Update!

We've done quite a bit in the past few days.

I'll start with Tuesday night - We went to see Eugene Onegin, a 3-act, 7-scene Tchaikovsky opera based on the Alexander Pushkin novel in rhyme by the same name. It was completely in Russian with Hungarian subtitles, so we had no idea what was going on. But we enjoyed the beautiful voices, full orchestra, and the Opera House setting itself. We later looked up a plot synopsis and discovered that it is the story of a man (Onegin) who rejects a woman and kills his best friend and later regrets it.
The Hungarian State Opera House itself was incredible. It's a horseshoe-shaped, Neo-Renaissance building located in Budapest (on the Pest side). It's not huge as opera houses go, but the acoustics were absolutely amazing, especially considering it was one of the first opera houses to be built in the world. It's a very historic building - many of the greats have played here or have been guests. Gustav Mahler was actually the music director here for a period of time.

Then on Thursday, we went to Szentendre(in English...St. Andrew)- a village slightly North-West of here. It was essentially an in-tact Baroque town that has (since the 1500's) been the center of the Serbian community in Hungary and an artist's colony. The town itself was adorable with its cobblestone, winding, narrow streets, little shops, and art galleries. We went to the Marzipan Museum there - which was amazing. Marzipan is an almond and sugar paste that can be molded into virtually any shape and then dyed to create life-like figures, scenes, and buildings. Check out our pictures!

The next day, Friday, we took a tour of Parliament and later explored the Jewish section of Budapest. The Parliament building was extremely ornate and is the third largest in the world after Romania and Argentina. We saw the crown jewels and the holy crown, which were, strangely enough, located directly under a 5-ton chandelier...which the tour guide himself actually called the most dangerous place in the museum. We also trudged up the huge staircase in the foyer. As we were doing this we could easily picture the Hapsburgs standing at the top of the staircase crossing their arms and tapping their feet, laughing at the out-of-shape guests who were not important enough to use the lift. We also saw the legislative room. This building was absolutely gorgeous and completely different from any government building in The States, which are clean and simple, as opposed to the extravagantly detailed design that the Hapsburgs used anywhere they occupied.

Later on Friday, we visited the Jewish section. It was incredibly run-down, though it looked like they were working on some renovation. We later learned that it was hardly been touched in centuries. The one part of the section that looked decent was the Synagogue. It was stunning. It was an Moorish Revival-style building that, after being bombed and suffering air-raids during the communist era, had just started to be restored in the early 90's.

On Saturday we took a day-trip to Vienna with our host to see the other half of the center of the Hapsburg's dynasty. It was incredible (and incredibly different from Budapest)! We immediately noticed how few people were walking around, even on a Saturday. Some parts were like a ghost-town. We also noticed that, unlike Budapest, there are more traffic laws and speed limits. And everything was incredibly orderly. Except for the street pattern. The streets in Budapest had been straightened out by the great architect and engineer, Szechenyi, in the 19th century. In contrast, the streets of Vienna never underwent anything of the sort and are incredibly winding and narrow in many places. The most obvious difference was probably the language. German, of course, as opposed to Hungarian. The similarities were also evident, though. The Hapsburg's palace was, of course, in true Hapsburg taste, extravagant and intimidating. For example, they had huge statues of men with clubs directly outside of the castle. Not-so-veiled threat? I think so.

The first thing we did when we got there was step into St. Stephen's Basilica, which is currently undergoing renovation, but is still incredibly visually spectacular.
We also went to the Holocaust memorial, the monument itself was designed to look like an Auschwitz gas chamber and had all the names of the camps around it along with an inscription in Hungarian, Hebrew, and English. We have photos that we will be posting as soon as possible. It was incredibly intense and sad, but also moving, to be in the midst of this spot where the Gestapo headquarters once stood. Similarly, we ate at a cafe that Hitler used to frequent when he was studying art in Vienna. I wish he had succeeded in his art...maybe we could have dodged the bullet that was World War II. Anyway, the cafe was amazing, even if it did have an eerie back story and incredibly high prices. All of Vienna was expensive, which makes sense seeing as their income is about 4 times that of Budapest's.
We also walked around the palace a bit, outside mostly, and were able to look into the courtyard where the horses have their stables and glimpse the perfectly-trained Lipizzaner horses, the preferred breed of the Hapsburgs, of course.
The palace was absolutely beautiful, as were the "storage buildings" where the Habsburgs stored their excess art, ancient artifacts, and such.
We took a peek into the royal butterfly collection, which is in a gigantic glass room where you can now order food and eat among the butterflies, and saw where Franz Josef kept his huge collection of books in a floor-to-ceiling library.

On Sunday (today) we visited Gödöllő in Pest County, which is a palace built for the Grassalkovich family and later passed on to Franz Josef and his wife, Elizabeth (known as Sisi to many). Sisi spent lots and lots and lots of time here and it now houses a museum, much of which is dedicated to her. They have recently torn up the gardens and are completely re-doing them - because nothing is good enough apparently. The place was amazing though, with ornate decorations (of course) and intimidating size.
After that we went to visit a horse stable, which was fun, but cold. The horses were clearly well-taken care of and were absolutely beautiful.




So as our time in Hungary comes to an end (we fly out Tuesday) we've been reflecting on these first five weeks of the trip in general.
Basically, these past two weeks have been very different from Israel in regard to the weather and the history and the people. For example, the subways and buses here are always completely silent, while in Israel people are incredibly friendly on public transportation.
It's interesting that not many people speak any English, which is also quite different from Israel, where most people did.
We've been having a blast and we're looking forward to Spain! Keep checking back for photos of Vienna, Budapest, etc...
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Emily
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