Castle Hill

Friday was a tourist day for Jack and me. I've been itching to see more of the Buda side of the city, so we decided to check out more of Castle Hill. The picture at the top of my last post is my favorite of the day. You can see the rest if you click here.

The day actually started off with a bit of a scare. We ascended the hill after crossing the Széchenyi bridge, and at the top were various tourists. One man approached us and asked where we were from (in English). He was an older man with great white hair and mustache. Looked a bit like Albert Einstein, actually. His English was very good, but I don't think he was a native Hungarian. The accent sounded somewhat German.

He was selling himself as a tour guide. While he gave us a very articulate and charismatic plug, he showed us a laminated tour guide card. While he talked I thought it would be nice to take a tour with him, but we already had plans to go to the Labyrinth. He advertised it as about an hour long, for $15 dollars each. Included was information on where to eat well for reasonable prices, historical information, etc. As I said, very articulate and well rehearsed. I thought to myself it would be great to take a tour later, maybe on a less dreary day.

However, when either Jack or I would try to express this, he would ask us with increasing desperation not to interrupt him. His speech became faster as he started pre-emptively giving us a tour. We tried again and again to say we weren't interested at the moment, and then he started shouting. Jack gave up and walked away, and I tried for a moment to explain over him that we might do it later. Then, my astonished ears heard, "Shut up if you want to live."

Woah.

As we walked away, we were followed by shouts of "Stupid Americans, can't understand my language, waste of lives," etc. I don't know whether he was a scammer or would have led us to a robbery or if he was mentally ill. He genuinely seemed like he would be a good guide, had we need of one. Too bad he flipped.

Well, after that experience, things went uphill significantly. I found a Posta, where I mailed out 5 more postcards. The buildings in the first district are quite different than ones I've seen on the Pest side. Smaller and cozy looking, they reminded me more of Belgium than Budapest. There were more European compacts, too, for some reason. On a sunnier day, I'll go back and take color photos, for the buildings looked like candy. This day, however, was more suited to black and white.

We had a great time walking around the area. It was freezing out, but we spent as much time as we could just strolling. We eventually found the Labyrinth and began the climb down into the underground tunnels. My glasses fogged up the instant we started down. The air was stale, hot and wet. It definitely smelled like mold. Tickets were an expensive 1100 Ft each (5 bucks, but relative to what we've been paying for things...) There was no walking tour. We were free to explore on our own. I was expecting something very different from the commercialized experience we got. It was fun to walk around dark, underground tunnels, but there were a lot of parts that disappointed my expectations. The passageways were used as a secret military installation years ago, and as such cement covers most of the walkway and bricks line the walls. There were some joke exhibits, such as a boot "fossil" in a rock and a plaque describing the discovery of "Homo Consumus". The most tacky of all these was a giant fossil of a Coca-Cola bottle, which is in the pictures. All of this made me wonder how much of the tunnel was actually historically authentic.

I forgot about a trombone recital Eszter (from the Academy) had told me about the day before. I need to learn how to apologize and say "I forgot" in Hungarian.

Looks like I'm a day behind in my blogging. Tomorrow includes 3 hours of practice in the morning, then a trip to Ikea. I think there's free WiFi there, so I could post some photos, as well. Sok puszi!