Sore feet now....

I'm tired today, and my feet hurt, so we didn't go very far. Which was a shame because the sun came out and, at one point, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, but I'm here for another 11 days so anything I didn't get to see today I can see later on.

The apartment is very close to the river. The picture (click on all pictures to make them bigger) shows the view from literally outside the big front door of the building, and you can see the Buda hillside which is the other side of the river from where we are, which is the Pest side.


We decided to walk across the Chain Bridge to the other side and back again, so I can take pictures of yet more grand buildings for your edification. We went down to the riverside and walked along beside the river towards the Bridge. It reminded me a great deal of the South Bank of the Thames in London, except without the joggers or cyclists.

But there are cheery yellow trams instead:

Budapest is very good on its statuary - there's loads of it, and I rather liked the two modern bronze sculptures on the riverside that we passed:


This young boy seems to be wearing a paper crown. Note how polished his legs have got - obviously much fondling by passersby...

We decided that we weren't going to visit the Royal Palace on the other side of the river as our feet would probably mutiny, but this is what it looks like viewed from the Pest side:


Many years ago, no bridges forded the Danube in Budapest and the only means of access was via a ferry. The story goes that in December 1820 a Pest businessman, Count Szechenyi, received the news that his father had died in Vienna. The river was frozen and the ferries were out of action. The Count was stranded for a week (although why he couldn't have walked across the ice, I don't know...) and vowed that he would finance construction of a bridge. It took him nearly 50 years to achieve the building of the Chain Bridge.


The entrance to the bridge, on both sides of the river, is guarded by a large pair of fierce lions

I have no idea how you can tell which direction is 'upstream' and which is 'downstream', but this was the view westwards, halfway across the bridge:

The wind started to get a bit cheeky although it's been surprisingly warm today, so we trotted across the bridge fairly sharply. Got to the other side, crossed over and returned back down the other side. Not only does this side have the better views but the Danube was actually Blue!

This is the very spectacular Parliament building, designed by the same chap who built the Houses of Parliament in London.


Finally, a picture of me in unflattering coat, just to prove I was actually there:

As it was Sunday, we thought we'd go to church...

Actually, that's not strictly true. I wanted to go to St Stefan's basilica to photograph his preserved, wizened zombie hand. The basilica is Budapest's version of St Paul's Cathedral or Westminster Abbey, i.e., big and important. We assumed that there probably wouldn't be services. We were wrong.

It was raining when we set out at about 10.30 this morning. I would have preferred something a bit more exotic weather-wise. I mean, mid-November, just off the East European Hungarian Plain, one can surely expect snow - rain we can do ourselves at home, nae bother. But no, rain it has to be. Ho hum. Fortunately the basilica is only about 5 minutes walk from where we're staying, and on the way there we met this delightful chap:


The square in front of the basilica was wet and more or less deserted, so we went in, past the ornate door overlooked by St Stefan himself:

And straight into a full-blown Catholic mass! It was the whole enchilada - priests in fancy dress, swinging their incense and ringing their little bells. Every fibre of my being just wanted to yell "TED!"

It was, actually, (and part of me hates to say this, being a virulent atheist), terribly impressive. The basilica is gorgeous inside with lights meant to look like candles. There's gilding everywhere and, for this show, a full choir with organ singing their hearts out. The acoustics were just fabulous.

(I apologise that this second video is sideways but Blogger won't let me rotate it round, however you can still appreciate the wonderful music if you click the play button)

I found it all completely fascinating on the level of some sort of anthropological fieldtrip. You see, I've never been to any Catholic service anywhere, so this was all new - the smell and smoke of the incense, the tinkling of the little bells (what was that for?), the liturgy in Latin - I could see how appealing and mysterious it all was.


We pottered around silently for a bit, listening to the lovely music and marvelling at how alien it all was and slowly heading towards where they keep St Stefan's Zombie Hand only to find the room closed for the duration of the service! Feck. I will return, though. (God, I'd better be able to take a decent picture of it, now that I've embiggened it up so much....)

After leaving the basilica, we decided, as we were obviously in a holy frame of mind, that it would be apposite to head on over to the Grand Synagogue and check that out. Mum visited it last time she came over to Budapest and recommended it, and seeing as how I've never been in a synagogue either, I might as well do another thing for the first time.

During WWII, the Grand Synagogue on Dohany Street marked the border of the Budapest ghetto instigated by the Nazis. It's the third largest synagogue in Europe. It was bombed to buggery during the war and it took until 1991 (after the fall of communism) for renovations to begin, assisted by large donations from Estee Lauder (the cosmetics lady) and Tony Curtis (the actor), both of whom were Hungarian Jewish refugees.

The outside is very striking as it's built in a Moorish style - it's covered in terracotta tiles.


As I said, I've never been inside a synagogue so wasn't sure what to expect, so I was quite surprised at how church-like it was.

And I was really quite taken by the rather bizarre white globular chandeliery-things:

Round the back of the Synagogue, in a courtyard, is the very small Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Park. He was the Swedish diplomat who managed to wrench tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from the murderous grasp of the Third Reich and is rightly honoured around the world.

Most impressively there is a beautiful and striking holocaust memorial in the shape of a weeping willow made from stainless steel. Each of the leaves of the tree have engraved upon it the name of one of the victims of the holocaust and eventually the tree will be completely covered.


This particular memorial was built in 1989 but there is also another, older, memorial on the other side of the courtyard which lists names of people and has little niches for visitors to place pebbles in to indicate that the memorial had been visited (a Jewish tradition):


That's it for today, valiant reader. Tomorrow remind me to tell you of the fag-smoking statue and the 'Lock of Happiness'.....

Szervusztok a Budapesti ...

... or 'Hello from the capital of Hungarialand'.

Everything's been pretty groovy so far. One of Stelios' planes took us from the South of England in the company of a group of bodybuilders, a stag party all dressed in kilts and Hawaiian shirts apart from the groom who was in drag, and a quaint group of about 10 Hare Krishna cult followers. You used to see a lot of them, the Krishna botherers, skipping about in a procession down the street, banging tambourines and chanting - especially in the Seventies, I seem to recall - but you just don't see them nowadays. They seemed oddly old-fashioned.

The flight took a couple of hours and we landed mid-afternoon. It was grey and drizzly but not very much colder than home. The clinic sent a car to pick us up and take us to the apartment which is slap-bang in the centre of the city, about 3 minutes walk from the Danube.

The apartment block at 10 Joszef Attila utca ('utca' means street in Hungarian)

The apartment block is arranged around a courtyard. The front of the building is quite imposing, and the courtyard inside is a bit surprising because, at first sight, it seems somewhat shabby and rundown. This is, however, very common here. There's a small outdoor lift that takes you up to the fourth floor.


But, let me tell you, the apartment itself is like a palace. Almost. Well, all the rooms are bigger than mine at home. Even the bathroom is bigger than my bedroom.

Big kitchen/diner with hand-built units

Sitting room which has a 3-seater and a 2-seater sofa plus a double sofa bed. This place can sleep 6 comfortably.

Fully tiled bathroom with power shower.

The smaller of the 2 bedrooms which I'm using. This is still a queen-size bed, mind.

The master bedroom.

It was dark when we first arrived, but the view from the bathroom window was of nearby St Stefan's Basilica, all lit up. This is quite a grand church but the best thing about it is that it has St Stefan's mummified hand on display in a glass case. And yes, of course I'll get you all a photo.



Today was our first full day so we walked until my feet wanted to strangle me, which would have been interesting to see. We wandered down the 'walking streets' (i.e., pedestrianised streets) around Vorosmarty Ter which had lots of lovely shops, but the best one of all was dedicated solely to Christmas decorations - utterly fabulous [The shop's called 'Philanthia' and it's down Vaci utca]. If you want a 'fairy' for the top of your christmas tree in the form of a jersey cow in a meringue ballgown, this is the place for you. I was very taken with the fat green fairy and may bring one of them home with me ...

Just inside the front door. It smelled lovely as they were burning apple and cinnamon candles, and playing birdsong.

A tree full of imps, elves and fairies

I don't know whether these are tomato or orange elves but I just loved their curly hats and curly shoes.

The rather fabulous/alarming cow fairies. Note the human hands.....

Totally adorable fat green fairy. I think she's coming home with me...[She didn't come home with me as, gorgeous as she was, at 19,500 HUF she was ridiculously overpriced. That's £54. I know. I went back and checked the price on 3 separate occasions to make sure I hadn't added a 0 by mistake. I hadn't. And she stayed in the shop]

I wanted to post more pictures today showing the interesting architecture but it's taken me hours just to write this, so tomorrow, my lovelies....

What's behind the Curtain?

Thought I'd slip in a quick one (ooer!) before heading off to behind the former Iron Curtain tomorrow morning.

My bad mood of the other day by teatime had vanished like so much morning mist. I did actually feel better for blarting it out all over the interwebulator but I'll try not to inflict such misery too often. When I started writing this brain-spew, my intention was that I would only put up posts that had a definite something to say and weren't just regurgitated ramblings about the (non-existent) activities of my everyday life. But I've found said ramblings creeping in amongst all the more worthy educational nonsense. And, to be honest, the blogs I read mostly consist of other peoples' musings about stuff happening in their lives which, I have to say, I find fascinating. So, perhaps the few readers I have are also interested in what goes on at Jones Towers. Hmm, this means that having said a few sentences ago that I wouldn't fling more whinging crud at you, I may have to retract that! Well, we'll just see how it all goes.

The good news (the very good news) is that in swapping over the contents from my summer raspberry-pink handbag to my winter black capacious sack-like bag, I managed to find the missing Mont Blanc pen! Calloo Callay, oh frabjous whatnot. I'd shoved it into a pocket that I don't normally use and so couldn't find it before when I was searching for it. I have therefore returned TLH's pen to him - it turned out to be a very short loan period indeed.

I am almost packed for Budapest. The flight leaves tomorrow at 1130 from Gatwick and, as I live only an hour away, we don't have to leave the house until about 0830, so a very civilised time to travel. I have 4 days on my own in which to explore the city during the day, visit the clinic at some point, and then entertain myself in the evening. I'm not brave enough to venture out after dark to investigate the bar scene or anything as tacky as that, so I've had to ensure that I've packed enough stuff to keep me entertained until Mum's back in the apartment.

I'm taking my iPod which now has 8500 songs on it including everything from Chopin to Einsturzende Neubauten together with this really nifty portable speaker which is teeny but LOUD.

I'm taking my laptop with me as I will go seriously mental without regular access to the interwebulator. If it all works properly, then I may well be able to update my blog from there.

I'm also taking my camera and intend to take A LOT of pictures. Budapest is blessed with some beautiful 'fin de siecle' architecture (well, it used to be part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before the First World War) and it has a fair old quantity of museums and art galleries that I'm hoping to get round.

I'm also taking eight books with me which I may not get round to reading but at least I'll have them there. Some are books I've meant to read and others just sound interesting, but they're all light reads and I'll leave them in the apartment once I've read them. I got them all secondhand so they didn't cost me much which means I'm happier to leave them for future tenants.

They are 'Light a Penny Candle' by Maeve Binchy - obviously I know the name but I've never read any of her books. I heard her on Radio 4 a few weeks ago and thought she was hilarious. It's a thick book and the cover's a bit offputting (looks a bit too 'girly' for my liking) but what the hey, I'll give it a go.

'Let Them Come Through' by Neil Forsyth - the back cover says, "Nick Santini would have made a good living as a Medium if his manager wasn't a thief and he didn't operate in a world of endless corruption. With a TV show cancelled in murky circumstances, a crew member dead on his tour and the police and his past fast catching up with him, Santini is a man on the edge. The medium's job is to lie and lie well and only Santini's talent can save him while his life steadily unravels". It's been given reasonable reviews so sounds quite promising.

'I Capture the Castle' by Dodie Smith - I'm aware that this is a much-loved novel but it has somehow passed me by. I'm a little concerned that I'm now too old for it and I should have read it when I was 17 but I'll give it a go. I may read this one first.

Two books by Tobias Hill - 'The Love of Stones' ("The lives of stones are the lives of the dead; which always lead back, never ahead." So says Katherine Sterne, a woman whose life is devoted to searching for a single jewel. "The Three Brethren", a brooch fashioned from rubies, diamonds and pearls has been in existence since the 15th century, passing through the hands of Europe's monarchs and, in spite of its exquisite beauty, leaving a trail of bloodshed and ruin in its wake. Captivated by the jewel's dark history, Katherine finds herself on an increasingly perilous quest to discover its current whereabouts. Searching the hidden quarters of modern-day London, Istanbul and Tokyo, she enters a world steeped in greed and ambition, a world where men are prepared to kill to safeguard the Brethren's secrets") and 'The Hidden' ("Ben Mercer, a young archaeologist fleeing his estranged family in Oxford, finds his way to Athens and thence to Sparta. Confused and lonely, he insinuates himself into a team digging the site of ancient Sparta, an austere and introverted society whose warrior elite practised a form of eugenics by exposing unwanted children and for three centuries managed to keep subdued huge numbers of local people through terror. Ben desperately wants to feel he belongs somewhere, to be part of the multi-national group of archaeologists, but is the dig all that it seems? As he gradually melts their hostility towards him, and begins a relationship with one of the women on the dig, one is led to wonder whether there is something behind their apparent willingness to admit him to their number. Worryingly, ritual appears to be as important to the modern-day team as to the ancients... ").

And, finally, the trilogy by Pat Barker, 'Regeneration', 'The Eye in the Door' and 'The Ghost Road'. These books mix the lives of real and imagined characters during the First World War and I've wanted to read them for ages.

So that's reading material sorted. I'm also taking a whole load of DVDs to watch (I won't list them here but they include such gems as all three Godfather films, the first two Alien films, the original Hallowe'en, The Right Stuff, some Alfred Hitchcock, Fargo, Sexy Beast, Mike Leigh's fabulous film about Gilbert and Sullivan - Topsy Turvey, and other stuff which I can't remember just now).

I've also decided I'm going to teach myself how to crochet (I also want to learn to knit but that can come later) so I got myself a kit which includes a hook, a book of instructions and a large ball of livid lime green wool (you had to have the colour wool they gave you). I did once know how to crochet but that was several lifetimes and two husbands ago, and I've forgotten.

As if all this isn't enough, I've also packed quite a large quantity of Fimo Clay in various colours. TLH's sister made the sensible suggestion that I should pack the receipt because the large block of chocolate-coloured clay does look remarkably like cannabis resin, which could confuse an especially stupid Customs official. Although they're welcome to have a go at smoking it! And then I realised it did also look like how I imagine plastic explosive to look, so an extra reason for packing the receipt.

Fortunately the apartment where we're staying has a washing machine and tumble dryer because, with all this crap now in my suitcase, there isn't that much room for clothes so I'll have to wash what I do manage to fit in.

Hmm, I think I'm quite looking forward to it now. Obv, I'd prefer it if TLH was coming with me (his 'affliction' seems to be getting better, thanks to dilute bleach baths!!!) but that's not possible. We went out for an early dinner last night and had a really good time, ending up in Sainsbury's slightly pissed at 8.30pm and filling the trolley with cakes, biscuits, chocolate and ice cream (the basis of any well-balanced diet).

And talking of chocolates (nice segue there, Kaz), you might wonder what I want Fimo clay for. Well, I don't normally use this blog to specifically advertise my jewellery, but I'm making a new range of completely guilt-free, fat-free, sugar-free and calorie-free chocolate jewellery at extremely affordable prices. For real. I mean, just look at it and try not to drool:


So if any of those float your boat (and don't forget that it's getting perilously close to Christmas!), pop on over to VenerableBead where you'll find all these and more. /end shameless plug.

Well, that's me done, for now. I'm off to the land of Magyar horsemen and Goulash (in reality, it's more motorcars and McDonalds these days, but I can dream....)