Budapest-Strolling About and Rolling Out
This is not a haunted house, this is a really serious place akin to our Holocaust Museum but focused instead on the reign of terror the Hungarians endured in the 20th century when they were invaded and ruled by first the Nazis and then the Russians. The building is the actual one that Gestapo, SS, Arrowcross and every flavor of sadistic police inhabited as headquarters. The basement is reconstructed exactly with cells, interrogation rooms and a hospital (really just another cell but the bed instead of being a single plank, had a flat stuffed burlap mattress like cover).
After our leisurely day of almost nothing but swimming, we had to cram in as much walking, seeing, drinking, eating and feeling Budapest as possible in one long day.
Coffee, post office (yet another box and another $75 to send home more of our clothing we no longer needed and a few souvenirs), and then into St. Stephen's Cathedral to see another ornate interior of dark rose and dark gray marbles, detailed decorative painting in lieu of the usual bright mosaics and the shriveled blackened hand relic of St. Stephens. 
Planning and cramming the day was a bit difficult as the sites are more spread out than in other city centers with only three metro lines that connect at one station. So, we figured we would knock off the northern most site first, the huge and spectacular looking Parliament. It was already hot enough that we were walking only on the shady side of the street and I had even started copying the Japanese tourists and was using an umbrella.
OK, a side note of our observations of Japanese tourists. Japanese are in every city. They are well dressed women, have good haircuts, are always in groups except for some young, well off couples, are always with a tour guide, always taking photos of every single thing with no signs of wanting to enjoy what they are experiencing. They have the best cameras. Women are completely covered up with hats, long sleeves, scarves, gloves and umbrellas no matter the temperature. And they look and act nothing like any of the other Asian tourists.
As we approached the tall towers of Parliament, all we could see was construction and fences and detours. Would it even be open? Would there be tours? How many god damn extra sunny god damn blocks would we have trudge?
Short answer: number of extra blocks to get to the museum where they sold the tickets:5, not bad. Tickets available for the 12:00 tour we expected to take: 0, tickets to the 1:00 tour: 0. Well at least we didn't walk the additional three sunny hot blocks to the tour starting point.
We quickly regrouped and instead bought tickets for the LAST tour at 5:45 and reworked our itinerary. That made the next big stop The House of Terror.
The single eeriest part was at the end of one floor, all you see is a guard and a small walkway into a black tower. As you walk towards it, the guard sternly yells something in Hungarian that makes you stop, cold. At the proscribed time he motions you over as an elevator opens and you walk in. The door shuts, the tv screen inside flicks on and begins to play. As the elevator descends creepily slowly, the ex-prisoner, resistance fighter, executioner's helper (this is a true retelling) begins to describe in vivid detail the executions carried out step by step in this true house of terror.
Outside, I had two thoughts. One, is this simply leading up to visiting Auschwitz and would that be even worse? Probably. But more, did it move my needle about American involvement in today's continuing horrific repressive regimes and genocides? Enough to do a 180 and rethink my isolationist stance? It just may have. You cannot see this, this close up, hear living survivors tell their stories and not ask yourself, how did the world let this happen then, how can we still let it go on in this digital world of global news and Twitter? How far should we go to help those who want to to live free?
The Russians were exceptionally brutal to the Hungarians, who were already partially scattered throughout four neighboring countries as a result of invasions and wars. So how do the modern day Mugyars feel and act towards the Russians?
Well, we saw very few Russian tourists (quite the opposite of Prague) and heard very little Russian spoken. During our morning walk, we stopped at a monument to Russian soldiers at the same time a Segway tour in English was there. I am a self confessed tour eavesdropper, so I sashayed closer to hear the guide's take on it. ?
'In a sincere voice'- this is a monument to the Russian soldiers who freed us from the Nazis. There is a sister monument in Russia to the Hungarian soldiers who lost their life. This monument represents that everything is put in the past and relations today are fine'
'In an honest voice'-but they are not fine at all and no one has forgotten.
'In an ironic voice'- See that fence around the monument, it is there to stop all the people who still want to deface it. And if you look to your right, even more ironically, there is the American Embassy looking down on us.
Later that evening, after we did get back to and through the tour of Parliament, we were having dinner at Bock Cafe and sat next to two young Russian women in Budapest on business. They were from Moscow and I asked how they thought it was between the Russians and the Mugyars after these twenty some years later. They thought things were perfect, just another bit of irony.
As we see more and more of Central Europe and get to compare Prague to Vienna to Budapest, I would sum up Budapest as not as beautiful as Prague, not as good of a museum stop as Vienna but ultimately a more livable city. It is more urbane, with sharp looking young women and men and perhaps in some way a bit more western. 
The level of service in the hotels and shops and restaurants was wonderful. As always, I could have stayed longer but the High Tatras in Slovakia beckon. Let's see how we navigate that 250km drive out of Budapest and up into the mountains.
Above: Table-side/ Curb-side French/Hungarian service in a cafe
PS. I love having esspresso macchiato at cafes in Budapest.....
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