New Year's in Budapest

It is now New Year's day and mom and dad are up and the boys are not. We're spending most of our time in Pest because our hostel is here and many of the sites are here as well. We did go over to Buda and walked around Thursday night and will probably go back tonight. Pam bought tickets to the baths but went we went back they were closed so we're hoping they are open today. New Years was different in that there were mostly local fireworks rather than municipal ones and that there seems to be a sport of walking down the street and throwing lit firecrackers behind you. Jeremiah took special offense to this and almost got into several fights although it seemed like just regular people were doing it. At 12 pm we were in a huge crowd as the time was counted down and then the Hungarian national anthem was played. It was a bit emotional as Hungary had a tough 100 years, going from a great empire in 1900 to a recovering disaster in 2004 with being on the wrong side of two world wars and then communism in the middle; almost as sad as a Sarajevo but throughout Eastern Europe people are hustling and trying to better themselves.

There is an incredible castle in a park where there is also Hero's Square, a big ice skating rink, the baths, art museums and huge plazas with large statues. Since it is New years a lot is closed but we went to the transportation museum where they had a great railroad display with ¼ scale models of trains plus a space pod with Hungary's only cosmonaut in it.

Pam and Bob went to the house of terror, a museum inside an old police station where political prisoners were kept, beaten and killed by the Nazis and Soviets-pretty gruesome but an important part of history; we also went to a huge church that had the hand of a bishop from 1000 years ago in a golden cage-amazing but also gruesome. While monarchies have plenty wrong with them they did produce some incredible buildings that make America's monuments look puny. However, we have much better TV shows and movies as well as music. We have TV in our room and watch horrible shows- high schools could do a better job with news and interviews. They do dub a lot of American B movies and seem to like violence and sex; their own programming are rough, ham fisted copies of ours.

The public transportation works very well with buses, trams, and subways. They have a similar system of buying tickets and putting them in a machine but few seem to be doing this yet they still have the train police-Bob was stopped and asked to show his ticket which he had-it seems like they only pick on tourists because only about 5% of the riders are buying tickets. The subways close at 11 p.m. leaving only buses which run past midnight. While there are plenty of cars, there are no traffic jams and people seem to find parking although sometimes on the sidewalks or at odd angles.

Our hostel is under refurbishment and not everything works, especially door knobs. The owners are from Romania, which we think is eastern Europe's Mexico. Again the water pressure is strong but the baths have showers without curtains so water goes everywhere, although there is a big drain in the floor-same thing in Slovenia, in Bosnia there was a tub with no shower curtain, in Zagreb a shower with close by walls but a drain that didn't work well. We discovered later in Bosnia that on the weird wall switches was one for the hot water; we turned it off so didn't have a hot shower one day.
There are plenty of American restaurants here- McDonalds, Burger King, Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken although we only went to one to go to the bathroom. We had Chinese food New Years eve-it is the same world-wide. Eating out is an adventure because you never know what is going to happen-one time the food came right away, the other it took more than an hour and the subways closed by the time we finished. Still, everyone is healthy. We try to buy bread, which is great but don't always find the stores before they close. There are decent sized grocery stores but more very small, randomly placed stores. Plenty of coffee shops where we buy lots of cappuccinos because coffee by itself is instant and tastes bad and espresso is real-small and strong. Best use of the coffee shop is a place to rest and meet and most places it costs $1.25-1.50 a cup-still not as good as the coffee in Paris but OK. A lot of the coffee shops and restaurants only have 8-10 chairs so an interesting economic model.

We are walking a considerable amount but getting better at it-it seems that around every corner is another amazing building. We are not getting any news other than the earthquake but not sure how big a deal that is. Real glad to have Spencer with us and proud he could make it all the way here without error-don't think too many people could do that-this continues to be an adventure and scary often although we have finally met some English speaking people and Americans as well-a lot of people from all over the world here-hostels are an amazing mix of nationals i.e. Japan, Thailand, Mexico, often college students including masters and doctorate level people (come to think of it, that also describes our family although these people are here working on their degrees in Europe and Africa and we're just tourists).

It is interesting that everywhere we went in Europe are stores and advertisements for very expensive products-jewelry, clothes, cars, perfume- a bit out of proportion to what these countries need or aspire to but I guess there are rich people everywhere but it seems insulting to the destitute or an inappropriate use of disposable cash for those that can barely get by.