Budapest

Leaving Vienna for Budapest felt like leaving one world and entering another, we arrived to a very old station where ATMs didn't work (and money changers ripped you off massively; and they were the legal ones), drunks were chilling out on the platform like it was their local and the only available toilet had seedy pimps standing outside waiting for their drug addicted working girls to re-emerge (this may have been our first encounter with sex slavery).
Outside of the train stations Budapest was actually a nice city and the staff at our hostel were really friendly - one even bought out a bottle of vegemite for Jeremy to use at breakfast, though she seemed to forget about offering it to me when Jez wasn't around! (Another sounded like Borat and after a few drinks over dinner entertained us with his candid reflections on the gypsy population.)

We saw heaps of Budapest and learnt all about their communist past - we visited the Museum of Terror, which was excellent, it detailed life under the Nazi occupation and under Communism. We also visited Statue Park which houses all the old communist style propaganda statues that were found in public places prior to 1989. This was outside of Budapest and actually quite small (lame) but we got some good pictures.

Needless to say, Hungarians look back at this time as a period of oppression and terror - 1 in 3 families during this period had a member of their family incarcerated by the secret police! It really highlighted how communism was corrupted to become (or perhaps always was) an inhumane nightmare for those it purported to free.
Budapest also has a Palace up on a hill over looking the river that divides Buda and Pest. This had a great view and a few national museums and galleries that we explored (although quite quickly as they were not of profound quality).

Before departing Budapest Jez and I indulged in one final local tradition - Hungarian Thermal Baths. The experience was lost on me as it felt more like a warm dip in the local swimming pool, but again this experience was ruined by the roaming british stag party, a guy old enough to be my father was trying to give me a flower in exchange for my bottle of water, thinking I was a local he spoke to me in broken english. At first I ignored him but he persisted with his broken english and was being egged on by his equally repulsive stags but when when he discovered I was Australian (I gave him a few choice words) he slinked off with a red face!

(While this was going on I was in the hottest outdoor bath enjoying a shoulder massage from a statue that was spitting water out. It was like a big public pool, but I don't share Emily's fear of public pools having grown up swimming in other peoples snot from a young age It was probably a good thing that there was chlorine in the pools though, it needed the disinfectant, particularly because of its popularity with the beloved british stags. I enjoyed the baths so much I stayed in to long and got sunburnt, or maybe I had been slowly cooking in the hot bath....)

The joys of hostelling, Emily is on her bed and I am on mine (a matteress on the floor)

The statues at Momento Park

The view from the Palace grounds (another Unesco site)

Emily greeting her loyal subjects

another view of pest

It rained a bit while we were here, this was our street after we got back from the baths. Where I'd got sunburnt...