selenak

The downside of travelling is missing out tv and thus being unable to read an increasing amount of entries, but I'll catch up when I get back, and meanwhile: glorious Budapest!

Also dark Budapest. We visited the Museum of Terror, which is located at Andrassy Boulevard 60, where first the HQ of the Fascist and then of the Communist secret police were. The stories told there via viewscreens where interviewed survivors tell their tale, photos and other documents are absolutely gruesome. Outside you have, in tiny plaques, the photos of everyone killed in the 1956 uprising, but inside they tell you about hundreds of thousands through decades... This is the building/museum:

Incidentally, Andrassy Bld. is usually one of the busiest roads, but on Saturday there was a street festival, and thus we were able to walk right on it through three kilometres. Starting at the Heroes' Square, here:

Nearby is something I would have missed if not for

bwinter, who told me to go there. In 1896, in preparation for the Millennium exhibition, a castle was built that was to showcase the most beautiful castles of Hungary, 13 or so, and it is indeed a mash of all of them, with styles going from Gothic to Baroque to Rokoko. You find it in Szechenyi Park:

Let's go inside:

There are several statues around. The most famous one is of the unknown 13th century scribe who wrote the Gesta Hungarorum, titled "Anonymous". (Think Joe Klein rather than Roland Emmerich, I beg you.)

Then there is who looks like Shaw to me, though why GBS should be here in particular, I don't know (because of "Arms and the Man" maybe?):

And something I find absolutely charming and which he'd have adored, a later adition: Bela Lugosi. (Aka the first famous screen Dracula. Bela might have died old and forgotten, but Martin Landau won an Oscar playing him for Tim Burton in Ed Wood. Here he is as a bust in the castle's keep:

It would be amiss of me to only give you the big buildings and not pay homage to the city's lovely streets:

And the coffee houses, for which Budapest is as famous as Vienna. There are several of note, but the most beautiful is the Café New York, home of the literati and theatre crowd during the first two decades of the 20th century. Legend has it playwright Ferenc Molnar threw away the key into the Danube the day it was opened, so it would always stay open to writers. Behold: