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| The parliament building |
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| Edible specialities |
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| Striking statues |
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| Turrets galore |
Now that Ed, my youngest brother, lives in Budapest, we were keen to go and visit him and his girlfriend, Melinda. It's wonderful to go to a foreign city and be with people who know their way around and, more importantly, can speak the local language. Trains from Munich go direct to Budapest, which is very convenient. Although the daytime trip takes 7 hours, if you plan it properly, you won't get bored.
Being Easter, there was an Easter market in the city centre, which sold some lovely wares. We also tucked in (on two occasions) to the delicacies you can see pictured above, but were quite content with merely seeing rooster testicle stew written on the blackboard and not in real life. Melinda assured us that the dish is very tasty, but we didn't feel like trying it.
I thought the best tourist attraction was the hospital in the rock - a fully equipped hospital built at the time of WW II, in a set of tunnels with a combined length of 10 km. It was incredibly modern for its time, but vastly lacking compared with today's standards. Given that, at times, there wasn't even running water down there, it's hard to imagine how the doctors and nurses coped. The facility was put in use again during the uprisings in the '50s. Amazing.
Thanks, Ed and Melinda, for showing us around and making our trip so enjoyable!
