much more than that as there weren't any plaques around - even in Magyar - that explained any of it. Just statues of a lot of guys - all of whom were the proud bearers of fantastic mustaches - that I'm guessing you probably wouldn't want to piss off if you were to travel back in time and meet. They all looked pretty hard core. Here's pictures of a few of them.

Why no, sir, I do not wish to engage in fisticuffs with you or your horse. That is a mighty fine looking mustache, however. Might I touch it?

Here's the first monk, of the first variety that we spotted. Wily wife jumped out into foot traffic so I could pretend like I was taking a picture of her as he approached, but I think he was wise to our scheme, as he scowled after I took this.

Here's the whole of Heroe's Square. Wish I knew what it all meant.

These two guys are definitely hard core. Pay close attention to the guy on the right...

...It's one thing to make yourself badass, but if you're so badass that you need to make your horse harder by STRAPPING ANTLERS TO ITS DAMN FACE then my hat is off to you, sir.

I was going to save this one for my final, hopefully funny, entry about Budapest, but I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to throw in this statue of our guy here, proudly dsiplaying his baby-dick.

Bryan, tell me what's going on here...

...Because I thought it was a battle or something (there's probably a dozen or so of these reliefs) but after I saw this one, I'm not so sure...

The Citadel

The Citadella was also on the Buda side of the Danube. I think that, aside from the castle, it was the only other thing we visited on that side of the river. It's way up on top of a hill, so you get a nice view of the whole city, you can see the Danube and all of the bridges (by the way, whoever wrote "Blue Danube" is full of shit - that thing was brown and nasty looking), there's sort of a cool authentic curio shop dealing with used artifacts from the soviet era, and there are some more unexplained statues. Also, tour buses like to drop people off up here and then take three to four hours to return and pick them up.

Here's the Danube, Chain Bridge, etc. taken from up top.

Probably my favorite statue that I saw. I have no idea who it is, what it means (I'm guessing it's a holdover from the soviet occupation) but I do know that it's A GIANT NAKED GUY COMING CORRECT ON A DRAGON!

Some dapper looking man molested my wife while we awaited the return of the bus.

But she can take care of herself.

TV In Budapest

I just had to share this. Since Budapest is so close to Austria, many of the TV channels are German programming. What does this mean? We watched lots of German MTV (more on this in a minute), and late night programming - which was when we were in the hotel the most - was the most insane thing I've ever seen. There was a show on one channel that lasted hours that consisted of nothing but a puppet pound cake, front and center, nattering on and on. There was another channel that had a game show that had a woman (and sometimes a man) that would take phone calls...and get progressively more and more naked. And not in an Ooh-La-La striptease kind of way, more like "thanks for the bid, and now I happen to be topless" kind of way. And there was hard core porn on basic cable.

But my favorite was when MTV Germany let this guy take over the airways:

Check out "Augen Auf" if you want the highlight reel to continue - It may even be a better showing than this video.

At first it seemed kind of cool - some dude from Berlin in a metal skull mask rapping about his block. Until he takes the mask off and it's some skeevy looking man-child underneath. He don't look like he could kick my grandma's ass...

The Answer To Bryan's Question

Yes, I did find myself to be more...hungry whilst in Hungary. That's because when we could find food, it was usually in small portions (and I'm no fan of overly large, American restaurant portions) and it usually sucked. Although we did get fed a huge, strange breakfast every morning by the hotel. I got to start the day with pâté.

The Best Beer Commercial Ever. Word.

I remember trying to make these noises all the time as a little squirt.

Also, this had me laughing pretty hard. I bet there were some pretty stoked 12 year olds.

Someday, when I'm not busy with my head in excel spreadsheets, I'll get back to the boring you with Budapest bullsh*t.

-B-

Boring You With Budapest, Pt.1

I could only upload some of the pictures I took whilst amongst the Magyar, so until I get a chance to remember the name and password for another of my flickr accounts, this is what you get. Because everyone enjoys sitting back and perusing someone else's vacation¹ photo's, right?

Forgive any bluriness - I was attempting to take some pictures while moving, and some in dimly lit or really bright areas and so I dicked around with the shutter speed quite a bit. Some pictures, now that I'm looking at them full size, suffered for it.

The Journey Begins?
We flew out of Montreal on Lufthansa. A few words about Lufthansa. They dicked us on our seats. I reserved certain seats and they changed them, with nary an e-mail to let us know, so that we weren't even sitting near each other and the flight was full by then so no hope of squeaking around at all. The food was good (for airline food, anyway, I 'd still be embarrassed to serve it to house guests), and the alcohol was...definitely over-served. Not that I'm complaining. But...before we reached cruising altitude they served us a cocktail. Then they came by with pre-dinner beer and wine (the house beer was Warsteiner, too!). Then, wine with dinner. Then after-dinner wine. Then an after-dinner, after-wine aperitif of brandy or Bailey's (they didn't serve the Bailey's in a shoe, though). After which I think they were still handing out free booze, but even though we had plenty of flight left, I had to lay off. No one wants a wine headache at 3,500 feet!

St Joseph's Stephen's Basilica
What is St. Joseph's Stephen's Basilica? It's a giant church. Outside, as I'd guess is the case at many cathedrals world wide, there are people with official looking badges - for the sake of argument, we'll say they're official - wandering around asking for donations to feed the orphans. Well, gee, church, don't you think that you could worship in some kind of plain looking wooden structure and use all the money that would normally go towards art and gold and marble and glass and stuff to feed the sick and look after the poor? No? Well, okay then.

The outside. It was one of those landmark's that's large enough that you can use it to navigate around by checking out which side of it your facing. Really helpful if you're standing right next to it.

Here we see the first meeting of the Royal Order of the Water Buffalo depicted above the basilica's entrance.

This is the front door. These dudes really love Jesus, but they are very stern about it.

This was an inside arch - I may have taken pictures of others, somewhere.

This was the main dome. Hopefully my artists eye gives some scale to it's awesome majesty. It was breathtaking. It was grand. I really just couldn't wait for a group of Japanese tourists to move along so I could see the rest of the place!

The pic in the cap was kind of cool. I think that this is supposed to be Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top.

The first altar boy.

This looked like it was tempra (it has that glossy, eggy look) and I liked the form of the art. Too bad I took such a bad picture! And that's tempra, not tempura, which is also eggy.

Stained glass fo' yo' ass!

Look at this guy - he's getting ready to rock that microphone!

I wanted to get pictures of all the windows, but instead we had to get the eff away from some pushy, loud, obnoxious Italian tourists who then scowled at us when we didn't do the "dip the fingers in holy water, then it's spectacles-testicles-wallet-watch" bit as we left. It's not like I've EVER been Catholic, gang, I just wanted to look at the ridiculously gaudy art!

Castle Dracula
No, really. But not really. But really - this thing was a replica of the real Castle Dracula. Really. The great thing about it was that there were little old lady vendors that you could buy a giant can of beer from and then walk around with an open container (and what was great about that was that it was like 90° F outside!). And the beer was Lowenbräu, which I haven't seen in quite some time.

I didn't see any bodies impaled on spikes. There were some baby ducks in the moat. And there were a lot of statues on the eaves of the buildings - some of which were very cool. Knights in armor, dwarves, stuff like that. No explanations given as to who any of them were, but I'd put one in my front yard if they were for sale.

The chapel...

Behind this medieval lion thing that the love lady is leaning on, unseen to the camera as it was only about three inches tall, is a creepy little guy who I believe was wearing robes. Anybody know what the meaning of something like that would be?

I think that this guy was supposed to be a writer or a philosopher or something. I took a picture because he looks like one of the Nazgûl.

Ah! This ring-wraith has no eyes!

These look like they should be in a Chinese tea garden, and not Dracula's Castle in Budapest. But I thought they were neat, so I took a picture. There were actually two, on on either side of a bench or something that looked out over the pond, but some matro-looking dud was standing there, so I didn't want to take a picture. Cindy did, however, compliment the shapeliness of his backside to me. Reluctantly, I had to agree.

That's all you're going to get out of me for now. Later today or tomorrow - whenever I have a long, boring sort again, I'll put another bunch of pictures up - I also have to get more Flickr space or something else going on to finish uploading all the pictures from the trip, and of my garden friends, and of the crazy storm we had yesterday.

¹It was a business trip, really. But around attending lectures and other things,we got to do a bit of sightseeing.

The best...

..New music video I've seen it quite some time...



I'll try to finally post some pictures and retarded commentary later today or tomorrow!