Budapest with Gabi - part 5

XANDER had a good time in budapest, too. (yes, i bought him... i LOVE that dog!)



he got a sweater...

but he wouldn't stop moving around when i first put it on him. isn't he scary!?!?

i thought if i held him he would be still. but, no.

finally he calmed down enough for a proper photoshoot.

Budapest with Gabi - part 4

marzipan - who knew it was good for something? in szentendre, just outside of budapest, there is a marcipan muzeum and gabi's family took me there to experience it. i couldn't have ever imagined...

(this is Zrinyi Ilona - the lady after whom my school is named)

the crown jewels

creepiest thing ever

(the parliament is such a landmark and i think it's pretty well liked)

this one was really impressive in person, click on the pic to enlarge it

of course there is a gift shop where you can buy a bazillion kinds of marcipan: sugar candy, chocolates, chocolates with alcohol, figurines, caramels, suckers, and gummy candies... all mixed with/infested with marcipan.disney is so famous - everywhere

they look cute but they kind of taste like playdough

in case you didn't realize, every single thing in the museum was 100% marcipan, made by sweet little hungarian ladies. they work in a glass room in the front of the museum and you can watch them if you like. there are small signs in front of every scene/figure/statue that says who made it, when, whether it was for a competition or not, and how many hours it took (many took over 100 hours). do you agree with me that hungarians are the most patient people ever??

Budapest with Gabi - part 3

when walking around szentendre we saw such sights as these:

walking down the streets of szentendre you can see many vendors, shops, and artists

here is one such artist whom i asked in hungarian if i could take his picture. love his face in this

the average size of passageways in szentendre (gabi was in the pic, so i asked her to say hi)

cobblestone everywhere, so quaint

i want to go back to szentendre in the spring or summer when there are leaves on the trees

some guy was selling little secret boxes that are hard to get into. he'll carve your name or whatever on there if you buy it. kathryn and tom are my sis and dad, so i took a pic for y'all.

these otherwise cute purses are made out of MUSHROOMS

have you ever seen a "shop" so fulllllllll of stuff?!?!?

gabi with her apa and anya

look at her lovin' on him!

we had a nice quiet morning walking around the pretty little town. there are houses, flats, shops, museums, restaurants, and traffic... but not a lot of any of those things. it is some sort of non-touristy hungarian hideaway, so i consider myself privileged to have been taken there. :)

thanks AGAIN gabi!!

Budapest with Gabi - part 2

in between heartbeats

gabi and her parents took me to a little suburb of budapest when i was there. it's called szentendre (saint andrew) and i loved it there. there are a few museums there, and though i'm not usually the museum type, the ones we saw were fatastic! what i saw in a three room "museum" (which is actually up a wooden spiral staircase above someone's flat, probably) was so fascinating i'm certain i'll never forget it. there are teeny tiny miniature eensy weensy sculptures, paintings, and statuettes made by an unimaginably patient guy.

to prepare you for the museum (or by mere coincidence) there is a strikingly narrow path between two buildings in the center of the town. and it leads to the door of the place containing the tiniest stuff i've ever seen.

when you come in you notice little display cases that look like this. there is a tiny thing (whatever it may be) with a light and a microscope pointed at it.here is a close-up of the microscope aimed at what looks like nothing.

but here is what was actually on that little stick of nothing (head of a pin):

top row: a working padlock and key
bottom row: a disassembled padlock and key

here was another almost-nothing on a tiny pin. side view. oh, it's upside down on the pin and the microscope inverts the image.

here's what we were "looking at" in the above pic:

(by the way, that urn and those cups are sitting on a sliced grain of sugar)

this is the smallest book in the world.

it has hungarian poetry hand-written on its thinner-than-paper-thin pages. there are 12 pages... and you can turn them to read it, if you have the tools to do so. omg.

you've heard of things being so small you can fit them on the head of a pin? in the micro-museum they did it! here is a chessboard with movable pieces! i zoomed in with my camera AND we're looking through a microscope. freaking minuscule!

so, here is a poppy seed - you know those little things that get stuck in your teeth? well, these people cut one opened and made it a nest for golden sparrows... and a caterpillar.

nothing...

the most amazing thing ever!

in matthew 19:24 jesus said, "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." watch out, rich folks - i know it wasn't easy to get these camels in there.

i didn't/couldn't take pictures of everything. but there was also:

a bust of abraham lincoln carved in a sloe seed (size of a mustard seed). it's 3mm.

a life-sized baby golden flea wearing shoes.

a spring from a miniature watch with a little man walking on it. the man is 5 microns tall. (1mm=1000microns)

a golden yacht sailing on a sea – a grain of rice – with a standing woman, and a flying seagull.

a map of australia carved in glass and held in a half poppy seed.

a human hair, carved length-wise and inscribed with the word "peace" in 5 languages.

another human hair, hollowed out to make a tube, inside of which was a perfectly carved rose.

the guy who does these things (oh he also paints really small things on really small things) is some ukrainian-hungarian named Mikola Szjadrisztij. there is some info about him in the museum. he first had to make the tools necessary to make these tiny things. when he wants to make a stroke on a painting or carve a line in some gold, he has to be very still and quiet and listen to his heart beating. he has to make his move in between heartbeats or he will make an error.