Buda

On Friday we arrived in Budapest at about 2:30 pm and I was not impressed. In all honesty I totally counted out this city and was just waiting for Vienna the following Monday. After we arrived at the hotel the entire group went for a walk around the area we were staying and then I went with Brianne, Jamie and Liz to get sushi for dinner. None of us felt very safe in the area at first. Part of it was that we didn't know the city at all.
There is a very different feel to Budapest. It does not receive many tourists in comparison to Prague, Paris, London, Munich, etc... so there is no main "tourist" area of the city like Times Square or the Champs-Elysee. Hero's Square is one of the biggest attractions in the area. It is a huge square with statutes called the Millennium Memorial which depicts the founding of Hungary by its seven tribes. The memorial was constructed in 1900. Several museums border the square as well.
On Saturday we took a tour of the House of Terror. This museum is one of the best museums I have ever been too. The House of Terror is the building from which the facists regime ruled (the Cross Arrow Party) in the 1940s and then the communist regime. The Nazis arrived in Hungary in 1944. The Jewish population in Budapest at the time was 300,000. After the official end of the war 100,000 would return. The Arrow Cross Party is a form of Nazism that was created by Hungarians in the 1930s but was outlawed by the current government. After Nazi occupation they handed Hungary over to the Arrow Cross Party and legalized the party again. We visited the Jewish Ghetto the following day.
After the end of World War II the KMP (Hungarian communist party) took over and would officially reign from 1945 to 1956. Communism would not end in Hungary until 1989. The last of the Red Army did not leave Hungary until 1991. The KMP did not trust its citizens and had secret police called the AVO (a lot like the Gestapo) that worked all over the country. "Ordinary" people would spy on their neighbors, wiring peoples apartments and homes was quite common. Those who were suspected of or actually were planning against the government were taken by the secret police in the middle of the night to the House of Terror where they were tortured from 3 months to X amount of years for information, killed, or tortured and then sent to prison for life or for X amount of time. The prisoners were kept in an intricate dungeon-like system underneath the block that the House of Terror was located on because the KMP offices had expanded into the surrounding buildings on the block. There were different types of cells for different types of torture. About 2,000 people were executed during this time and over 100,000 were imprisoned. 44,000 were sent to concentration camps where they were worked to death or until their release. Interestingly a lot of the people involved in the KMP are still alive and out of prison despite the atrocities they committed. Personally I felt that the KMP reign was a lot worse than learning about the Nazis in some ways because all of the torture was done a very direct, one-on-one attack. If you are interested you can look up the different forms of torture used, but I wouldn't recommend it. We were also shown a hanging tree that had been in use during the regime as well as the cells and what not.
After the museum Katie, Ashley, Gentaro, Mimi and I went to Hero's Square. We took photos and walked around the park behind the square where the Vajdahunyad Castle is. There were a bunch of stands selling things and we got street corn which is corn on the cob from the a street vendor, naturally. Katie and I also got Hungarian candy from this vendor and we could not figure out how to take the candy without touching all of it with our fingers. And the lady kept trying to trap our hands in these bags and we were like WHY ARE YOU TRAPPING OUR HANDS? But then we put two and two together, bag = glove. These types of things happen to us a lot. We have embraced the stupid American stereotype quite well. I have also noticed that people call us stupid probably because Americans generally have a happy disposition. I conclude that many people judge our smiles for stupidity, but it's really just because we are happy. No one really smiles in Europe too much, a few here and there, but it's rare. For example, today we went to Schonbrun Palace in Vienna and this group of German teenagers were literally glaring at everything thing, and standing with such an attitude despite the fact that they were surrounded by the glory of Schonbrun. I. don't. get. it. . Asians smile. Americans smile. Australians smile. Canadians smile. Europeans don't. Oh when they do smile at you it's because they are your father's age and hitting on you. So it's a creepy smile. Sorry Europe, doesn't count. Then again it's been raining here for a month and flooding so Europe may just be a bit blue. Anywho, the candy was really good and we peeked in the baths at the most popular bath house.
That evening we went on a dinner cruise which was SO COOL. The views of Budapest along the Danue were the best I've seen on this trip. The buffet was the best buffet as well for dinner, but dessert was a little disappointing. But that's okay because I stuffed my face for dinner. Katie and I had so much taking photos and looking at Budapest shine in all its glory. DON'T WORRY MA (shout out woooo) I GOT SOME GREAT SELFIES ON DA BOAT FOR YA.
Gotta go get gelato. Photos to come!