Day 12: Gulash and a Night Train!!

Again with the crappy morning weather, but at least it wasn't raining. We decided to make the most of the morning by visiting a few more sites.

First on the list was the big synagogue, the largest in Europe and the site of a beautiful Holocaust memorial in the shape of a silver weeping willow. Rachel and I decided to take the tour (it was the only way you could get inside the synagogue), and it was totally worth it.

The inside of the synagogue was beautiful, but also very ornate, which Rachel said is unusual. There were also two pulpits inside and a lot of Christian-like decor, which made sense once we found out that the synagogue had in fact been designed and built by Christians. We were both surprised to find out that before the war, there were 800,000 Jewish people in Hungary, 600,000 of which were living in Budapest. Even now, it has the third biggest Jewish population of anywhere in Europe (after England and France).

For sure, one of the highlights was the garden, where there are several memorials- one big silver weeping willow, with tiny leaves, each with a name of a Holocaust victim on it. There were also memorials to the Christians who had saved the lives of individuals and large groups of Jews during the war. Very touching.

I was especially emotional after visiting the museum on site. The display was well-done, but as I was walking out, the woman behind me was describing her experience in Auschwitz to her grown son. Seeing all of the pictures on the wall, and then seeing this woman, a Holocaust survivor, in a place where she was confronting many of the horrors she'd already been through, was almost too much for me. As I walked out of the gates of the synagogue, I got extremely upset and began to cry. It was as if each of the people in the pictures, and names on the tree had come alive for me, in being in the presence of this one woman. I wish I had the words to describe how it affected me, but it was perhaps too overwhelming to describe.

After that incredibly emotional experience, we made our way to this indoor market where we walked around for a while looking at souvenirs, and eventually settled down to eat some goulash! We had been wanting to do that the whole time, but hadn't found a suitable place to do it until we got to the market. It was good! A perfect way to end our trip to Budapest.

We decided to take a night train to Split, Croatia, but it left at 3pm in the afternoon. So, we went back to the hostel, got our stuff, blew the last of our Hungarian money on junk food for the train ride and made our way to the train.