On my travels back home

On my way to the airport to catch my flight I found a few things which made me sit up and take notice. This video clip shows one of them. You'll see a group performing in the underground part of the train station at Keleti Pu in Budapest - totally unexpected.

This hotel which is in a really nice building on the Grand Boulevard near to the train station also made me take a second look. It's called the New York Palace hotel and dates from 1894.
So I left Budapest on 25 June 2009 and that brought an end to my journey which started on 8 June 2009. Not a terribly long time surely, but in that time I managed to go to places I had never been to before. I coverd an awful lot of ground, met lots of different people and saw lots of things that made me ask questions of myself and of others. I really enjoyed it.

Last day in Budapest

This once beautiful but now crumbling old building on the riverfront was used as a Gestapo (Nazi secret police force) HQ during World War 2. At least that's what I understood from a sign outside it.

Well my long adventure through Europe and the Middle East was coming to an end. I just had a bit of time left to see Budapest. I really like the city, it is so much nicer, cleaner and more welcoming than a lot of the other former Soviet republics. I don't know why that is, maybe it's because of the architecture which seems to be mostly very modern (19th cent) and is a remnant of the great days of Austro-Hungarian empire when they built wide boulevards and squares and big houses and apartment building to represent the empire. Here are a few photos of what I saw on my last day.

This is a Soviet monument that I saw near to the very heavily guarded American embassy.
This is Heros' Square and two of the museums that are around it.

This is one of the massive St. Stephen's Basilica in the centre of the city. It was completed in 1904 and the latin inscription means 'I am the way, the truth and the life'.

Liberty statue - Budapest

Liberty statue looks over the city from its high vantage point on top of Gellért Hill. It was erected by the Soviets in 1947 to remember the people who liberated the city and the country. I'm not sure if the locals found the liberation all that wonderful though and if it was totally welcome or not! Anyway I like the look of the old Soviet statues, their design is really interesting I find. I know they represent some of the worst oppression and tyranny in history but I still like their statues.

Like any other ex USSR republic there were lots of Soviet statues in Budapest, Lenin, Marx, Engels and all those guys. Hungary decided to do something very clever with these old statues, they removed them from their prominent positions in the city and put them in a park on the outskirts of Budapest. Why not try and make some money from these things. Here's a link for the park where the statues are -
http://www.szoborpark.hu/index.php?Lang=en


You can walk up Gellért Hill and as you can see from the photos the view from the top is great. You can see the city (well only the Buda side) beneath you and you can also see beyond the city to the green fields in the distance.