Four Magyar Observations from the Old Man

First, Burger King is king in Budapest. Their fast food joints are quite flashy with flat screen tv's, and other devices to entertain. Meanwhile, McDonald's usually has the lesser locations on side streets.

The second observation can be summed up with one word . . . teeeeekit. We've become experts in riding the Budapest subway. But we quickly discovered that you must always have your validated ticket at your ready to display to any of the numerous "ticket" police. We've been hounded on every trip at several places. In spite of this constant pressure to always have ticket ready for inspection, the system is very efficient and easy to use. Curt plans to wite Mayor Nickels and explain him that he doesn't need some fancy multi-billion dollar system. Just copy what the Hungarians built in 1896, small stations, small trains, and frequency that never leaves you waiting more than 3 minutes.

Thirdly, if you were presented with these clues about an attraction, what would you do ?
it's not listed on any of the tourist maps.
it does have a nice advertisement on those maps, but fails to mention the price.
it's 30 minutes away.
no other former eastern bloc country has such a display.
you can't access it very easily with public transportation.
it provides it's own transportation from a bus stop jammed with tour buses.
you are informed that you will be at the attraction for 2 hours if you take their bus.
and lastly, you discover the inflated price before the bus leaves.

All we had to do was get off the bus. That's it. No harm, no foul, and we could go on our merry way. But noooooo, we were hellbent on going to "Statue Park". For some reason, we both just had to see all the communist statues that had been torn down throughout the city following the peaceful revolution in 1989 and placed in nice park on the edge of town. The park was a nice gravel lot with a few red brick facades, it was raining, it was cold, and it took about 15 minutes to slowly walk through it and read all the placards. Thankfully, "Statue Park" had an accompanying "museum" in which we could learn all about the secret police that roamed Budapest following the uprising in 1956. The museum consisted of the nice photos that highlighted the events of 1956 and 1989 that took another 15 minutes to read, and then it was onto the highlight of this sidetrip . . . a one hour docementary on the aforementioned secret police. But wait, there's more. This wasn't a traditional film, it was a compilation of training films that the secret police produced in the 1960's to train new recruits. Even though it had that "grade school film" quality, it was the first real thing we've seen that cast some light on what it was like around these parts before 1989.

Lastly, we finally found the Hungarian meal that we were craving in a place called Rustico. We ordered two bowls, one with chicken smothered in paprika sauce over dumplings, and the other a very thick beef stew with a hearty paprika sauce, over potatoe wedges.

Even though our 1999 Budapest guide book gave us a few options, we were not able to find the Seahawks game at 7:00pm.