Budapest: Good work, black cat.

It was a bright, sunny day as Dustin, Jen, Tymona, Nicole, and I walked alongside the Hungarian Parliment building. Dustin noticed a black cat walking on the far side of a fence, and conversation followed with something about glitches in matrices and all sorts of crazy things. There was also a pack of pigeons nearby, and since the pigeons had been relentlessly annoying me earlier in the day regardless of how many rocks I threw at them, I was a bit bitter toward these unintelligent feathered curses. So, I said, "it would make my day if that cat attacked one of those pigeons." Almost on cue, the cat snuck up behind a bush and settled into what looked like attack mode. This can't be happening! we whispered amongst ourselves. Suddenly the black cat pounced, the rat-of-the-sky flapped its wings frantically and tried to fly, but the cat caught it about a foot, maybe thirty centimeters for my European or Canadian readers, off the ground. The black hunter then ran away with the filthy meat in its mouth. The words I spoke before the event happened were indeed true, because that sight made my day, and it made my weekend. Budapest: what a great place!

A cat having the courage to do what I desire to do to pigeons is not the only reason we rode fifteen hours in trains, travelling well over a megameter, to get to Budapest. Saturday we went about exploring the city, seeing things like "Hero's Square," which was a square with a bunch of statues of Hungarian heros; the Cave Church, which is a church built into the side of a mountain; the Parliment Building, which I can only assume is where the Hungarian Parliment meets; a nice church or two; and the original bridge that linked the former cities of Buda and Pest.

Sunday we decided we would try to find an English church. The endevour was rather simple on the Internet, and we easily located the church. The endevour was not so easy in real life, and eventually we gave up and settled for a Hungarian Lutheran church. It was swell and I'm pretty sure they had a good choir, but I really would have liked to attend an Easter Sunday in English. Later in the day, we trekked out to who knows where, gambling on the public transit system with our time. Lady Luck was smiling at us as we beat the proverbial casino and arrived at our intended destination a quarter hour before the last tour. The destination was a cave, which was pretty interesting. At this point I wonder, during the course of this blog, how many things I've described as "interesting" without any further explanation. Well, add one more I suppose.