052 - wed 21 jun - budapest

our tour officially over, we moved hotels the following morning, although only just down the road, and into a room that our tour guide had organised for us at a discount rate. we then booked a tour that would take us to budapest's statue park. we weren't actually sure if the tour would run because george w bush happened to be in budapest at the time, and all kinds of roads had been blocked off. we'd been warned the previous day by several people that we should probably expect all kinds of public transport cancellations, and that the tour probably wouldn't actually be running. but it did.

with rodrigo and ferdinand we went up to the statue park, which is basically a big flat paddock of sand where they now house some of the great statues of budapest's communist era. apparently its one of the bigger collections of intact communist statues, because many cities had a nasty habit of completely disfiguring or destroying all signs of the communist era as soon as the russians packed up shop and went home. someone in budapest had the foresight to store a few away, and recently they were repackaged into this open air museum. our bus tour included a guide, which was great because we wouldn't have had much of an idea what any of the statues symbolised if it wasn't for her. it was really interesting.

tacked on to the end of the statue park visit, in order to pad out the tour, our bus took us back to the main office of the tour company, where downstairs they had recreated an authentic communist apartment. at first glance this seemed kind of lame, because we were led downstairs to a white concrete room that basically resembled the basement (because it was the basement) filled with rundown retro furniture and bric-a-brac that you would expect to see at a flea market, or at tolleys. but once the tour guide started opening books, explaining things, we realised that despite the lame-ness it was probably more of an accurate and definitely a more interesting insight into the everyday mundanities of people's lives in the communist era, than anything else we had seen or were to see. our guide in particular gave us some great perspective, because she had been through primary school while the education system was still run by the communist government. she described some of the things they had been taught, history in particular, and how she and many of her schoolmates struggled in high school when all of a sudden there was a revolution, and the history being taught in the classrooms changed overnight, everything they had been taught was no longer true. she had old school books of kids, exercise books with kids names and colored-in front covers, and inside drawings of communist leaders and communist slogans in crayon and colored pencil. it definitely helped to make it real.

our tour ended with a complimentary shot of hungarian brandy, which actually took the form of our guide bringing out several bottles of the stuff in different flavours, putting them on the table with some plastic cups and saying 'help yourself.' i like tours where you get free booze.

whether or not it was the liquor, we were a little bit snoozy at this point, and also a bit peckish. after grabbing something to eat back at that outdoor cafe place, we wandered around in a bit of a daze. it was still quite hot. we ended up meeting back up with rodrigo and ferdinand, having a few drinks and then heading to a restaurant for some yummy dinner. back at the hotel, we said farewell to our perth buddies with the obligatory pointing-the-camera-at-the-mirror type group photo.

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