Budapest, September 2003

There were lots of neat things about Budapest - the gargantuan renovated Synagogue, the many-hundred-year-old churches... I think the one fact about Budapest that wowed me the most, was that during its Renaissance, in the late 1800s, when they built the first European subway system (second in the world), Hero's Square, and lots of huge buildings, they dedicated everything to the new Millennium. That is to say, the city's new millennium.

I have never been somewhere that felt so old.

It's quite striking that so much of it still exists, all things considered.

It was a neat perspective on the city to take the train north 10km to the Roman settlement, Aquincum. The hill on which the city of Buda was eventually founded, was a strategic place to control traffic in all directions, so the Romans had towns all over the area, some as large as 50,000 inhabitants.

Buda had layers upon layers of city- each built on the ruins of the last. Now, complete with many coffee shops...

They also have what may be the world's most aggressive subway ticket-monitors. I always rode with a legal ticket, but I think I was checked at least a dozen times in the four days I rode the subway.