Well today we made the shift from vienna to budapext. It was a 3hr high speed train that was more expensive then the overnight one we have in a few days. So we arrived at our hostel around 130 and after dropping stuff of took off again. The hostel is not what I remember hostels being like it is clean the room is fairly large and everything is normal except that the key to the door is anbancient key with what a cartoon charafter might use. Oh the other problem is the hotel and it turns out everyone else quotes prices in euro but wants to be paid in forints... im going to have to change more money... grrr...

Once we dropped our stuff and packed a day bag we were off. First we went to the house of terror. This was the headquarters for the hujgarian ss then stazi... again it seems that hungary along with slovakia picked the wtong side of every major fight. The hungarians entered wwii in 1944 on the German side. Anyway, the most interesting part I found about seeing it with alex was his total lack of reference points... kgb... stazi... nothing... anyway it was a pretty sad story about all the people tortu4ed and killed there... there was also a room filled with pictures of secret policemen and alex pointed out moet of them are still alive... also on a mildly related note when I asked whether I would need my passport to change money alex thought that was a crazy kdea why would the government be interested in that. Note Ukraine still requires passpkrts to change money... as does cuba.
We stopped at a cafe for lupper on the edge ofba dastle moat/pond.
Anyway, after that we went to the szechenya baths... it is a series of hot springs in a baroque palace and grounds.., it was amazingly relaxing and refreshing. I think I have alex hooked on sauna. Anyway there was not much to complain about there. There were three karge pools in the courtyard.... some that had statues shooting water at you... inside the palace there were 8-12 smaller pools for different treatments. And 5 or so saunas. Plus there were additional services you could buy from massage to beauty treatments to food to hospital services. Luckily we required n8ne.

After thst we just walked back down to the hostel thriugh the square of heros and other squares. My intial immpression of hungary, is a place that has faded sigficantly from its former glory... but is on the rise.

Tommorrow up castel hill acrossed the river on the Buda side.