Day 16
Location 4: Budapest
Nov. 16, 2022
Planes, trains, and solo meals are great times to read a book. Today, I reached the last pages of my book while eating at Frici Papa, a famously authentic Hungarian restaurant with awful looking, but wonderfully tasting food.
The book was All the Pieces Matter: The Inside Story of The Wire by Jonathan Abrams. The TV show, The Wire, is incredible and had just recently been binged (by me) on my friend Ginny's HBO account (thank you, Ginny). Please watch The Wire.
This marks the fastest I've ever read a book. By a lot. For reference, it took me 4 weeks to read Strega Nona.
The morning's castle tour looked like a James Bond movie. It felt like one, too. Listening to the No Time To Die soundtrack and eyeing everyone dressed in black with suspicion also helped maintain that feeling.
Fun fact: apparently, in Budapest, there's a rule where if you throat punch a guy because he's in a black turtleneck, you don't get lauded as this world-famous international secret agent. No. Instead, they'll be super unchill about it (even if you explain that he really looked like he was a spy). Or, rather, they would be super unchill if that were to happen. Apparently.
Oh, there was also this guy performing an impressive scooter trick:
Fair warning, this is a genuinely sad section. Lots of European cities are marked with a dark history due to the far-reaching evils of Nazi Germany. Hungary was among the countries affected the worst: over 560,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered during World War 2.
This memorial, Shoes on the Danube Bank, represents a horrific real event where innocent people (including children) were lined up, ordered to take off their shoes, and shot. Their bodies then fell into the river below, leaving behind only memories and shoes. This display preserves both. Really sad.
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