I must’ve walked for kilometres today – I’ve had a really full second day in Budapest as I had to schedule in a visit to the Embassy to arrange my Emergency Passport. They were only open after 2pm today, so I could squeeze in an attraction or two before I made my way to Királyhágó ter again.
I had breakfast at the hotel – two slices of bread and a tub of yoghurt. I then quickly went to the nearest photo studio to arrange for two passport photos for my Emergency Passport. After waiting for ten minutes, my photos were ready – it was a bit funny seeing the photos as my pose is similar to the pose generally used in the yester years. Even though I still look straight at the camera, there is a slight face and body angle. Don’t get me wrong, the camera was modern, the studio is comparable to that in any cities, it’s just the pose! Haha. If the photo’s in black and white or sepia, it wouldn’t have looked out of place in the 50’s!
After I got the photos, I took the Metro from the nearest station, Kálvin tér because I wanted to see the Heroes’ Square. I’m getting used to the Metro system in Budapest – having had to take it from the first day so I could go to the Australian Embassy meant that I had to immerse myself in the public transport. After transferring from the Blue Line to the Yellow Line in Deák tér, I stopped at Hősök tere and walked right to the Heroes’ Square. The square is huge! The statues of the heroes circling the big Millenium Monument in the middle are impressive. It was pretty hot today as well so I didn’t hang around for too long. I stopped by the Palace of Art shop quickly to get some postcards and then walked along the leafy Andrássy út towards Oktogon. The House of Terrors was my next stop. The building at 60 Andrássy út used to be the site for torture during Nazi occupation as well as during the communist regime. The music and the atmosphere within the building created such an emotional impact that you felt the oppression as you moved from one room to the next. When you entered the building, you hear the account of a local man who lamented the loss of sixteen year old kids who were hanged because of their ‘counter-revolutionary’ activities. Visit the House of Terrors when you are in Budapest to get a real feeling of what life used to be under its communist history. Looking at the traffic outside and the amount of commercialism, as I mentioned in my previous blog entry, Budapest feels like any other western European city, except for the weird language. So, when you learn and see its dark history, you get a glimpse of what life was like before democracy was established.
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