Numb to the World

Stayed up a bit late last night, so feeling slightly numb this morning. We are preparing to leave Budapest and head to Krakow. We will probably take an overnight train.

Yesterday was . . .interesting. We headed out walking toward Heroes' Park, a place of statues that resemble the ringwraiths of Lord of the Rings (eerie ghostlike men). I have some pretty pleasing pictures of this spot. My only frustration was lack of English explanations on the statues.

We then headed to Aquincum, a place of Roman ruins. However, as we were walking (a VERY long walk, I might add), a rainstorm came up and caught us on the bridge to Buda (we were on the Pest side of the city--pronounced "pesht"). We huddled under the tree leaves we found and then made a run for it after about 20 minutes. Suzanne and I were the only ones with umbrellas, and we were splashed by the oncoming trucks and thus ended up as drenched as Marty and Hannah. After that, we hid out with a bunch of others under a bridge for a while. We then proceeded on to Aquincum before we were again hit by rain. We grabbed a snack at a supermarket, where I used my first Hungarian word (thank you). A kind Hungarian woman offered us some candy which was quite good. (Yes, we ate it--she seemed quite trustworthy).

After giving up on reaching Aquincum, we decided to try out the House of Terror. This is a building which both the Nazis and the Commies used for their secret police headquarters during their occupation of Hungary. The top two floors described the occupations, but it was the bottom floor which truly inspired some "terror." It had been left with rough walls and poorly lit rooms with hideous facilities to show the bleakness and deprivation of the prisoners of the state of that time. In one room, they even had a noose. Another room showed the torture chamber. I still feel chills thinking of it. More than any other part of that building, you could feel almost a haunting there . . .sounds silly, I know, but truly, it gave me shivers.

That night, I attempted to not spend much money on dinner . . .however, I failed miserably. I had intended to eat dinner by purchasing food from the super market again, but Suzanne wanted to go out, and I hated to have her go alone, so we found a place to split a pizza and salad. I thought I'd save some money by ordering a soda instead of a beer (since you have to pay for water when eating out--learned that the night before); however, when I received my bill, I found out that the large soda cost about $4. I was pretty . . .annoyed, we shall say.

Then I went back to apt/hostel to wash my clothes in the sink and had a conversation with our British fellow hostel-sharers. They were quite pleasant and fun to chat with.