tisdag 10 augusti 2010

communist baths…

Or rather communist statue and capitalist baths. Our last day in Budapest we went to Memento park, a historical park displaying remnants of Hungary's communist era. The main part was a collection of old communist statues that the Hungarians decided to keep as a memory rather than destroy for short-lived instant relief. Most of theses were rather boring things like busts and memorial plaques but a few of them were stocky, soviet style soldiers and proletariat figures. I like these but there were too few of them to really make it an interesting place. The rest of the park was a small exhibition about communism, a series of instructional films for secret agents and my favourite, a Trabant car that you could sit inside to get a feel of.

When we had seen the park we decided to go to the baths again, this time we tried the Gellett spa in the famous Gellert Hotel. It was smaller and had fewer pools than the other one but decorations were nicer. The thermal baths were split into one female and one male part and at least the male part was beautiful. Turquoise and blue tiles, figures of small children, flower reliefs and even the water temperature in mosaic. I liked the other bath more than the Gellert spa though, since I like sharing the thermal pools with my girlfriend.

After the spa we headed to our favourite restaurant in Budapest, Parika for some nice dinner. Yini had sadly developed some kind of skin allergy that made it painful for her to walk so she went back to the hostel while I continued to the river front for some night time photography. It is amazing how easily a city can score points by sticking some warm lights on to grand old buildings. The Mathias church and other important buildings on castle hill were perhaps even more stunning at night. An added bonus was finding a small music festival and a relatively good ska band. The walk was longer than I though it would be but nice, and when i start posting pictures you will see it was worth it.

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