And Friday isn't even finished! We went to the Pest side of the river for dinner and wandered around and had dinner and admired the pretty fountains. Then, blissfully, to our crappy little hotel. A group of us trekked to a 24-hour grocery and bought alcohol. We stayed up late drinking in the little park out front of the hotel and climbed trees and braided hair in the near pitch-black.

Saturday morning we dined on horrible hotel food (anemic bologna!) and then set out. First we checked out the Citadel, a bunker that had been used by Nazis in WWII when Budapest was a city under siege by Allied forces. Then we went to St. Stephen's basillica, the before-mentioned wonderful view was seen there. (Nice bathrooms, too.) Then we went to the Terror museum, a place dedicated to a very dark time in Hungary's history, the period of Nazi occupation and the following decade of bloody Soviet communist control. It was an incredibly heavy museum with lots of reading, lots of videos of former communist leaders and henchmen tearfully recalling their terrible deeds and pleading forgiveness. It was pouring down rain when we finally finished, so we had to dash and scuttle to the Subway, trying to dodge raindrops. We had another dinner in Pest, and then, half-drenched and chilly we finally made it back to the hotel.

Ah! See, I have remembered what I forgot. On Friday night we also went to an art museum full of Hungarian art. I could have spent a day wandering around. I went to the third floor, with the mid 1800s to mid 1900s, so I could work my way through the art that I really like before tackling the symbolism and lives of saints in older, ecclesiastical art. I feel like I really need to carry around a book of saints, so I can figure out who died and why for a lot of these guys. Mauled by bears, carries a little white book, oh, St. Whoja who was martyed by Romans, gotcha, etc.

Sunday we visited the largest synagogue in Europe, kind of a yawn, really, maybe I've been jaded by overexposure to massive cathedrals. The boys all had to wear construction paper yarmulkes. I got really pissed for a little while thinking about just how sexist and exclusionist Judaism is. There was a museum with a bunch of chalices and silver Torah scroll platforms and various other religious paraphanalia, which was pretty dull. (This comes second only to the car museum as my least favorite stop on this trip so far. Even the Really Dull chateau was amusingly boring, this was just boring boring.) There was a really great memorial outside in a courtyard for those who died in the Budapest Jewish ghetto in WWII. The memorial is a weeping willow statue, each leaf on a branch has a name stamped on it, so it was a really good visual of that level of devestation.

Next we went to the Hungarian National Museum. I lingered on the ancient stuff, admiring beautiful filigree jewelry and some 16th century pocket watches. I rushed through the WWI section rather qucker than I wanted to because time was limited. I wish I had gotten to see more of it. There were a bunch of great uniforms and dresses on display. I wanted lots of them, but especially the bright red and gold-trimmed Franz Joseph outfit. His mannequin even had a moustache.

Another thing I forgot about Friday, we went up to a hillside outside of the city where they put a lot of the statues that had filled the city during their communist years. Most cities pulled down the statues and destroyed them, but Budapest kept theirs, which is very curious to me. The place the statues live now is hardscrabble and weedy, and the statues are fairly neglected. Lenin peers out of elderberry bushes. (Another amazing view of the city from this hillside.) Socialist realism, which was the style of all of the really big pieces of art is kind of funny. Sometimes the people depicted wouldn't even have faces, eyes or noses or mouths because that's the minimalist style, but a few of them had moustaches. A face with a moustache but no mouth or eyes is pretty spooky. Kind of like the button eyes in Coraline.

Anyhow, we finished up Sunday with a trip through the labyrinth under Buda castle. The labyrinth has been there for a long time, it started as natural caves and was hewn out and used for hiding and secret meetings and a bomb shelter during WWII and finally converted into a tourist attraction. Lots of the doors and passageways are closed off by iron gates now, so people can't really get lost. It is very eerie to press up against a gate and peer into the semi-darkness, trying to peek around corners and trying not to imagine the vampires/wolves/demons/imps/etc that want to grab you and haul you away. There were drum beats and bell chimes used very effectively on the sound system. There was one room, The Labyrinth of Courage, that was completely pitch black. My professor, Dr. Murphy hid in there and jumped out and terrified people from our group. I teased him about it later, chiding him for being that childish. He looked quite serious when he said that after two weeks of babysitting this group he really needed to get that out of his system. I don't doubt it.

Then we rode home, and everyone made up new lyrics to Beatles songs (mostly Let it Be and Yesterday) about how much we all needed to pee.

I had strange dreams about the labyrinth and woke up, shocked to be in my hotel bed. I didn't understand at all, for a long time where I was. I even found my journal and though, "How strange! I didn't bring this into the labyrinth with me! I must be really lost!" until I came to full wakeful realization.

Today is a free day, so I will write like a maniac. I already did my laundry, so I only need to wander around the city and buy a few souviners today.

Ciao, loves!