Budapest!

Somehow we didn't take a single picture over Christmas, which is odd. Nonetheless, we had a lovely, quiet Christmas at home, with a cute tree with homemade decorations as usual. On Boxing Day we walked up to Cospeda for a dinner with Calin and Susanne and their parents, all four of whom were visiting. I'm sorry we didn't get pictures of that meal at least, as it involved lots of northern European specialties, including various preparations of herring, meatballs, and cod, as well as some things I'm sure we've forgotten. (We ended up having to admit the pregnancy to C & S's parents, as it was too hard to avoid the rounds of Schnapps with the meal, though Calin did fill up the first glass with water.) It's possible that we didn't take so many pictures because I was miserable with morning sickness and fatigue around this time, and couldn't stand to be around meat at all, which put a bit of a damper on my Christmas feasting. (I think I had a single piece of the beef filet we cooked for Christmas dinner, as it just seemed gross at the time, though Jeremi assured me otherwise.)

Despite feeling generally crappy, we decided somewhat spontaneously to head to Budapest for New Year's Eve. We were able to get ridiculously cheap train tickets, and couldn't really say no. And so began our Hungarian adventure!

After a really long train ride to get there, and checking into our hotel, we headed out for our first supper, and ended up eating at this place, which was awesome. So good in fact, that we ended up going there later in the trip for another meal, which we never do while travelling. But really, the food was great, and the service was good. (Incidentally, it was really impressive how many people there spoke both German and English really well.)
I'll admit to being a lazy tourist on this trip, partly because it was freaking cold, but also because I felt so crappy that we often got a pretty late start to the day. You wouldn't know it from these pictures though - I look like I feel great!

The next day we wandered the city, taking in the architecture, much of it with traces of the Austro-Hungarian yellow still to be seen.

While heading towards the the river (the Danube), we came across this tree, which had really cool Japanese lantern-like seed pods. I have no idea what kind it is - any suggestions?
And here we are, checking out the twin cities of Buda and Pest from one of the many bridges.
From here we could see one of the many bath houses for which the city is so famous, due to the substantial natural hot springs in the area. This was one of our plans while there, but it proved to be harder than anticipated, as many were closed for a couple days over the holidays, including this one.
Here's a giant statue of St. Stephen, or Szent Istvan, as he's known around those parts, who was the first king and patron saint of Hungary. We climbed up to the monument, and then continued up some more paths to the fortress on the cliffs overlooking the river on the Pest side.
At the top there were some awesome Iron Curtain-era statues, which I always enjoy.

While descending into the misty city below, we also spotted yet another bath house, with huge clouds of steam rising from it. This was the Hotel Gellert, which proved to be the place for us.
Here's the view of this posh hotel from the street right in front. We weren't able to go there this day (it closes early), or the day after (it was closed), but the day after that was going to work out well. Finally, we were going to get to warm up after walking around the cold city for a few days!
Oh yeah, did I mention that it was New Year's Eve? We hunted around earlier in the day for reservations somewhere, anywhere, where we could have a decent supper to celebrate. Pretty well all restaurants were offering some sort of expensive multi-course meal for the evening, with their menus posted outside, but pretty well all of them were sold out. While it took a while to find a menu that didn't involve meat in every course (not so easy in Eastern Europe), we finally settled upon a restaurant. In the end, it worked out okay. Here I am enjoying my dessert.
After leaving the restaurant around 11:00, we weren't really sure where to go to celebrate at midnight, but it proved easy enough to follow the crowds of people who were all converging on a public square. En route there were tables and booths set up selling all manner of goods to ring in the New Year, including bottles of bubbly and other alcohol, fireworks/firecrackers, noisemakers, and all manner of crazy hats, wigs, and other apparel. Here's one such booth.
And as you can see from the pictures of the crowds, the wigs were quite popular! (Also popular, unfortunately, was the ridiculous use of fireworks, including lighting them while drunkenly holding them, and pointing them over/into crowds of people.)
We were having lots of fun! (I really think that Jeremi made a conscious effort to take a picture every time I wasn't retching into garbage cans, and I thank him for that.)
There was also some live music, which was pretty fun, and lots of dancing and celebration.
In the middle of this square was a large statue, which was covered by this inflatable bubble that was custom-made to fit it. While I've seen lots of statues or fountains here covered for the winter, this particular covering seemed more temporary, like maybe it was only done to protect it from the fireworks for one night. I can't see them keeping the air compressors there all winter just to keep the snow off...
From there, as the party was winding down (at least for us), we went for a romantic walk along the Danube, where we had a nice view of the palace up on the hill on the other side of the river, which we decided to visit the next day.
This is a random picture of a store front that we passed, but I thought the signs were funny...
We also made it to the Gellert Hotel Spa the next day, for lots of swimming, hot baths, steam rooms, saunas, and massages. It was incredibly busy, and also incredibly chaotic, not least because the women's baths were closed for the day and everything was co-ed, which seemed to make it more crowded and less organized than normal. (Though I don't really know what it's like normally, it can't be that insane all the time. Luckily, some woman that we asked at the information desk about how to book a massage took us under her wing and basically walked us from the front door through the whole place, booked our massage, and brought us directly to the change rooms. I guess we looked really clueless. Still, it streamlined the process somewhat.

Of course we didn't get many pictures while actually in the pools/saunas, as it wasn't really a place to bring cameras, but the facilities are just gorgeous. Here's a crappy picture taken on the way out through a window of one of the (cold) swimming pools.
And here you can see the lobby of the spa, to give you an idea of how ornate it is. In fact, for a better idea, see their website.
By the time we left it was already dark (remember, this was on January 1st), but we decided to head up to the palace all the same. It was pretty cool, even in the dark, and we wandered around for quite a while.
It also gave us a great view over the city, which wasn't nearly as misty as the day before.
When we headed back over to the Buda side of the river, we took a detour to check out the incredibly ornate parliament buildings, which we did a really bad job of photographing. Still, a cool-looking complex.

And then the next morning, we were back on the train. Not to head home to Jena, mind you, but on to our next destination - Bratislava! Here, while waiting at the train station, Jeremi is having a bittersweet moment with what he knows will be his last genuine Hungarian langos for a while. The poor guy!