Kate comes to Budapest

and therefore gave me a reason to actually go out and break out of the routine I'd gotten into. Admittedly to a certain extent that started on Friday when Bryan, Nora and I decided to go to the baths. We went to the Széchenyi baths in the city park. None of us had been yet so we didn't entirely know what we were doing, but the signs were pretty clear and the staff spoke enough English to give decent directions. The three of us split up, changed, and met back up outside in the hottest of the three baths where we ran into three more friends from BSM. It was snowing, which was actually quite pleasant while one was in the bath because the cool flakes helped counteract the heat. The snow made the towels wet and cold though, and the snow and general cold made getting out of one bath to go to a different one very unpleasant. Especially when I saw a large white patch on the ground and thought "dry tiles!" instead of "a couple millimeters of snow!" and tried to walk through it. (Apparently I really do need to wear my glasses almost all the time)

There are three large outdoor pools. One of them is quite hot, the others less warm. Of the others, one is primarily for people swimming laps, and the other has bubble jets and a whirlpool/current thing. We stayed for under three hours, so we got a refund. Admittedly the refund isn't very much, but it adds up and even 300 forints has quite a bit of buying power.

Saturday afternoon several of us went to Statue Park, which is a collection of the Soviet-era statues from the various street corners of Budapest in addition to examples of Soviet propoganda and an East German car. It was interesting, although it would have been nice to have more information about each of the statues. One, a giant statue of a soldier holding a flag, apparently used to stand on Gellert Hill, although I don't know whether he was there instead of the giant statue of St Gellert or stood blocking the saint. There's a couple replicas as well, including a replica of Stalin's boots. The rest of the statue was sawn off during one of the uprisings, leaving only the boots.

On the way back to Nora's we stopped off at Jégbüfé, the pastry shop we found near the language school. Then homework occurred until it was time to take the metro and then bus to the airport to meet Kate. Nora and I admittedly to being slightly anxious about our abilities to get back without having to have a night bus adventure so the entire group ended up going to get Kate and bring her back to Nora's.

Sunday we went to a church Kate knew of, then she and I ate with the rest of my hostfamily. That afternoon we met up with people at the Fishermen's bastion which was beautiful in the snow, and then all eight of us went to Ruszwurm and got cakes and hot chocolate. Apparently we hadn't had enough sweet things because we went back to Nora's, made cookies and watched Serenity.

Monday was mostly occupied with mathematics, so we stuffed Tuesday and Wednesday full of things around classes. Quite a few of which involved food. We had pancakes for brunch Tuesday morning, and ate dinner at the hummus bar. Kate and I spent the afternoon at the art museum. We were hoping to see the El Greco exhibit, but it had already closed. There was plenty of other things to see. I need to go back because we got kicked out before we were ready to leave. Castle Park was nice to wander around while waiting until it was time to meet people at the hummus bar, if a bit cold. After dinner four of us went to the baths. I had neglected to inform Kate that the baths were outdoor, so she was startled when I took her outside, but she enjoyed herself. Since it was much later the baths were much less crowded.

Wednesday I had classes and Kate sat in on Number Theory. Several of us went to Kádár(the eatery my Hungarian Language teacher had shown my class) for traditional Hungarian food, then went to Jégbüfé for breakfast and all tried bits of everyone else's cakes. I still like the Túrós táska the best, although this is partly because that one's the most likely to be warm from the ovens. Although there's this big apricot chocolate and icing thing which is pretty tasty, unfortunately they're usually sold out. The Marzipan cake slice was pretty good, and everything with chocolate in it has been delicious and I like this one apple pastry, especially the few times it's been warm from the oven. Their Kremes isn't as good as Ruszwurm's though.

Kate took off for the airport after lunch and the rest of us went back to class. It was really good to see her again, and it was a lot of fun to show her around the city in general and point out all my favorite spots, although in the time we had we weren't able to hit all of them. Ah well.