Hungary

24 to 27 September- (yes, not enough time....we will come back....just that we are meeting Rolf Karina in north Italy!)

I have a positive vibe as we arrived in Hungary. Very hard to explain, but I could breathe again. As full of nature as Slovakia was, the mountains around and the amount of people/monoblocks in the cities, made me feel a tad claustrophobic. So I welcome the open field of this country as we were driving through and the cleanliness of the villages.

We stopped at Gyor just for a bike ride in our way to Budapest and we found out that the inventor of the soda water was from this town! (a brilliant man in my books)

How could you not fall in love with Budapest? It is classy, spacious, elegant and oh so full of old buildings. Every time you hit a corner there is a church or a museum or just a block of apartments from the 14 century. They told us that the city has received an special grant from UNESCO to paint/maintain/repair/restore all the buildings here... a job that will take about 20 years.

The Jewish quarter is our first destination, there are many monuments here as a memory of the holocaust.

There is a long and public controversy going on here. A strong group who claim that the Hungarian government should take responsibility for their role in WW2 jews massacre and the government who insist to be seen as vulnerable and victims of the Nazis. This ongoing fight is reflected in different monuments- the "official" voice and the "counter" voice".

We attended the ceremony of Rosh Hashanah in the old synagogue. It is a very luxurious synagogue with gold ornaments and a pulpit in the middle were the rabbi gives a speech. It is really big and tonight is full. The ceremony is in Hungarian but doesn't matter that much. It is nice to sit and hear the familiar Hebrew songs and prayers.
Before going "home" we rode all through the city, our night tour! All the buildings and the bridges are illuminated. The view of the Parliament (the biggest in the world) across the Danube is particularly impressive.

Inside the huge Market Hall we bought "Hungarian salami",  Challah and some cheese for lunch before getting inside the parliament for a visit.... which is very much like a castle.... even though we also visit the "castle" which is not a castle anymore but several museums all part of a city on a hill, a city inside a city. The city of Budapest shines from there. It is a magnificent view. I am loving this place, so full of life and happening. Plenty of restaurants, coffee shops, bars.....so many quirky places, very "arty" feel. A long mall with expensive shops and a night organ concert with a tenor signing Ave Maria at the St Stephens's Basilica....all part of our time here!

There is so much to see and do here! I said to Hector that I could live here for a few months....just to be able to visit all the old buildings that we are seeing, or to go to all the museums and art galleries. The Danube here is particularly wide so again I feel a sense of space. And so far, with very little communication; we found the people very interesting.

And if all Budapest has to offer wasn't enough, we just found out that this is the spa capital of the world! There are so many thermal spas with swimming pools, steam baths; that we could easily do a "spa crawl" over here!

Inside the Parliament