It's raining when I wake up after only a short break of sleep. Raining and raining and raining. I head to the Parliament to meet Patricia, arriving a little late. It turns out that she slept through her alarm and would write me emails throughout the day apologizing and making new plans for the evening.
So I head on to master the byzantine mess of the Parliament myself. First around the building to the wrong side, then back around the building to the wrong line. Then inside the building where I manage to get the last ticket for the 10am tour when everyone in front of me has been receiving tickets for the 12pm tour. So I head back to the wrong line, which I had been told was the line for people with tickets. 10am comes, 10:15am comes, and I get curious. I poke my head out of line and towards the front of the line and lo and behold the entire front half of the line has disappeared into the ether. I guess I missed the tours? Another tourist, a man from Japan, is in the boat of left-behinds with me. Luckily Mr. Arigato is more forward than myself and goes on a mission to find answers. He explains our case in broken English to a Spanish language tour guide, and I try to add pieces in what I think is more clear English. But the lady answers Mr. Arigato, while turning to me and rudely insisting that she does not speak German. Or maybe I'm more obsessed with German culture than I believed and I've started speaking German without realizing it? In non-German countries? Eventually someone tells us we can sneak in with the Spanish tour group as long as we keep it a secret. Alright.
Inside we roam around for a few seconds and then something beckons us backwards. Is that English? Sure enough there's a two person tour group being shown around by a private guide - a common way to see these cheaper Eastern locations from a local's perspective. After casually standing a few feet away, we get permission from the British couple to crash their tour.
The Parliament itself was probably less interesting than the surrounding hubbub. It was built as part of the 18965 quirky Hungarian 1000 year celebration - quirky because building umpteen magnificent palaces, churches, statues and a parliament is a funny birthday celebration, and because they celebrated the wrong year. Magyars first arrived in 895, not 896, like originally thought. And the powers that be realized this - but need an extension on their massive development project. Sounds like my students!
After climbing 96 steps to see the crown at the bottom of the 96 meter dome (see a theme here?) we saw the Hungarians pride and joy. An interesting crown with an interesting history - amended and changed, hidden and found again, sent to a then top-secret location in the US for safekeeping during WWII and then returned by Jimmy Carter. Actually of its storied history I think that's the most intriguing part to me - the fact that historical artifacts were hidden off in lands away from the war. It's easier to connect to that reality of preservation during difficult times somehow than the reality here pasting your romanticized picture over a jewel seemed like a necessary way to assert your power over an empire of peasants.
One half of the former two house parliament is no longer in us. Turns out this is possible when you build the largest parliament on the continent and end up as one of the runts of the litter population-wise, after turnover and turmoil. So we went in the old House of Lords - not used because the Soviets chose the red chambers over these blue ones. Shocker. Amazing handwoven carpets adorn the antechamber - one of the largest? the largest? There are so many arbitrary relativistic claims given on tours, so who knows. However big it is, those ladies must have worked their bums off because the carpet is still in perfect condition and the government doesn't mind us feeling its odd crunch under so many pairs of shoes.
The parliament room is leafed with gold all about, equipped with a primitive electronic vote system and apparently boring. Scribes have to be changed every 10 minutes and the worth of debates was measured by the number of cigars it was worth leaving to waste in the cigar holders outside.
Walking out my fellow tour crasher and I (is there a Hollywood deal for Tour Crashers in our future?) have a conversation about baseball. Definitely the first time that someone's initial response to my hometown's name has been an enthusiastic "Padres!" He must be missing our current slide while on vacation. We chatted about Aki and the lack of good turf and players left in Japan. I bite my tongue and don't tell him that Ichiro's stance makes me want to scream.
Outside the rain keeps bursting down upon the Budapest streets. I try to tip our impromptu tour guide but after taking the money she turns around and gives it back. Did I offend her? So thank you random anglophones for letting me crash your private, and likely expensive, tour. Oh and thank you Hungarian Parlament for letting me experience a little bit of what it must have been like to be a citizen during some of those regimes with mazes of bureaucracy to weave through. An ersatz experience of a life amid bureaucratic roadblocks. And I thought I was just in for a dry trek through an old building.
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