A little info on Budapest

First, I am not sure if this is just me being uneducated, but here is a little fact about Budapest. So the Danube river runs through the city dividing it into Buda on the west and Pest on the east. I had no idea, but nonetheless the city is terrific. I might even go as far as to say my favorite Major European City to date. Not that that says much since I have not been to that many, oh well you understand. The sightseeing highlights would be the Children's railway, the Market, church service in St. Stephens Basilica, and the Szechenyi Baths.

The children's Railway is a railway that was started during the Communist reign in Hungary. Children ages 10-14 run the railway. They do all of the work from printing, selling, and taking tickets to working the switch boards, changing the tracks, and directing the trains. At every station you can see the children salueting the trains and every cabin has its own worker. They are adorable but at the same time freighting. It was kind of creepy almost like a bad horror movie. You are riding in an old train through the woods on the mountains surrounding Budapest with little kids dressed up as adults being in charge. Well of course my pictures are not up yet but here are a few of the kids... http://www.budapestinfo.hu/images/gallery/gallery_en.phtml?imagename=R_526

The Market pretty much was just a huge building with a lot of stands like a flea market type thing. It was nice alot of interesting things such as pig and chicken heads. St. Stephen's was just a beautiful place. It had a good mix of burgandy, grey and white marble with georgous frescos, statues and alters. The service we attended had an amazing Choir to go along with the huge pipe organ. It did not even matter that the whole mass was said in Hungarian.

The Szechenyi Baths were a very interesting place. It was a huge old yellow building in the middle of a nice park. Inside the building was several small pools of varrying temperatures, a few suanas, and a steam room. Then in the center of the building outside there are there main pools. One had a center hot tub area that was surrounded by a ring of water that reminded me of Emerald point where you just go around and around in a circle real fast. That is always fun. Then throughout the pool there were random jets. On the side of one of the pools was a chess board that was taken over by a few elderly men. It wold be so cool to retire in Budapest and just come play chess in a heated pool all day. We need these things in America. You can not take pictures of the baths for people's personal saftey since all areas of the building are co-ed so here are a few pictures i found... http://www.budapestinfo.hu/images/gallery/gallery_en.phtml?imagename=B_001143

Alright well that is about it for now if anyone is thinking about studying abroad look into Budapest that would be a great place to study. Just in case you wanted my thoughts on the matter.