In the queue for the plane to Budapest was a woman who had problems with lines on the ground. After a few minutes watching her shuffle, stop and start, I reckon that she couldn’t step over one line until the coast to the next line was clear. She had a thing about the space being clear, and then she could go, but she always stopped at the next line and looked left to right before waiting and then proceeding.
There’s a chap in Porty who is a bit the same. I’ve seen him take enormous steps in the past and couldn’t figure out what exactly it was, because he didn’t seem to have a problem with lines, but there was obviouusly something that was the matter. Today I happened to walk up the road behind him, and I could finally see that he has a problem with the paving stones with anti-slip bubbles on them – the type that you get at crossings and road junctions. He can’t walk on these, and has to go round them, or sometimes step right over them with one big stride.
All of which has nothing to do with the wonderful architecture we saw in Budapest. There are many very impressive buildings in Budapest, and they’ve been able to build these because, unlike Edinburgh, they don’t spend all the civic money on digging and re-digging up the roads.
We took the ‘Walk Strolling the Secession’ as described in our guidebook, around parts of Pest. One of the best buildings was the former Royal Post Office Savings Bank building, designed by Ödön Lechner.
Postal Savings Bank building, Budapest (1899-1902)
The facade is nice, but the best bit is the riot of line and pattern on the roof. When told that this was difficult to view from the street (and my photo above is taken from the best vantage point), he answered: “The birds will see them.”
Wonderful!
Front of the Gresham Palace Hotel
We considered a coffee in the Gresham Palace Hotel until we saw the prices. Lovely building, both inside and out.
Gutenberg-otthon
One of my favourite buildings was the Gutenberg-otthon. I haven’t compressed the photo above, so if you click on it and then magnify it, you should be able to see its detail in some clarity.
Gutenberg-otthon
Orthodox Synagogue
Awesome photos, Dude!
Hi Kay. For really good photos, check out Infobunny http://www.flickr.com/photos/infobunny/sets/72157626970059870/
At the Nuremburg trial when told that there was going to be evidence next day from a Hungarian jew, he was most surprised there were any left. So well done the synagogue. Why is it called Pest? I thought it was a buddha place as well. Did you tell anyone they were a pest when you were there? How could you resist?
Goering.
Thank you Hotboy for getting so far. ‘he’ is Goering, I think, from your addendum. In the museum, there were many military uniforms. After 100 yards of uniforms, we went into a room, and the first caption said “And so, the War ended, and the people of Budapest were able to concentrate on rebuilding their city.” So, I reckoned that was the end, and went into the room from the other entrance. But that was wrong. The thing about Budapest is that it has been blown up too many times.
Was it raining when you saw yon Porty guy? Where Albert lives, the anti-slip bubbles work well except in wet weather (which is really when you need them). In the wet, they’re deadly slippy and you get some hilarious pratfalls.
Maybe the Porty guy is right, and we’ll all end up avoiding them with big steps, etc.