Trams, Trains, and Castles

Since Rachel has done most of the recent posts, I thought I would take some time and fill everyone in on some recent happenings.

Last week we went to the Millennium underground museum where we learned about the building and operation of the first underground on the European continent. It’s the metro we ride to go just about anywhere, and the museum is conveniently located in the Déak tér metro station, but for some reason we hadn’t been. It costs as much as one metro ride, in fact it uses the same tickets! It was built in 1896 for the 1000 year anniversary of the Magyar invasion and named after Franz Joseph the emperor of Austria, apostolic king of Hungary, etc.

The communist era apartment section of the exhibit including a speeding double decker tram, and a moving red bus in the back.

While there, I saw an advertisement for a Model train exhibition put on by a local model train club. So today we packed up and went to Saint Lesley’s square. The church there is beautiful with the kind tiled roof I have come to love. In the exhibition there were 3 train sets. First, a Lego town with a couple trains and second a smaller set run by some kids. That was Avery’s favorite because there was a church with some people getting married inside.

The last and best was a 30 meter long H0 scale set with at least 10 trains (not all running at once), 4 trams, 1 trolley bus and a delivery truck plus numerous non-moving vehicles. I watched the DHL truck (with trailer) make it halfway across the tram tracks before the tram plowed into it. Both fell over and many H0 scale lives were lost.

A small portion of the exhibit including a double decker train. The darker red RailJet is a common train for us to take. In the background you can also see a tow truck hauling a broken down bus.

The best part though was just outside the main exhibition—toy trains for the kids: Duplo trains, wooden trains, and of course Thomas the tank engine.

On the way back we stopped at the Miksa Roth stained glass museum. The kids had about had it at that point so we were lucky it wasn’t too large.

In other news, the kids made their first sand castle, Rachel replaced the purse she’s had since our honeymoon in Guatemala and we ate Kakastöke Pörkölt. This last was not as good as I had hoped given what it’s made of—I actually found it a bit bland. While eating it I assumed that they must have been ground and made into little “sausages” because they were over an inch long. Looking online, however, I see they must have been the real thing. Rocky Mountain Oysters, here I come!

Avery and Evelyn hard at work on their towers. The yogurt bucket in the foreground was the mold.

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Transportation Museum

Wednesdays are Ivan’s day that he doesn’t have classes, so we try to get out of the house and do something fun. Wednesday is also “pastry day” – our self declared day of the week when we go for a walk to the metro stop to get pastries for breakfast. It’s a nice little walk and we usually let Avery walk the whole way instead of strapping her down in the stroller. So this Wednesday we bundled up against the sub-freezing weather, stopped at the pastry shop at the metro station and headed to the Transporation Museum (Közlekedési Múzeum) for our weekly outing.

You have to pay extra to take pictures in most of the museums here and I don’t typically bother because most things in museums don’t lend themselves to unprofessional photography very well, but I think this museum might actually have turned out some good pictures. It had A LOT of models, replicas, and exhibits that varied in size from the size of your hand to the actual train in the picture that looks like it’s chugging out of the front of the museum itself. There were trains, cars, boats, airplanes, motorcycles, coaches, bicycles, ships, and even a model of the Russian Soyuz space capsule, complete with a landing parachute that stretched all the way up to the ceiling and back down again. It was pretty impressive.

They had a lot of cool things outside, too that I was able to take pictures of without having to pay extra. One of my favorite parts of the whole museum was the display of parts of the different bridges over the Danube in Budapest. Most of this display was outside and there were links and sections of the chain bridge especially, but the other bridges too.

This is a picture of a section of the chain bridge. I don’t know a whole lot about it and the links they have on display don’t look much like the typical links I think of when I think of a chain, but they’re pretty cool to see anyway. I think the bridges are one of my favorite parts of Budapest. This came as kind of a surprise to me. I’ve never lived in a place with a lot of bridges and it’s kind of fun.

Here’s another cool picture of the train. The thing is really huge. Dad – I took the picture with the airplane on the roof just for you. After I’m rich enough to buy you an airplane, maybe I’ll work on a museum for you to put it on top of too :)

Some basic facts for anyone interested: It cost us 1500 ft for both of us to go (Avery was free), not the 200 ft that Wikipedia said it was (we were a little surprised). Apparently Ivan was 1000 ft and I was only 500 ft because of Avery. That’s about $5.00 for Ivan and $2.50 for me. It closes early in the Winter (4:00 PM) again, not the 5:00 PM that Wikipedia claims (that was last week’s surprise).

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