A Leggjob City

Budapest is a blast: a nice and clean city, friendly people and a charmingly incomprehensible language (that is, to somebody with a Western European background). Spending a couple of days in the Hungarian capital is a splendid idea, and produces some mental flotsam & jetsam. Here's a selection of it:

Memento Park lies in the city's outskirts, but is well worth a bus ride. After all, statues and monuments of the Communist era cannot be left unvisited, especially if they are placed in a rather glum environment, which gives a perfect impression of a grey and not-so-wonderful past. Plus, as a bonus, there's a real Trabi to sit in.

Dancing with the birds.	Two cretins (foreground).

Next to the usual tourist rubbish on sale (USSR passports, McCommunism t-shirts ant the like) there's also a very interesting-sounding DVD on display: "The Life of an Agent", a collage of instructional videos of the secret Hungarian police. It is supposed to make a good companion film to "The Lives of Others", and as such looks very promising.

Speaking of cinema, there's a theater on the inner ring road which features unusual but eye-catching posters - they are display windows made by hand. They've had these three on display (click to enlarge):

Black Swan, Micmacs, Polanski.

In conclusion have some random observations:

• food is excellent in restaurants having to do / deriving from mensas;
• the sound indicating a subway stop would make for a good ringtone;
• if every single one of the 1'700'000 Budapesters visits a bath for two hours every month, the average occupancy of a single bath at any given moment should be around 730 people - which seems to be in line with direct observation;
• Reka is a champion for providing useful tips :-)
• "a leggjob" has nothing to do with nose- (or other) jobs, but is simply a homophone for "the best".

The sun always shines in Budapest.

For a more traditional approach to travel photography, try this photo gallery. And last but not least, you might find this list of common expressions in Hungarian (complete with their pronounciations) useful.