So yesterday I managed to get up early (for a weekend), ate a quick sandwich composed of caviar, sour cream and arugula, and joined up with some other students on the program to take a tour of the Buda side of the city. We met at the Lutheran Church at Déak tér, which I had tried to find Saturday night. It's not nearly as impressive as the Szent Istvan Basilika.

We then grabbed a bus to get over the river and for the first time, I crossed the Danube to leave Pest and enter Buda. The bus wound its way up Buda for some time (Buda is much hillier than Pest, which is largely flat), until we got off in an impressive old square. Buda is much older than Pest, having been settled by various peoples since Roman times, while Pest has largely been meadowland for most of the city's history. The square featured a very impressive church, Mátyás Templom, named after one of the two most famous kings of Hungary (the other being Szent Istvan), who ruled during the second half of the 15th century.

It's a fantastic church, featuring art nouveau tiles, as our guide told us. The square is known as fisherman's square, or something similar, as it used to be the area where the fishermen sold their wares, even though it's rather far from the Danube. The reason for this is that the Danube flooded quite frequently, so anything setup near the Danube would not be very permanent.

It's a very neat, old-looking structure that provides a fantastic view of the river and both sides of the city. Our guide informed us, however, that it was only built to look medieval. Along with most of the other impressive buildings of the city, like the Mágyás Templom right near by and the Szent Istvan Basilika across the river, this structure was built in the late 19th century, to celebrate the 1000th anniversary of the founding of the state of Hungary, the coming of the Magyars to the region. It's kind of shocking, because I assumed the buildings were much older than 100 years, but I guess that explains why Budapest is called a 19th century city. This was also the time that the first metro line was put down, the oldest one in Europe. I've only rode on this line once, but it's very nice. It's very close to the surface, and very nicely decorated, with tiles everywhere. It looks very different than the second metro line, which I ride everyday.
The statue in front of it is of Szent Istvan, the first Christian king of Hungary, who converted the nation to Catholicism to placate his neighbors. Apparently Catholicism was chosen rather than Orthodoxy because the neighboring Catholic nations were more powerful and the Catholic Church in Rome was more willing to send him priests to help convert the populace.

 The doubled cross is really common in statues and paintings of Szent Istvan or other religious figures. According to our guide it's associated with evangelism and conversion of people. I had always associated it with the Orthodox Church, where it's called the patriarchal cross and quite common, so I was very confused to see it so frequently here in this historically Catholic nation. I'm still not quite clear on it, as I haven't seen it associated with other Catholic nations, but I suppose it's more of a generic cross variant than one associated with any particular branch.
Anyways, the view afforded from this fake-old structure is still incredible, with views of both sides of the city.

 That's Szent Istvan Basilika in the center picture. It really towers over everything else in Pest.
The square in front of Mágyás Templom also features a government building of some type (I forget who works there) and a neat monument memorializing those who died in the plague, since Budapest was hit twice. The building is also an example of what some of the architecture looked like before everything was renovated and done over for the millennium celebration, so it's interesting in that way as well.

Also in the corner of this square was a statue of the patron or protector goddess of Budapest (I wasn't quite clear), Pallasz Athéné:

Or Pallas Athena, another name of Athena, or Minerva, the Greek/Roman goddess of wisdom, among other things, and protector of many many cities, including Athens. I thought it was interesting, a representation of the mixed heritage of the city. I'm not sure quite where to place it, but I imagine it has to do with the Enlightenment and Europe's rediscovery and sudden fascination with classical antiquity.
Down the road from Athena was a much more interesting and practical statue. It is of one of the finest hussars to serve Maria-Therese, the Habsburg queen, a tactician by the name of András Hadik. While the statue makes him look fairly impressive, he was actually a rather squat and bow-legged man, but obviously that would not have made nearly as good a statue, so his appearance was changed to reflect his importance.

The statue is currently important, however, to students, who rub the horse's testicles for good luck before their exams. Our guide, at any rate, swears that it's true. Maybe later in the year I'll return to the statue and see if there are any students doing so, or if it's just the guide pulling our leg.
We walked around Castle Hill, the area where the castle is located, which was hollowed out in order to serve as a bunker and hospital during World War II. It's currently a museum, but the entire hill is still hollow.
We then walked towards the castle museum, which led us past the president's residences and offices. In Hungary, the president is elected by the parliament, and is the secondmost powerful position, after the prime minister.

Saturday, the day before we were here, there were people protesting in front of the president's houses. It has recently come to light that the president, who was an Olympic athlete and then received his doctorate in sports studies or something similar, probably plagiarized the vast majority of his thesis, over 90% of it, translating it word for word from a Bulgarian paper on the same topic. People are unhappy about this, and are now calling for his resignation. He's also apparently made kind of a fool of himself by claiming to be a protector of the Hungarian language, and having that be important to his platform, and given speeches that are grammatically incorrect and mispronouncing words.
Anyways, past the president's house we walked towards the palace (I think), which consists of a series of very beautiful, French-looking (to my eyes) buildings.

We then walked through the museum, which consisted of many different architecture samples and items from the palace's history since its initial construction in the 1200s. The town has been sieged and won and lost many times, by the Mongols, the Ottoman Empire, the Habsburgs, and various Western powers. Much of the city was destroyed during WWII as well, so it has undergone many different periods of rebuilding.
We had to buy a special ticket to be able to take photos inside the museum, so I did not do so. We spent the time just talking to the guide, who complained to us about the local politics and the warm winter we were having. As far as politics go, the situation is not very good. The previous party in power, the socialists or liberal party, was corrupt and very obvious about it, with lots of giving and taking of money. The current party in power, our guide fears, is not much better but much subtler. They are trying to consolidate their power, having over a 2/3 majority in parliament, and getting slightly autocratic. The government has also extended non-voting citizenship to ethnic Hungarians living outside the present borders of Hungary (the borders were shrunk drastically by the Treaty of Trianon after World War I). While at present that doesn't mean much, our guide feared that these citizens would soon be giving voting rights and, as they live far away from Budapest, they would vote uninformed, simply supporting the government that gave them citizenship. She also doesn't like that the second most powerful party currently is a far right-wing one. She didn't explain any of their policies, but I assume it's similar to France and Sweden and other European countries, where parties like le Front National of France operate on very xenophobic platforms.
Afterwards, we headed down the square towards the Chain Bridge, one of the biggest bridges that cross the Danube, and got a nice dinner at a little place a side street there. I had pork golyás served on top of potato pasta, which was slightly gnocchi-like and very tasty. I accompanied my meal with a small elder pálinka, which I assume was elderflower or elderberry. In any case, it was very tasty.
Returning to Pest, we walked back past Szent Istvan Basilika, which is even more impressive at night while lit up.

Boris and I then entertained some of the other students on the tour at our apartment. All the students agreed that the immediate area around our apartment is much more sketchy than any other neighborhood they've seen so far in Budapest, but I'm definitely growing to like it.

Anyways, I think that's all for this post. You'll have to excuse my slight falling behind, but this was a lot of information, and I'm quite tired.
Viszlát.