Soaked through and through

Not sure if I offended my tour guide at the parliament, but I feel like I must have offended *someone* as I trudge through high waters to the Great Synagogue. I stop wading through the rivers to grab some salmon carpaccio as a place recommended for foodies in Budapest (tasty!) but then find the synagogue closed for a Jewish holiday. Fumbling my camera under my umbrella with no free hands and no free brain cells, I grab some shots to make the sopping wet journey something less of an exercise in futility. Every water-logged fiber of my being wants to head back to my warm, dry, friendly hostel, but I press on to the next opportunity to enlighten myself. Might as well just stay wet right? Which means more walking tot eh Buda side. I'm sure theres a bus, but it just seems somehow more logical to keep moving, keeping trudging through and not worry about relying on schedules and wheels. My feet constantly hate me for this unhealthy reliance I have on them. Somewhere about a quarter from the end of the bridge they start letting me know just how much they hate me. The balls of the feet seem to be the only part that have the, well, balls to do the backtalking. If only they had eyes to enjoy the view they were getting!

Up the expensive funicular and over to the Hospital in the Rock on the other side of castle hill. I just make it for the hourly tour. Yes! The day isn't a wash after all. Highlights of the tour include looks at all the old lab equipment (a hand-operated centrifuge?!), old propaganda in the bomb shelter built as an extension from the hospital and the hilariously overwrought faces of the wax figures bringing the hospital to life. There are also funny stories about a couple hospital machines being used only once. One was used only on Madonna to recreate a hospital for the movie Evita (filmed in Budapest). And the `new` X-ray machine which was used only to X-ray the main doctor's broken pinky finger. Poor guy.

Back to movies for a second - Budapest has been used for a number of movies because it's cheap and offers a great backdrop for other European cities and apparently Argentina as well. Spielburg had the entire area surrounding the opera turned into a mini-Germany (I think it was Germany for the movie Munich). For the days surrounding the filming, tourists could be found scratching their heads and dazed, confused at their suddenly inaccurate maps.

After the tour I chat with the guy my age running the souvenir shop. At the shop, they sell some of the 10,000 extra WWII era bandages they still have lying around. The shop attendant is very interested in describing the meaning of the propaganda on a postcard I buy and his interpretation thereof. We chat a few minutes about California and goulasch and places to visit and it leaves me in a sunny mood.

The skies almost echo this change - the downpour has at last ceased and tourists across the city can be heard zipping away their umbrellas with glee. I wander around the hill and then the funicular whisks me back down to 0. Meaning point zero with a giant 0 statue marking the point from which all other distances in Hungary are measured. Bratislava seems to have a similar system.

I give into my body at this point and head back to the hostel around 5:30. I make plans with Patricia to see a movie with a bunch of foreigners (and their sympathizers) later that evening. Then I try to break into my hostel's social scene. But they're all talking about the rigors of 6 months of travel and it's hard to break in. Like birds, they are all starting that annual migration southward as the weather worsens. Seems incredibly smart since it seems that fall has skipped the northern half of Europe, as I will discover later.

With all my enthusiasm straight off the plane, I was incredibly jealous of the 6 monthers with all their time to hop to and fro around these amazing locales. Inwardly I was planning my own such trip - when could I do it? how would I get away? But I've begun realiying more and more that I'd rather be with my family or otherwise surrounded by people I love. Don't get me wrong, I love traveling and I love experiencing things as an individual. But I don't think I love it six months worth. So instead I'm starting plans to lobby my dad for my dream low key (and relatively cheap!) vacation around these parts.