Tuesday morning we woke up to rain. Ah well, pack up, go to the station, catch the first train to Budapest.
It was running an hour late.
But there’s a very nice coffee-and-cake shop at the station, and it has wifi.
Got to Budapest close to two, the train docks at the Nyugati station. I knew there was a mini statue here somewhere, but figured, let’s get the bags home first. Bought a 72-hour public transport ticket. They work. Blue to Kálvin tér, green to II. János Pál pápa tér, and from there we could catch the 99 bus for one stop but it’s quicker to walk.
Nice modern room on the fourth floor of a nice modern building, on the Mátyás tér.
And then we were off again. We were just one stop from the Keleti station, so I took Tanya there to show her the Trabant I saw last time but… it was gone. Stolen, I guess.
So we got back on the Metro to Batthyány tér and from there took the tram to Tanya’s favourite-in-Budapest stationery / craft / bookstore.
And from there Szent Gellért is only two stops and I’d heard that there was a new mini statue so there we went.
Found him, we did, hmmm?
And then we found Tanya some food at an Asian place, bought wine, went home.
The next morning, I took Tanya to see some of the mini statues I’d found in her absence, last time.
The ark lives close to the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine on Bethlen Gábor tér. Maybe ark->animals->veterinary medicine? I don’t know. There’s another Kolodko on the other side of the faculty but we only found that later.
On the other hand, this Kolodko of Hanna Szenes — a British SOE-trained Jewish Hungarian poet-turned-parachutess who was executed in 1944 (she was 23) for trying to helping Jews flee Nazi occupation — is on the side of Szenes Hanna park.
And then we meandered down (well, walked to the closest tram stop and took a tram to Herzl Tivadar tér (where there is a Kolodko of the gentleman himself, we saw that last time)) to Erszebét tér where there is a “free” walking tour (you are expected to tip around 10 Euros per person).
Szent István (St Stephen’s) Basilica from Szent István tér. They have bits of dead people in there. We did not investigate.
We saw things we had seen before and other things we had not seen. And our guide (Balazs) told us things that we had not known about the things that we had seen before. So all in all, recommended.
We saw this Kolodko last time as well, it’s the Russian hat that was thrown in the river but grew legs and crawled back out again.
From here we wandered downriver, Tanya was feeling hungry so we stopped for Goulash soup and (of course) beer, eventually ended up at the castle in Városliget.
The tower on the left is straight, the cellphone wide angle lens, not so much. Clever devices, but they cheat.
We came here specifically for this new Kolodko.
It was already after five, so we had a quick beer and caught the Metro to Nyugati station.
This is Kópé, the mascot of the Skála stores which opened in the eighties and were not directly state-owned.
OK, that’s probably enough for one blog post. Stay tuned, as they say.
