Fri 30th May view all the photos Time to go to church – Mátyás Church, to be specific. Like many of the major buildings around here, it has been built, destroyed, re-built, collapsed, re-built etc. more or less since the 13thC. In an effort (presumably) to stop this happening again, it is currently being extensively […]
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Fri 30th May view all the photos National Historical Museum I know where I’m going now – which metro, tram etc…or so I think, until I try and take a short cut up to the castle again (in search of some things I missed yesterday) and hit two dead-ends in quick succession. Doubling back for […]
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(still!) Thurs. 29th May Tired and happy, on the metro on the way back to the hostel; a youth, sitting opposite me. My first thought (due mainly to astounding girth of trunk-like legs) was ‘shame, he’s caught America’. Very short, seriously gelled hair, t-shirt proclaiming allegiance to some brand or other, listening to music on […]
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Thurs 29/5/08 view all the photos Castle Hill, museums and more… Successfully negotiate public transport back from Statue Park, poking my head into Hotel Gellért in passing. There’s some lovely 30s stained glass decorating the main staircase, a series of illustrations of a folk-tale involving a magic deer. At this point the camera battery […]
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Thurs 29/5/08 view all the photos The Statue Park Slept like a dead animal, despite (or perhaps, because of) a bed only slightly softer than a park-bench. Suitably refreshed, and feeling somewhat intrepid, I decide to visit the statue park, full of soviet era monumental sculpture. I’ll start with this, I decided, on the basis […]
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Wed 28th May view all the photos It’s a new (and not immediately pleasant) experience being cast up alone somewhere with a language so impenetrable to me. The fact that the (Hungarian) check-in clerk at Luton airport commended my pronunciation of ‘Budapest’ salves the pride a little, but only a little. French, Italian, Spanish…even German, […]
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Went to Budapest for a few days holiday last week… Weds 28th May view all the photos Let’s see….red, already have the beginnings of blisters on feet, sticky with the heat, legs aching a bit…but, there’s a cool bottle of beer within easy reach, and I’m actually in Budapest. Good start, then. On the taxi-ride […]
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I’m half awake, dreaming of boats and voyages – strange so far from the sea. This place is all about crossing places, though, many layered, one on another as you walk up through the city towards the Alhambra, through the Alcazar. Peeling away the layers or sliding between them, something infinitesimal traversing an onion. A […]
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From the air, wherever there is bare land, or not green at any rate, there are strange patterns impressed in the land. Valleys and hills, one assumes, but they look more like cloud shadows, or tree shapes, ferns and foliage. It’s as though the land has been branded some time ago and the burnt patches […]
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