Mistakes

One learns best from mistakes. True, ain't it?

So mine is to figure out how to use a cellphone in a foreign country before getting to said foreign country. Lucky for me I am blessed with encountering kind, oh so kind and patient folks here in Hungary.  Peter, who is helping his brother's rental apartment business in Budapest, located a T-Mobile shop in West End City, a shopping mall near Nyugati (West) train station. Apparently, it's called "West End City" because every shop in the mall has a "pretend" street address. Cute! But the place is not cute; it's huge! Three floors huge.  Thanks to my Hungarian teacher, I am well versed in two trusty phrases that I have had to use plenty of times thus far: ....hol van?  (Where is....?)  and Bezel angolul? (Do you speak English)  The problem with asking the first one is that I don't understand the answer unless there is a great deal of pointing and demonstrating along with it.

Nyugati train station, a stop in time

The other excellent part of heading out to West End City was to visit Nyugati train station. Talk about gorgeous!  This is one of the reasons why Budapest was dubbed the Paris of Eastern Europe.  The architecture--most of it Art Nouveau, Baroque, and Gothic--overlook broad boulevards and narrow streets. While most of the train station has been converted to businesses (the finest looking McDonalds among them), the ticket office still is contained within its former structure.

Parliament Building glittering like a jewel above the Danube.

Monday most of the touristy things like museums are closed. So I headed over to the over-the-top amazing Parliament building. It felt like I walked for a full fifteen minutes along the Danube gazing up at the porticos, curly-cues, and dodicos (the latter two being stupid  made-up words of non-architecturally literate me.)  Most of the time my jaw was wide open in awe.

Memorial

More sombering was the memorial to the Jews who were shot into the freezing Danube in late 1944 by the Hungarian Nazis--the Arrow Cross Party. Over 100 pairs of copper shoes line the edge of the boardwalk here to commemorate those murdered. The Parliament building overshadows this memorial and over on the other side of the Danube is Buda and the Castle Hill district.