Spring Has Sprung

The weather.com reports keep predicting rain for Budapest, but the past three days have been gloriously warm and sunny. The rainy, cold days were getting us a bit down, so it's been wonderful to quickly transition from hats, coasts, gloves and scarves to short sleeves and light jackets. Flowers and trees are blooming everywhere. The photos above and below are from Karolyi Kert, a lovely central square park in the heart of old Pest.


I think Wednesday (when the above photos were taken) may have been our most perfect day here so far. We took Devin to her Superkids pre-school in the Buda hills (Margaret and I switch off picking her up and dropping her off), where she is very happily settled (her newest best friend there is Malika, who is from India), so much so that she gets a little weepy at the idea of us taking off on our journey to Prague on Sunday. Luckily school will be closed all next week, so Dev will just miss a few days the following week and we'll be back in time for International Day at the school, where parents bring in a dish from their native countries. I asked Devin what we should bring and she said, "Maybe broccoli raab?" Ah yes, that traditional American dish -- well, I guess it's as traditionally American as anything else we make at home. (If you folks have any ideas of what would be sufficiently representative of the good, old U. S. of A, let us know!)

After dropping Devin off, we took the second part of a self-guided walking tour with the help of a terrific book called "Visible Cities: Budapest." Our neighbor and landlady, Hadley, is the photo editor at the company that produces these books (she hooked us up with Berlin and Prague guides, too). First we went to the Hungarian National Museum -- about five blocks from where we live -- which is devoted to the country's very complicated, and often tortured history (between the Ottomans, the Habsburg', the Nazi's and the Russians, they've served many masters) back to the 1300s.

And after that we finished one walking tour on Raday Utca, a lovely, mostly pedestrianized street of restaurants and cafes, where we had some stupendous french fries. The self-guided tour led us through old Pest (old meaning the 13th Century!) where the book led us into alleyways and courtyards we otherwise would never know existed. Here's a photo of a preserved old Pest Wall (city walls were big back then -- though they didn't always protect against marauding Mongols and Ottomans) in the courtyard.


On our walk the day before (the last cold, rainy day), we were led inside some gorgeous buildings around the museum, including this beautiful library with an enclosed courtyard cafe. This seems to be common in many buildings, turing the ubiquitous building courtyards in public buildings into some kind of cafe or public space.

As we were nearing the time to pick up Devin, we got a phone call from a friend of a Peace Studies colleague of Margaret's. Margaret had e-mailed him -- he's an organizer here and he invited us to come to a short movie that evening at Central European University (this has become a little bit of a home base for us -- it was founded by billionaire George Soros, who is Hungarian by the way, and it's an English-speaking institution) about the plight of the Roma (gypsy) population in Mitrovica, Serbia. We decided we'd give it a try, even though it probably wasn't our first choice of a first film to take Devin to. So, I picked up Devin and met Margaret and a playground near the university.

Here's a couple of pics from the playground ...

Devin was a real sport through the 30 minute film, "taking notes," and only getting a little fidgety towards the end. It was nice to see an interesting film and talk to interesting people who spoke our language.

After that, we went to a restaurant that a Manhattan College alum (she's Hungarian) took us to a couple of weeks ago. The food there is delicious and inexpensive and there was just a good vibe there night -- the four women next to us were visiting from Frankfurt and were in a festive mood. Here's a pic Devin took of me (she's getting really good at this!) at the restaurant ...


The highlight for me of the day was the walk after dinner to the trolley along Andrassy Ut, Pest's loveliest boulevard -- it's where the famed opera house is. They have ballet class at Devin's school on Wednesdays. Devin didn't want to go the first couple of times (it's optional) but she really wanted to go that day (a sign that she's very happy there now it seems). So, all along Andrassy, Devin showed us her ballet moves, and here's a little video sampling of that ...



After this, we ran into the Manhattan College alum in front of the opera house just as we were remembering meeting her there a couple of weeks ago. And then we had an nice conversation with some Australian tourists in front of Burger King (yes, they're everywhere!). A pleasant end to a wonderful day.

Another beautiful day today -- someone is practicing the sax across the street as I write this -- and we're meeting another friend of a friend for lunch, a Jesuit priest who teaches architecture here.