Budapest

With my lecturing finished at the University, I am visiting nearby Budapest for a few days. It's south of Bratislava on the Danube, an easy two-hour train ride. I even got two new stamps in my passport, one from the Slovak border agent and another from the Hungarian, a first.

This is the National Gallery in the Palace complex on the Buda (west) side of the Danube, taken on this very foggy day. With major historic buildings on both sides of the river, it evokes Prague, although that's a different river.

This is the Pest Concert Hall, one of the most beautiful buildings I saw today. Designed by Mihály Pollack, it traces to the mid-19th century. The mix of historic architectural styles in Budapest is strikingly similar to Bratislava, no surprise since some of the same architects worked in both cities and, indeed, since Bratislava (then called Pressburg) was the capital of Hungary for a couple of centuries.

I spotted just one building with an exterior painting, of the kind so common in Prague. This one (in the middle) faces a major construction site by Szabadság híd (Freedom Bridge), where the new fourth subway line is under construction.

On the other side of the street is Corvinus University of Budapest, in an architectural style I never see in Bratislava.

Budapest has a bustling pedestrian-only shopping area in the middle of town, just like Vienna, Prague, and Bratislava. This is Váci utca, running north and south, a couple of blocks east of the river.

On Régi Posta utca, a little side street off that shopping street, McDonald's has gone up-scale with McCafe, serving high-end pastries and great coffees in china cups. This was Budapest's first McDonald's, opening in 1988.

I've gotten used to seeing American pop culture absorbed everywhere here, but I did a double-take at the "MTV" sign on this historic building on "Freedom Square" -- until I realized that was short for Magyar Televízió (Hungarian TV).

These huge photographs of Los Angeles and Times Square in a Burger King by the Oktagon are not uncommon in central Europe.

Travel tip of the day: My round-trip first-class ticket on the very nice EuroCity train was 902 SKK (about $37). I bought it at the Bratislava train station an hour before I left. The clerks speak English and they take credit cards. The RailEurope web site, for the identical trains on the same days, charged $64 for round-trip second-class and $94 for round-trip first class. I am not making this up. I'm seeing a lot of on-line articles with tips for how Americans can cut costs on European holidays, given the collapse of the dollar. Here's another: wait until you get here to buy your train tickets.

This blog entry has gotten very long, so I'll do separate ones for some other things that caught my attention today.

NOTE: Click on any image in this blog to see it full-size.