Monday, December 17, 2007
Monday, December 10, 2007
Budapest, playing "show an animal" game...:-)
a Sea star????
aaa...cockroach??
aaaaaaaa flatfish?
aaaa spider-woman?
a Spanish matador? :-)
Budapest, day third, the last
Heroes' Square (Hősök tere in Hungarian) is one of the major squares of Budapest, Hungary. It lies at the end of Andrássy Avenue (with which it comprises part of a World Heritage site), next to City Park and thermal baths we went to.
It is surrounded by two important buildings, Museum of Fine Arts on the left and Palace of Art (or Art Exhibition Museum) on the right. On the other side it faces Andrassy Avenue which has two buildings looking at the square — one is residential and the other one is the embassy of Serbia (former Yugoslavian embassy where Imre Nagy secured sanctuary in 1956).
The central site of the square, as well as a landmark of Budapest, is the Millennium Memorial (also known as Millennium Monument or Millenary Monument) with statues of the leaders of the seven tribes that founded Hungary in the 9th century and other outstanding figures of Hungarian history (see below). The construction of the memorial was started when the one thousandth anniversary was celebrated (in 1896), but it was finished only in 1929 and the square got its name then.
On the 16th June 1989 a crowd of 250,000 gathered at the square for the historic reburial of Imre Nagy, who had been executed in June 1958.
Friday, December 07, 2007
Budapest, day third: Thermal baths
Széchenyi Thermal Bath:
The Széchenyi Thermal Bath is one of the largest spa complexes in Europe. It's also the first thermal bath of Pest. It owes its existence to Vilmos Zsigmondy, a mining engineer. on his initiative, successful deep borings had been performed in the City Park, where later, in 1881 already an "Artesian bath" was in operation. However, this temporary type of bath was meeting the demands of the age less and less, so the Széchenyi Thermal Bath was built in 1913 on the basis of plans composed by Gyozo Czigler. The Bath was expanded in 1927 with a public bathing department for gentlemen and ladies and a beach site. In the middle of the 1960s, further transformations took place, including the creation of a group thermal section in bathing suits as well as a daytime outpatient hospital (complex physiotherapy department).
The reconstruction of the pools of the swimming section, their equipment with water filtering and circulation devices was completed in 1999. The so-called fancy bath includes a whirling corridor, underwater effervescence production, neck shower, water beam back massage installed in the sitting banks and many other services.
Budapest, Christmas fair
Budapest Christmas Fair is the best place to buy Exclusive Christmas Gifts:
* quality folk and applied art products,
* decorations made from traditional materials and with authentic techniques
All products are hand-made and the Hungarian Society of Folk Arts guarantees their quality. You can watch many cultural programmes and listen to folk music while you're looking for gifts.
On 21st-23rd December a small Betlehem comes alive on the square with a crib and live animals. You can take part in a Christmas tree decorating competition, as well.
We didn't forget to taste traditional Hungarian food and cakes: strudel, grilled sasuges and meat, Christmas cookies, kürtös kalács (hollow, cylinder-shaped pastry with different coatings: sugar, walnut)and cinnamon nectar.
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Budapest, Building of Parliament
The Hungarian Parliament Building (Hungarian: Országház) is the seat of the National Assembly of Hungary, one of the Europe's oldest legislative buildings, a notable landmark of Hungary and a popular tourist destination of Budapest. It lies in Kossuth Lajos Square, on the bank of the Danube, in Budapest. It is currently the Third Largest Parliament In the world (1st Romania, 2nd Argentina)
Budapest was united from three cities in 1873 and seven years later the National Assembly resolved to establish a new, representative Parliament Building, expressing the sovereignty of the nation. A competition was published, which was won by Imre Steindl, but the plans of the other two competitors were also realized, facing the Parliament: one serves today as the Ethnographical Museum, the other as the Ministry of Agriculture.
Construction from the winning plan was started in 1885 and the building was inaugurated on the 1000th anniversary of the country in 1896, and completed in 1904. (It is to be noted that the architect of the building went blind before its completion.)
There were about one thousand people working on its construction in which 40 million bricks, half a million precious stones and 40 kg gold were used.
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