Last days in Budapest

Yesterday was nto very eventful for me, but it was for the rest of the city.

 

I had no idea, or at least had not added two and two together, thus was ignorant that the red bull greatest pilots competition was being held over the Danube just a few short tube stops away from me. Is there a bigger DOH I could ever do !!!

 

Nope, instead I took a day off from my hectic schedule of travelling to finish readin 1984 ( not as good as I had hoped and certainly not the ending I wanted ), get a bit of a suntan and generally get some proper RnR.

 

It was not the anniversary of their independance day, as I was led to believe earlier, but it was St Istvans day - who for some reason the locals all pronounce as Steven. And just as suddenly as I realised that this is where Robert Asprin got some of his character names from, the heaven opened and I don't mean that figaritively.

 

In the cities most violent, localised and sudden storm in living memory a wicked storm brewed up, killed 4 people and injured at least 40 more, riped whole sections of roofs apart - INCLUDING that of the royal palace - and tore down, or at least partly down, several thousand trees over a few adjoining districts of the city.

 

My hotel was not in one of the regions worst hit so all that we suffered was a bizarre battering of rain and small twigs for about 15 minutes and then just as suddenly it stopped.

 

Today was a day of a much more normal effort of sight seing, including taking my camera and getting a local travel firm to escort me round the various districs on a 4 hour whistle stop of the city.

 

We went past many different government department buildings, the 3rd most famous (aparently) hotel in the world, behind one in Dubai and one in New York, saw lots of demolished trees and lots of churches and statues of their saints.

 

According to the guide Hungary was settled by 7 tribes of asians ( mainly from siberia, russia and mongolia ) in around the 800's.

There was lots of talk of battling the turks and that the area of Transilvania, now more commonly associated with Romania and Dracula, was actually at that time owned by the Hungarians. 

 

Quite a few places were built to commemorate the war, and the independance of first the Germans and then the Russians. Also according to our guide they only joined the Germans as they promised once they had conquored the rest of europe and peace was agreed that they would give back Transilvania to the Hungarian empire. Of course this never happened so they still do not own it to this day, although for the most part now they dont want it back as it is less developed and than anywhere in Hungaria.

 

I took some nice photos but it takes forever to try and sort them out for a blog entry, so I will just print them for my album and then scan them and email them to friends in personal emails.

 

The Ibis hotel wa a great choice as it was cheap, friendly, hosted by mostly english speaking staff and the food was top class, regardless of how cheap or the rest of the hotel was.

 

Tomorrow will be more lazing about and then the flight home again.