An American in Prague: Pest

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On Sunday we were led around the Jewish quarter of Budapest and over to the Buda side of Budapest where another castle is by Aggie, a friend of Dr. Klima’s who is a historian in Budapest. Side note: Budapest is two cities split by the Danue River. There is the Buda side and the Pest side to = Budapest. We stayed on the Pest side. The Jewish quarter of Budapest is still in a lot of disrepair from the facists because the communists only left in 1990s and did not want to spend lots of money on repairs. As long as things were functional, no additional repairs were given. When the Nazis came all of the Jewish families of Budapest were placed in the quarter. Over time many were sent to extermination and concentration camps. The Nazis used one of the markets to hold the bodies of those who died in the ghetto. We were shown Dohnny’s Synagogue (the largest in Budapest) and the WWII memorials that surrounded the synagogue as well.

After the Jewish quarter we went to the Buda side and walked around the hill top and saw views of the Pest side from the castle. The castle in Budapest is massive.

That afternoon Mimi, Katie, Mike, Alex and I went to the National Gallery because it was free admission with our 48 hour metro passes and we saw their sculpture exhibit, modern art exhibit and the renaissance painting exhibit. The modern art exhibit was really cool because a lot of them were based on geometry and were like eye tricks. Generally I don’t like modern art. The renaissance exhibit was a lot of religious paintings that depicted Jesus’ birth or his death. So much Jesus.

The metro system in Budapest is a death trap. You have seven seconds at each station to get on/off the car which is not much time at all. I don't understand why it's so little time. But it's cray. And when the door are about to close they have all these alarms go off. The doors open and like two seconds later they start whistling and whatever. I don't love it.

That night 10 of us went to a restaurant called Menza and then got ice cream. We left the following morning for Vienna by bus.