Szia from Hungary!

We've stayed busy exploring Budapest. We've been filling our days with wandering around, working out and training with the Hungarian National men's team (thanks to Meetesh and Denes), eating and drinking plenty, and watching World Cup games. I'll let the pictures (and silly videos!) do most of the talking.


Our shout out to all the happy cows and pigs in Europe. Mike is eating some kind of meaty, supposedly-but-not-really-Hungarian, meal at the Nagycsarnok Market. I had the goulas, a meaty tomato based stew...delicious! We've temporarily thrown vegeterianism out the window in the interests of experiencing the true cultural cuisine of Europe.

Party pic near the liberty bridge that crosses the Danube River and connects Buda on the west to Pest on the east.


Nagycsarnok Market, a huge indoor market on the banks of the Danube.


Szent Istvan (Saint Stephen's) Basilica, a roman Catholic church completed in 1905. Many historrians consider St. Stephen to be the first king of Hungary, after achieving independence from the Holy Roman Empire in 1000 CE. He was most known for strengthening Christianity in the region and for acquiring the land that is now Transylvania (which until post WWI was Hunagrian land, along with parts of today's Slovakia). Today, Transylvania and Slovakia still have large numbers of ethnic Hungarians.


A look from the back up to the altar of St. Stephen. Similar to other Catholic churches of its size, there are pulpits further back so that the people in the back could hear the service as well. Also, we could not believe the size of the organ pipes.

A beautiful high dome dominates the center of the basilica and everything is bathed in gold. Goooooold.

St. Stephen at the altar. Someone mentioned that this is the only Roman Catholic church in the world that has someone besides Jesus at the altar, but that is uncited information. The mummified remains of St. Stephen's hand are housed at the church and available for viewing.

Video of St. Stephen's Basilica.



The Great Synagogue of Budapest, built in 1859. By area, it's the largest synagogue in the world! Temple Emanuel in NYC can seat more people, but this one is bigger by cubic meters. Amazingly it has served as a Jewish temple ever since it's opening (even though badly damaged during WWII) since it was located in the Jewish quarter of the city.



Mike admiring the inside of the Synagogue. Usually synagogues are not as ornate as this one, but the wealthier Hungarian Jews were already seen as outsiders, so they wanted to build a temple that would fit in with the local architecture and be respected by the Hungarians.

The inner courtyard of the temple was forced to be used as a cemetery, even though according to Jewish tradition cemeteries cannot be in such close proximity to a synagouge (so technically the Great Synagogue is not kosher). In the fall of 1844, the Hungarian fascist party (Arrow Cross) took over and started swiftly eradicating Jews from the Budapest ghetto to "work camps" or i some cases just killing them outright. The Jews that were left in the ghetto were forced to endure one of the coldest winters on record, so many died from lack of services and food. Since the ground was frozen, they could not bury the bodies of the dead, so they had to wait until the ground thawed in the spring. By that time, there were thousands of dead and upon Soviet "liberation" of Budapest in 1945, they buried the people in the courtyard of the temple.


A wall of the ghetto was left by the Soviets to memorialize the ghetto. It still has the barbed wire on top of it.


A view of Parliment from atop Castle Hill on the Buda side of the Danube.


Parliment is a beautiful building right on the Danube, and apparently the first building in continental Europe with "air conditioning" since the architects build special rooms in the basement to house large blocks of ice and a ventilation system that runs throughout the building.

View of Parliment from Castle Hill, near Matthias Church.

Széchenyi Chain Bridge was the first permanent bridge in Budapest, build in 1849. You can see the huge St. Stephen's Basilica dominating the skyline in the distance.


Meetesh and Denes demanded that we go to a very old (est. 1827!) little bakery (pekseg) called Ruszwurm for a Hungarian dessert called Kremes (pronounced Kremesh). You don't have to tell me twice to go eat dessert, so we hit it up on our time in Buda on the hill. It was mindblowing...basically a layer of two crispy wafers with rich creme (best compared to the custard of a creme brule, but much fluffier) in between. Aghhhhh...


A view of the Royal Palace from the Citadel, the highest hill on the Buda side.

Whit and Claire, this one is for you!


Another picture of Parliment, the Chain bridge, and the Danube from the Citadel.


Pedro, a frisbee friend we met on Friday while training with the Hungarian men's team, (Benedec is his real name) is a traditional Hungarian dancer and had a performance on Saturday night in a small village outside of Budapest. He was kind enough to invite us to go see the performance, which included his troop of adult dancers, and also performances from the little kids in the classes that they teach at the local dance school.


After the amazing performance, there was a party in the courtyard of the small village, and we ate Hungarian sausgae, dessert, and drank beer while the band continued to play and the audience danced. His family was incredibly welcoming and filled us in on all of the cultural and historical details of the dancing style. Then we watched U.S.A. play England in a basement bar in the village. Unfortunately, we didn't meet up with Meetesh like we were supposed to because he came down with a really bad fever.


Heroes Square, built to commemmorate the 1000th anniversary (in 1896) of the Magyar (Hungarian) conquest of the Carpathian Basin (area that is now Hungary) under Arpad.


The Szecsenyi Baths. Hungary is full of thermal baths! We spent a few hours rotating between the hot/cold/warm baths until we had shriveled up to half of our original size. Many of the baths have Turkish influenced architecture from when the Ottoman Empire ruled over Budapest (during the 16th and 17th centuries).


Party pic in front of the Parliment building. There was a marathon going on, so we cheered on the runners as we walked along the Danube.


We finished up the night by going for a jog on a beautiful park island in the middle of the Danube with Denes and his school friend Corine, grabbing a few beers, and throwing the frisbee in the middle of St. Stephen's Square in front of the Basilica. Beautiful!

A few more days in Budapest, and then we're off to Krakow to visit Witty!