Final two days in Budapest (July 23-24)

It was our third day in Budapest and we were already impressed with the city. Today, we first went for the tour of the Hungarian Parliament - which in the times when it was built had so much money spent on it that the same amount could have been sufficient to completely build a town with all the infrastructure for more than 50000 people. It has the original crown still in place and the building is symmetrical on either side of the main entrance hallway. Since the left side is used by the current parliament and the right side is used for conferences and other parties, we got to see the right side. The building was truly impressive and the money spent on it was reflected in the ornate beauty of rugs, painted walls, seats, sculptures among other things. Thereafter, we took the metro to Heroes Square and wanted to go to the museum of contemporary art but it was supposed to open late that day. So we just walked around the square. After having lunch at a cheap Thai place, we went to the best thing that I did in Budapest - the Szechenyi furd which are the traditional baths with pools having water at different temperature and with different mineral content. We had a whole range of temperature from 18 degree celsius to 38 degree celsius. I could barely get into the 18 degree water but after spending time in hot water, it was very relaxing to get into the cold water. There were also sauna rooms heated from 45 degrees to 70 degrees and rooms which were heated with different sources. We could barely see each other even after standing next to each other in the sauna room heated with steam. And the fun started when we entered the pool with jets propelling the water in circular motion. I could just lie on my back and with a little support from the side surface (since i was a bit afraid of moving too fast and sinking in water), i circled round and round in the pool. The medicinal pool with a lot of mineral content made our bodies float - if we could just leave our arms or legs free with a little support to our body, they used to float like a dead person. We spent about three and a half hours at the baths and did not feel like leaving. It was the Hungaroring festival with the planned display of flights and formula one cars that convinced us to leave. We got back to our hostel to change and moved to the castle to enjoy the festival time. As soon as we crossed the bridge the air show started, about 30 minutes before the scheduled start. We saw some amazing maneuvers of the pilot, turing the plane, falling to the effect of gravity to very close to the top of the buildings for a short while. We then hiked up to the castle and were greeted with a huge crowd gathered around the track on which they were supposed to run the F1 cars. We only got a couple of short glimpses when the car was driven by David Coulthard down the cobbled stone streets. It was more of a disappointment considering the hype that was created around the event. Afterwards, we walked around the other side of the castle with nice breeze flowing through. It was a nice relaxed time after such an eventful day. When we got back, the whole chain bridge was lit up and with the lit up castle in the background, it was giving a beautiful view.

The next day started off with a visit to the Szabor Park (the communist statue park) outside the city. It was an organized tour that included the travel to and from the park and the admission ticket. We bought a booklet that provided details on each of the statue and walked our way across the park, built in the form of two consecutive 8s, symbolizing the symbols of infinity. Outside the park, they were playing in a small theatre movies created during the communist times to train the spies. Some of the scenes with the guy holding a spy camera in his spy purse were quite hilarious if one compares them with the technology put to practice these days. After getting back to the city we took the metro back to the Heroes square to go to the contemporary art gallery with the special exhibition on things related to light and perspectives. Some of the exhibits were quite interesting - a room full of balls hanging from the ceiling at different heights with the height of each ball corresponding to the pitch of the note that will come out when you touch the ball. I moved around the room touching first all the low hanging balls creating a low pitch sound, followed by touching all the high hanging balls creating a high pitch voice. In addition to several other very interesting exhibits, there was one where a small slit in the shape of character S was cut into two discs. Three pair of such discs were on display with different amount of overlap inbetween the pair. Based on the overlap, one pair when rotated was producing a dot, another pair was producing a circle and the third one was producing a square. After this interesting exhibit, we walked around the city parks to another place with a few more statues. However, there was a concert of nine inch nails scheduled for that night for which the park was closed. We, then, got back to our hostel area, had our early dinner at a Pizza place next to Menza. However, this place was more expensive and the food was very disappointing. This early dinner was to go to a contemporary dance performance. We were told about this performance by the owners of our hostel, whose friend was choreographing the performance. We got to the performance half an hour early. It was scheduled in an open air small amphitheater in a new park on the Buda side. I was very disappointed to the see only a handful of us in this wonderful location but as the starting time inched closer, the small amphitheater of capacity about 50-70 was completely full. Thereon, followed a very energetic performance by 6 girls and 2 guys. I was very impressed with the acrobatic and energetic display of several styles of contemporary dances which continued for about an hour. With so much energy, I probably would have been dead by the end of 10 minutes with my stamina. It was a perfect finish to the wonderful stay in the beautiful city of Budapest. On my flight back to India, I also saw a Hindi movie which was mostly shot in Budapest and was quite happy to see the parliament house, castle and the chain bridge which were mainly focused as the attractions of the city.