Sunday 13th April |
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Unfortunately when the flights were booked it wasn't possible to get all the people
from Sheffield University
on the same flights. Therefore I was travelling to Budapest, via Munich, with Horacio Saggion
so we had arranged to catch the 10:12am train from Sheffield Station to Manchester Airport. Unfortunately when we arrived at the
train station it was to discover that it was overflowing with Sheffield United football fans who were also travelling to
Manchester to play Arsenal in the FA Cup. Before we started to queue, just to get on to the platform, we bumped into
Nick Weaver who it turned out was flying from Birmingham but was booked onto the same flight as us from Munich to Budapest,
so we will meet him again at a later point in this story. Anyway back to the train...
Now we did have reserved seats on the train to Manchester but there was no way we were ever going to be able to find them
so we had to stand with our luggage all the way to Manchester. Once we had negotiated the crowds of football supporters at
Manchester train station it was another quick train journey out to the airport, where we checked in for our 1:15pm flight with
plenty of time to spare. I have to say that Terminal 1 at Manchester airport is an absolute dump. I know they were doing some
building work at the time but even so I expected the waiting areas to be clean and tidy - these didn't look like they had
seen a vacuum in a month or so (not that I can talk, it takes me five minutes to remember where our vacuum is as I don't
use it as often as I should).
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In a startling contrast to the terminal, the Lufthansa plane we boarded was absolutely spotless (if a little tiny!).
I'll say it now (in case you get bored and don't read to the end of this diary) I would recommend flying with
Lufthansa (http://www.lufthansa.com)
to anyone. Not only were all the staff friendly and helpful, but the airplanes were clean and tidy, the food they served
was wonderful (compared to the sandwiches on a British Airways flight) and the range of drinks was staggering as was
the number of times they asked you if you wanted a drink, they even
gave us one of their own brand chocolate bars (as you can see an
interesting wrapper). An exceedingly pleasant experience!
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Getting back to the journey sees us arriving at Munich airport. We were offloaded from the plane to a bus to take
us to the terminal. As we approached the check-in desk for the flight to Budapest we bumped into Nick again
(remember we saw him briefly at Sheffield train station) and so the three of us sat and talked for about half an hour
until the plane started to board at which point we ended up in completely different parts of the plane (because
Nick had checked in and had seats assigned in Birmingham). Yet again a pleasant Lufthansa flight finds us at passport
control in Budapest.
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Now I've only ever travelled on a British Passport within the European Union before so it was a novel experience to have
to stand, queue and then actually have my passport scrutinised and stamped before I was allowed into the country. Don't get
me wrong it wasn't a bad experience, although I was getting a little tired by this point in the day (I blame the football
supporters we meet at the beginning of this story). Anyway once we were through passport control we headed to the airport
minibus desk.
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For those who haven't been to Budapest before I have to say that this is a great service. You buy a ticket (mine
cost 2100 HUF, which is about Ł5.50) and they will deliver you to the door of your hotel. The also provide a pick-up service
to get you back to the airport although we actually took a taxi. Its just nice to know that when you arrive in a country
where you don't speak the language you can still easily get to your hotel without any problems. Partly through good timing
and partly because so many people from Sheffield University were attending the conference we met up with Angelo Dalli at the
airport minibus desk and so the four of us travelled onwards to the hotel.
The hotel was on the other side of the city to the airport and so it took some time to drive all the way
across Budapest, but it was nice to see the centre of Budapest at night, including the famous Chain Bridge over the Danube.
Just as we were arriving at the hotel a group of people were just heading around the corner to a local restaurant.
This group, which included Katerina Pastra from Sheffield, were kind to the weary travellers and waited while we checked
in and dumped our luggage before setting out for a meal. I won't name the restaurant but it's a cafe and grill place in Normafa.
Although the food was excellent (I had Hungarian bean soup and chicken on a bed of fried vegetables and noodles) the service was
far from good. Not only did it take them forever to even bring drinks to our table, but when we got the bill, the waiter
didn't bring the change, about Ł10 until we asked him where it was. I guess he was lucky service was included in the price
because we certainly didn't leave him a tip (there was only two peoples meals on the bill so Ł10 would have been over the top
for a tip - we were not being stingy I promise). By this time I was really quite tired so I said goodnight and headed straight
to my room.
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Monday 14th April |
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For some strange reason I came around at about seven in the morning still quite tired (I think the feather pillows
and my asthma hadn't mixed too well), and so sat and read my book for a bit before realising that I actually had a balcony!
Now I know your all sat there think this guy must be exceedingly stupid if he can't see that there is a balcony attached
to a small hotel room, but the door was hidden behind a curtain, which had been drawn when I arrived the previous day.
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Now that you all know that I'm not completely stupid, here is the view from my balcony taken that morning, looking over the
houses near the hotel down towards the centre of Budapest and the Danube, which you can just make out on the photo above the
roof of the white house
(clicking on any of the photos on this page will display full size copies of them). Of course what I should have done was
taken a photo from the balcony outside the restaurant on the top floor of the hotel as this afforded a much better view over
the trees and houses, but that's hindsight for you!
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Having completely exhausted all that the balcony had to offer, and the time having reached 8:00am I headed upstairs to
register and have breakfast. Never having been to a conference before I wasn't expecting such a mountain of paper to cart
to breakfast with me. Not only was there the proceedings of the main conference and the QA workshop, but also a companion
to the proceedings, a list of participants and what appeared to be all the leaflets one could possibly find in a Hungarian
tourist information centre. It is a good job they provided us with a very very nice conference bag in which to store it all.
As the QA workshop wasn't until the afternoon I had a nice lazy breakfast, with plenty of coffee (those of you who know me well,
know that this is the only way I can stay sane for the rest of the day). When it comes to breakfast either Hungarian's
can't make up their mind what is usual to eat, or the hotel was trying to cater for as many nationality of guest as possible.
They provided breads, cold meats, fried breakfasts, cereal, yogurts. If it can be eaten for breakfast somewhere in the world,
it was probably provided.
After breakfast I started to wade through the mountain that was the proceedings attempting to decide what I definitely wanted
to listen to during the week and then I relaxed for a while with a novel.
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Once it got to about 11:00am I went and bought a phone card, so that I could ring home and let them know that I had arrived
alright (I was meant to do it the previous night but I couldn't buy a phone card when I arrived). Placing an international phone
call was absolutely no problem, but what has had me worried since that day is what have they done with either a) my eye sight or
b) physics in Hungary, as I'm sure liquid isn't meant to sit at an angle in a glass, which is what appears to be happening on
this card.
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A bit more relaxing with a novel (which incidentally was Robert Ludlum's
"The Bourne Identity" (ISBN: 0007134355) which is much better than
the 2002 film adaptation, in fact it is almost a different story) and it was time
for some lunch. What can I say about lunch?
Well the sandwiches were more like pieces of french bread with things on them (not even what I would call an open sandwich),
also they had so much piled on them they were hard to eat without getting stuff all down your clothes and for some reason they
appeared to put some kind of cream with just about everything, cheese, ham, salami it was decidedly odd.
What was worse was the coffee. Now at breakfast there was sensible sized cups, and nothing to stop you drinking as much coffee
as you wanted or could. Lunch, however, was a different affair. Firstly the cups were espresso cups, although the coffee was
no where near strong enough to be called espresso, and they didn't fill the cups so that there was room for milk if you wanted it.
So after having half a mouthful of coffee I went to get some more. Unfortunately for me the women serving the coffee must have
been a member of the communist parties secret police, as she would only allow you to have a single cup, and she watched you
like a hawk for the rest of lunchtime to make sure you didn't get someone else to try and get you a second cup.
Not a very hospitable lady!
Once lunch was over it was finally time for the QA workshop to start. Even though I wasn't due to speak until after the
coffee break at about 5:00pm I was already beginning to feel a little nervous. Just before we started Rob Gaizauskas
(my PhD supervisor) came to wish me luck and then we were off. All the papers were really interesting but I'm glad I didn't go
first as it gave me the chance to watch exactly how other people presented their work and made me relax a little.
Two cups of coffee at the break made me relaxed and also in need of the toilet. That taken care of I went in search of Angelo
as he had agreed to lend me his laptop to show the PowerPoint slides of my talk. We transferred the slides to the laptop
and he decided he would join me to give some moral support. I sat and listened to a couple more interesting papers and then
the moment of truth, my turn...
I shouldn't have been worried, having practised presenting the talk to the QA reading group back in Sheffield
I knew that I wasn't going to run out of time, and I was fairly certain I could answer most of the questions that may be
asked by the audience. I was right, I could answer all the questions and everyone seemed happy about my work. Now I could
relax and enjoy the rest of the week and, if you read on you will find, that's exactly what I did.
After the workshop, at about 7:00pm, there was the welcome reception for all the participants of the main conference
where I bumped into a few other Sheffield people (including Yorick Wilks and Roberta Catizone) and also had some interesting
conversations with people from all over the world, who I'd never met before, but who were all exceptionally
pleasant. The hotel had laid on a
huge buffet including some interesting looking hot food. Unfortunately being allergic to nuts means I have to be careful
about what I eat, and as I didn't know what any of the dishes were it was a case of trying small bits of everything.
The food was all wonderful even if I still don't know what I actually ate.
I think the reception was going to go on for quite a while but a group of us decided it would be more fun to go down into
Budapest for a few drinks, especially as it was Angelo's birthday. So Yorick ordered a bunch of taxis and we all headed off
to Cafe Angelic (no idea if that is spelt correctly or not). Now I know taxi drivers in England certainly aren't the best
drivers but I've never actually felt scared in a taxi before. The taxi drivers in Budapest, however, must all want to be rally
drivers as they certainly drive like they are the only ones on the road, treating any other traffic simply as an obstacle to try
and get round as soon as possible and completely ignoring any traffic coming the other way.
Still in one piece, just, we arrived at Cafe Angelica (still don't know if it is spelt right or not), which is right on the banks
of the Danube not far from the Chain Bridge (pictures of the bridge will appear at some point later in this diary) and managed to get
seated around two tables at opposite sides of the main room, way too far apart to be able to talk. I was sat with
Angelo, Nick, Katerina, Jimmy Lin, Rob and Ted Briscoe. As well as drinking a series quantity of beer (Belgian as they were out of
Hungarian, in fact they were out of almost everything, Rob had to order four times before he found something they actually had)
I had a pleasant conversation with Jimmy (who along with Eric Brill were the first people to use the web to help produce answers
for the TREC QA track). When I explained that I had been nervous about the workshop (he had also presented a paper) he told me I
had given a good presentation and was surprised to learn that it was the first paper I had ever presented at a conference.
This made me feel much better about the whole experience, not quite as good as the beer was making me feel but almost!
Once we had all drunk our fill of Belgian beer another white knuckle taxi ride and we were back at the hotel and another
day was over.
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Tuesday 15th April |
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After another night in which my respiratory system had a vigorous fight with the feather pillows I went to breakfast where I
bumped into Nick, Angelo, Katerina, Kalina Bontcheva and Alexiei Dingli (even the two new characters are from Sheffield,
I did say that a lot of people were going to be there!). We had all decided we wanted to go down into the city
centre
so straight after breakfast was congregated in the hotel lobby ready to navigate our way down. The first step, however, was to
buy a bus ticket.
The buses, like all the public transport in Budapest, work on a form of honour system. You buy the tickets in advance and then
use a punch machine when you board to validate the ticket. The tickets are then only checked if you happen to bump into a ticket
inspector. So we had to work out where we could get a ticket given we were a good 30 minute walk from the centre of town.
This turned out to be really easy as the hotel gift shop happened to sell the tickets and we all managed to remember to buy at
least two tickets so that we could get back relatively easily (assuming we could find the right bus stop).
About five minutes later we were all seated on a bus heading to the city
centre. Now the bus drivers in Budapest must all want
to be taxi drivers, or vice-versa, because the bus journey didn't feel any safer than the
two taxi trips the previous day had. Anyway we all poured out off the bus, shaken and a little stirred, in Moszkva Tér, which
is a big public transport interchange (of which there are apparently ten different forms) in Buda (Budapest was
originally three cities with Buda on the western bank of the Danube and Pest on the eastern bank, and the other city... well I'm
not sure where that was or what it was called) with numerous bus stops a Metro station and a lot of tram lines all converging in
the square, which is actually triangular in shape but who's counting, or measuring, come to think about it.
Moszkva Tér is situated just off the northern edge of the castle hill district of Buda and so we decided to wander
in that directions for two good reasons. Firstly according to the guidebooks (my favourite being
Dorling
Kindersleys EyeWitness Travel Guide ISBN: 0-7513-1150-2)
there should be plenty to see, but also, as its name implies, it is on a hill and so there should be good views across
most of the city.
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A quick walk, up hill, found us at the northern gate to the castle hill at Bécsi Kapu Tér. On the right as you enter the
square is the State Archive of Historic Documents, which you can see in the photo on the left. This was the first of many
buildings we would see whose roof is decorated with glazed titles. The pattern is not simply painted onto the roof, but made up
of many different coloured tiles. The archive holds documents transferred to Buda in 1785 from the former capital, Bratislava.
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I didn't know until I was writing this up and re-reading the guide book that neither Buda nor Pest were the original capital,
I guess you do learn something everyday! What I was learning while stood next to the archive was that the temperature was rising
quite quickly and it was becoming a rather hot, but pleasant day. Having finished marvelling at the roof of the archive we wandered
along Mihály Táncsics Utca. Apparently during the Middle Ages this area was a major Jewish stronghold, the evidence of which
is now housed in a museum on the street including a large number of gravestones. Moving along past the Hilton Hotel
(which seemed a little out of place) we suddenly saw Mátyás Church (The Parish Church of Our Lady Mary) which was built between
the 13th and 15th centuries. During the Turkish occupation of Budapest it served as the main Mosque but during the liberation
most of the building was destroyed. From the side we approached it was impressive but not really open to photos due to the
surrounding buildings, so...
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we wandered down the northern side of the church to find ourselves at the Fisherman's Bastion, which is built upon the original
defensive wall overlooking Pest and the Danube. It was designed in 1905 by Frigyes Schulek and despite its name it was never
meant to be a defensive structure and to this day it hasn't been used as such. Its main purpose is as an elevated viewing
platform for tourists.
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Unfortunately there is a charge to climb the ten or so steps up to the top level. If, however, you go to the right
side of the bastion you will find you are above all the buildings below the castle hill with an
uninterrupted view
across the city so there is no need to pay for a good view, yet, I'm sure the owners will cotton on eventually.
Before exploring the bastion, however, we had noticed a small shop built into the back of the Hilton hotel and as it was
now getting seriously warm we went to see if they sold bottled water, which they did. They also sold Unicum. According to the
guide books (the bottle label, surprisingly, in Hungarian, a foreign language to me!) Unicum is a secret blend of
forty herbs gathered in three different areas within Hungary. Having now bought and tried to drink some Unicum I can safely say
that at 40% alcohol by volume it is not only strong but exceptionally bitter. I'm glad I've tried it but I think I'm going to
need help drinking the rest of the bottle!
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Having now enjoyed the views from the bastion we wandered around to the south side of the church to be treated to a spectacular
sight of yet another highly decorated roof (at this point I'd like to thank the developers of
Jasc's (http://www.jasc.com)
Paint Shop Pro v8 for the perspective correction tool which allowed me to join together multiple photos taken from different
angles to produce this picture). Based upon the outside of the church Nick and I decided that it would be nice to see if the
inside was as good, so we left everyone else outside and paid the entrance fee of 200 HUF.
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Before talking about the inside of the church I'd just like to thank them for charging a very reasonable entrance fee.
At the moment most churches and cathedrals in the UK don't charge an entrance fee but rather ask for a voluntary donation
towards the upkeep of the buildings. While I have no problem with paying a reasonable entrance fee or being asked to make a donation
I always feel annoyed at being asked to make a voluntary donation of a specific amount. Most cathedrals in the UK are now
suggesting between Ł3 and Ł5 as a donation although it has recently been announced that a lot of these churches are now intending
to actually charge an entrance fee. Hopefully the entrance fee will be less than they are currently suggesting
as surely the number of people visiting will remain roughly constant but everyone will now contribute to the upkeep.
If they attempt to charge Ł5 to look around then I think I'll just look at the outsides. After all surely there should not be a
huge fee to enter the house of God, even if his houses do cost a huge amount to maintain.
Now that I've moaned about money for an entire paragraph I'll get back to telling you about the inside of this spectacular church.
As we passed through the door and into the body of the church the first sound either of us made was "WOW". I can't
begin to describe how impressive the church really was, the only way for you to understand would be to go and see for
yourself, but as most of you probably won't have a reason to go all the way to Budapest I'll do my best. Every inch of plaster
work was painted in bright colours. Some of the walls were covered in geometric designs while others were
decorated with enormous frescos. I did take a couple of photos unfortunately a combination
of the light in the church and the poor quality of the flash on my camera meant that they haven't come out too well and you
certainly can't appreciate the quality of the paintings from them.
As well as being able to wander around the church there was also a small museum spread out over numerous small rooms and
corridors on one side of the church. This was the first time I had ever seen a reliquary that actually contained a relic, in
this case the mummified right foot of someone, whose name I can't remember (my high school German at least meant that I could
tell it was the poor blokes right foot).
Just as we were about to leave Angelo and Alexiei came in so we went around with them too, still marvelling at everything we
saw. When we emerged from the church it was into brilliant sunshine that had us all reaching for our sunglasses, it was turning
into a truly wonderful day. We continued to wander down towards the Royal Palace at the southern end of the castle
hill complex, stopping along the way for Alexiei and Angelo to buy a few postcards. Just before you reach the Royal Palace
there is a small tourist market selling among other things a lot of chess sets and brightly embroidered lace which we spent
five minutes wandering around. By this time it was getting on for lunch time and as Alexiei had a presentation to give in the
afternoon session, and I wanted to listen to a few talks we left Nick and Angelo to continue wandering around Budapest
(with my guidebook) and headed back to Moszkva Tér to catch a bus back to the hotel.
Now the only problem with the buses in Budapest, other than the crazy drivers, is the numbering system. There appears to be
two different routes for each number, a red route and a black route. To make matters worse the buses all drop off their
passengers at one spot in the square and then pick up at a different place. Now we knew that we needed the black 21 bus, but we
quickly realised that the numbers on the front of the buses were displayed on electronic boards which gave no idea as to colour,
so Alexiei made a valiant attempt to ask a bus driver which stop it would go from by holding up his fingers and pointing
at his black t-shirt. Surprisingly about 30 seconds later we not only found ourselves at the right stop, but also actually
sat on the bus, where we bumped into Rob who was also heading up to the hotel for the afternoon session having spent most
of the morning in one of Budapest's many baths.
I'll quickly pass over lunch as it was just like yesterdays (including the woman guarding the coffee!).
It turned out that Alexiei was presenting in the Information Extraction track which contained two other papers, one I wanted
to listen to and one Rob wanted to listen to. I won't bore you with the details of the papers, suffice
to say that Alexiei's was by far the most interesting and understandable. After a short break I then went to see a demo of
a QA system, called AnswerBus News
Engine (http://www.coli.uni-sb.de/~zheng/answerbus/news/),
which uses CNNs website as it's knowledge enabling it to answer questions about events which have only just occurred.
Although the system is impressive it is only doing sentence level information
retrieval and not exact answer pinpointing which is what I was hoping to see (never mind I'll just have to look elsewhere for
ideas on how to improve our system).
Once the days presentations had finished I found myself on the rooftop balcony of the hotel along with Jimmy, Rob, Ted,
Donna Harman and a few other people who's names I never did find out. The general consensus was that we should all gather in
the lobby of the hotel and then head off to Pest to find a restaurant, but not before a few group shots were taken
for posterity (unfortunately I didn't have my camera to hand so I'll have to see if I can get a copy from someone else).
So having grabbed our coats we all headed for the bus which was exceptionally full, and raced down to Moszkva Tér, where we
all unfolded from the weird shapes we had contorted into on the bus and headed deep into the bowels of the earth, well the sewers
of Buda to catch the metro to Deák Tér. The nice thing about the public transport system in Budapest is that all the different
forms of transport use the same ticket system, so having bought a book of bus tickets on the way out of the hotel, I could
simply punch another one to board the metro. Having been on both the London Underground and the Paris Metro, I at least knew
roughly what to expect of the metro in Budapest, although I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. Either the lines are much
deeper under the streets or they just build their escalators really steep but we seemed to go down an awfully long way.
All of a sudden everything seemed really strange but it took me a minute to work out what: everything
was quite clean. Not just clean compared to Budapest at street level but clean compared to the London Underground or the
Paris Metro it was actually quite disturbing. I felt a little better when the train arrived and found that the train drivers
also drive like they are on a race track! The only problem I have with the metro (or at least the red line, number 2) is that
the platforms don't have particularly good signs telling you which station you are at, so if you can't understand the
announcements then
you are reduced to counting the number of stops on your map. Anyway we all disembarked at the right station and managed to find
our way to a slightly darker surface as the sun seemed to have set while we were making our way under the river to Pest.
Clearly by now we had decided where we were going for dinner, actually we decided while on the bus, but I couldn't seem
to work it into my narrative until now so... we were heading for Fatál. Alright I admit the main reason we decided to try
this restaurant was it's name, but the guide books also said that it served good Hungarian food at a reasonable price so...
There were sixteen of us which we thought might be a problem in even getting into the restaurant,
especially when we arrived to find there seemed to be a queue, but there wasn't so we all piled in and found two tables that
seated eight. Now the guidebook as well as telling us the food was plentiful and good also warned
that the service could be a little sullen. I don't think I would have used the adjective little, but we did enjoy the
food. I had mushroom soup, followed by Goose Legs served with a whole range of vegetables including what seemed to be
red cabbage cooked with huge chunks of orange. Very nice it was too. I was sat with Rob, Ted, Jimmy and Donna among others
which led to an evening of very interesting conversation which included among other things endangered languages and the
way we perceive and think about language, along with colours and everyday objects, a very interesting discussion.
Now before leaving the restaurant I should explain why the restaurant is called Fatál, it is not (as I think I have made clear)
a description of the food but rather the name of the large wood platters on which the food is served.
Anyway once we had finished our meal we headed back to the hotel via taxi as we were too late to get the last bus back.
Unfortunately we picked a taxi driver who thought he could drive in the wrong direction without us noticing. Donna did notice
though and made it quite clear that she knew we weren't heading in quite the right direction. Surprisingly enough at the next
junction the driver made a very sharp turn to point us in the right direction!
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Wednesday 16th April |
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Having looked at the programme for today, the previous evening, I had decided I wanted to listen to a paper about filtering
spam e-mail (something which I have a little experience of), but as this wasn't until around
four o'clock in the afternoon I made the decision to go back down to the city straight after breakfast, hopefully
to cross the river and see some of Pest in daylight. At breakfast, however, I ran into Horacio and Katerina who were
also intending to catch a bus down to the city and so I joined them and off we went to find a bus, which again
dropped us near the Castle Hill district. This was the fist time Horacio had been down to the city and Katerina wanted
to visit the labyrinth under the hill, so we set off back up to the castle hill. The first place we went was back to the
Fisherman's Bastion where I managed to remember to take some photos looking north-east and south-east along the river.
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In the left of the two views you can clearly see the parliament building and along the river towards Margaret Island and
in the other view you can see St Stephen's Basilica on the skyline (there is a better photo of this later).
As Katerina and Horacio hadn't been in the church they decided to go in and I was quite willing to pay the entrance fee again
so that is what we did. When we came out of the church we headed off to find the labyrinth, pausing to notice a small sculpture
specifically for blind visitors. It must have been about four foot square and was a bronze model of the church and
fisherman's bastion, with Braille descriptions so that blind visitors could get an idea of what was around them.
Personally I think this is a wonderful idea and I hope to see more of this kind of thing at tourist spots in the future.
Now the Labyrinth of the Buda Castle (to give it its full name) is an odd place. It is a complex of caves and cellars beneath
the Castle Hill. A long time ago (according to the leaflet at the dawn of the history of the Earth) hot water springs
carved out a number of small caves, in later times these small caves were connected together and to the
cellars of the houses
for economic and military purposes. It was severely disfigured, however, when during the Cold War it had a concrete floor poured
to turn it into a secret military installation. It currently runs to over 4000 square meters and houses a weird collection
of sculptures and artefacts. Now I really didn't think much of the displays in the labyrinth although walking around in what
was a secret Cold War installation was something I hadn't done before!
Once we came out of the labyrinth we decided to head down to the Chain Bridge and cross the river into Pest. On the
way there we called in at the small tourist market I had visited yesterday where Horacio bought some really nice coloured lace.
We took a set of steps down behind some of the riverside buildings to get us to the bridge and on one of the steps sat a small
lizard basking in the sun, although it soon ran off once it knew we were watching it.
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We finally emerged onto the river bank at Clark Adam Tér, where the tunnel under the castle hill emerges at a roundabout
on the Buda side of the Chain Bridge. Now the reason that this square is named after the Scottish engineer Adam Clark is because
not only was he responsible for building the famous Chain Bridge but also the tunnel which you can see in this photo.
To the left of the tunnel you can just make out the funicular railway, which runs from the square
up to the Royal Palace on the Castle Hill, and the bronze sculpture of the mythical turul bird, which marks the
millennium anniversary of the Magyar conquest in 896.
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From the square you can also see the main Royal Palace, I guess they get good views
across the city from the state rooms. Unfortunately the photo I took of the bridge from the square turned out to be at the end
of the film and so I spent the time crossing, the first permanent bridge over the Danube, attempting to change the film
in my camera.
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Once across the river we spent about five minutes working out exactly what we were intending to try and see. It would
spoil the story to tell you in advance what we did see, so you will just have to read on.
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The first place we went to was St Stephen's Basilica which was built between 1851 and 1905. The guidebook suggests that
the construction was fraught with problems, including the collapse of the original dome. Anyway just as were entering the
church we bumped into Jimmy who was having a last wander around as he was leaving the following day.
After having been in Mátyás Church this one was a real let down. I'm sure the inside is wonderful but we only spent about
five minutes looking around as it just didn't have anything very spectacular to offer.
It does have a relic containing the right hand of King István (the first Christian King of Hungary) but having already seen a
foot and the fact that there was a bit of a queue meant we didn't bother to look.
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By now we were all getting a bit hungry (not Hungary - it's a bad joke I know) and so we headed to Budapests best known
pâtisserie. Gerbeaud pâtisserie has a richly decorated interior and a very large selection of coffee, cakes, pastries
and deserts, however, we all knew that what we wanted was a slice of Dobos Torta. Dobos Torta is one of the only deserts
listed in the guidebooks and is described as: delicate slices of sponge cake, layered with a chocolate cream filling
and covered with a golden brown icing. If I ever go back to Budapest I'll be going for at least one more slice if not quite a few
or even an entire cake.
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Now suitably refreshed we headed out into the sunshine and set off to find the Great Synagogue. The Great Synagogue is so called
as it is the largest in Europe and can accommodate up to 3000 worshippers. It is meant to be open to the public but when
we arrived there were security guards on the doors and the gates were all locked. We never found out what the problem was
because the guards didn't speak English, but we had to make do with seeing the outside which is pretty spectacular anyway.
From here we walked back down towards the river and headed south towards the Gellért Hotel and Baths
passing the Inner City Parish Church.
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We had a look around the entrance of the Gellért but none of us really wanted a bath so we headed back along the western bank
of the river towards the Chain Bridge, stopping along the way for an espresso and to stock up on bottled water to try and
beat the heat. Just before arriving at the bridge there is a nice area were you are right up against the river and so
can get good views without traffic getting in the way.
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We were, by this point, heading back towards Moszkva Tér and a bus to the hotel, but we decided we would take
the funicular railway up to the Royal Palace and then head for the bus from there. It was a smooth
pleasant ride up to the palace and some more great views across Budapest.
We made it back to the hotel in time for me to listen to the paper on filtering spam, which didn't tell me
anything I didn't already know, but was worth listening to nevertheless.
Having suffered with the heat all day I wasn't feeling too great and so didn't go out in the evening but I did finally
manage to get some sleep without disagreeing with the feather pillows.
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Thursday 17th April |
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After having breakfast I went to the Question Answering and Summarization track of the conference and listened
to the three presented papers, although having already read the papers in the proceedings I didn't learn
anything new and unfortunately none of the papers are really applicable to the work I am doing at the moment.
After the coffee break I went to the lexicon track, not because I'm interested in lexicons, but because one
of the papers was detailing a question answering system known as QUALIFIER. This was an
interesting talk and
I certainly came away with plenty of new ideas that could be applied to our question answering system, if only
we had enough time.
By this point it was time for some lunch (again the coffee was guarded by that women!), and then seen as there
wasn't anything I was especially interested in listening to in the afternoon, I head to the bus stop for one final
trip to the city centre. I arrived at the bust sop to find Nick, Horacio, Angelo, Alexiei and Katerina already there
as they were going to go have lunch in Budapest. Rather than spend the afternoon walking around on my own I decided to
stick with them, although I wouldn't be eating a second lunch.
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Once of the bus we walked along Margit Körút to northern of the four main bridges over the Danube, Margit hid. This bridge
is north of most of the centre of Budapest and hence the photo shows both
Parliament and the Castle Hill district with the
Royal Palace, and the Chain Bridge across the river.
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Having crossed the river we headed for a small café listed in
Katerina's guidebook somewhere off Szent István Körút. The reason for heading to this café was that according to the guidebook it is mostly used by locals and it
certainly isn't in an are frequented by many tourists. Once seated and given a menu I decided I was going to have
another lunch, because they were serving Töltött Paprika (peppers stuffed with rice and meat and served in tomato
sauce) which I had read about and wanted to try ever since buying the guidebook. We did have fun with the
menu though which was entirely in Hungarian, so with three guidebooks and the three or four words of English
spoken by the waitress we all successfully ordered what we wanted. The Töltött Paprika was
absolutely wonderful
and unlike anything I had eaten before.
Once we had all eaten we took the tram to Fövam Tér (at the southern edge of the city opposite the Gellért Hotel.
The trams were wonderful and exactly what you imagine when you think of the depictions of Eastern Europe as depicted
in Cold War movies. The reason for going to Fövam Tér was that we wanted to visit
Budapest's main market. Now I've been
in some large covered markets before but this one was great just to wander around in. It was set out on two floors with the
ground floor housing mainly stalls selling everyday food and drink, and then the upper floor had the stalls selling to the
tourists (yet more chess sets and lace). I enjoyed wandering around downstairs mingling with everyday Hungarians buying there
food, a great experience. I did have a brief wander around upstairs where I bought a Hungarian cookbook (in
English fortunately),
which included the recipe for Töltött Paprika (which I have since learnt to cook).
From the market we walked to the State Opera House, which was being cleaned so there wasn't much chance to see the
outside properly, although we did look around the fantastic foyer with its marble columns and gilded vaulted ceiling.
We all felt badly under-dressed, however, as there was a performance taking place that afternoon so everyone else in the
foyer was in suits (often tuxedos) and expansive dresses, so we left quite quickly.
We didn't go far though as there was a sidewalk café almost directly opposite the opera house where we must
have spent at least an hour if not a lot more drinking coffee (including
liqueur coffees of some kind) and talking
about a wide range of things (including a weird conversation with Angelo about the possibility of time travel, something
to do with with people suddenly appearing while large areas of grass suddenly
disappear!).
We eventually started to get hungry and we realised there was no way we could drink anymore coffee so we left the
café and headed north east towards the outskirts of Budapest along Andrássy Út towards the Millennium Monument at Hösök Tere
(Heroes' Square). On the way there we passed the old headquarters of the Communist
regimes secret police, which now has the
word 'terror' written around the roof. A short walk from the Millennium Monument is a wonderful restaurant called
Bagolyvár
Étterem (http://www.bagolyvar.com/angol/index.html)
The restaurant is fantastic if a little unusual. When the current owners were renovating the restaurant they decided that
the best way to make it friendly for all the family was to employ an all female staff. I doubt this effects the quality
of the food in any way but it was a different experience not to be able to see a male member of staff. As we were all still
quite full from lunch (me more than most I guess) and the vast amounts of coffee we had drunk in the afternoon, we all just had
a main course and some wine, Tokaji of course (I still think this Hungarian wine is too sweet - and we had the dry white with
our food). I had chicken in a white sauce on a bed of pancake strips which was delicious.
Having finished eating we realised that it was too late to walk back to catch the bus to the hotel so we decided to use
the metro to get back to the bus stop at Moszkva Tér. SO we took the yellow metro line (line 1) from Heroes' Square to
Deák Tér and then tried to change to the red metro (line 2) to get to Moszkva Tér. Unfortunately there were ticket inspectors
and some of us (not me I must add) hadn't punched their tickets, or didn't even have a ticket not all of us made it to the
platform. Nick, Alexiei and I made it and got the bus back to the hotel, whereas the others didn't and ended up taking
a taxi back to the hotel and arriving back before us. It being nearly midnight and the taxi to the airport was picking us
up at 4:30am I headed straight for my room where I quickly packed my suitcase and got into bed. My last full day in Budapest
had come to an end.
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Friday 18th April |
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Unfortunately I just couldn't get to sleep. I tried reading my book to tire my eyes but that didn't help either. I eventually
nodded off at about 3:30am with just an hour to go before the taxi arrived and about half an hour before my alarm went off.
I made it to the lobby of the hotel for 4:10am by now exceptionally tired but still not sleepy. Nick and Horacio arrived down
just before the taxi arrived but we had to ring Angelo to remind him to get downstairs as we were ready to leave. Anyway we got to
the airport with plenty of time and so the first thing (after we had checked in) involved numerous cups of strong black coffee.
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Once the coffee had taken effect we headed through the gate to the departure lounge and the duty free shop. Now I had already
bought a small bottle of Unicum but I also knew that the Hungarians make a plum spirit, unfortunately my guidebook was packed
in my suitcase and I bought a bottle of Slivovitz instead of Szliva Pálinka, but the Slivovitz is actually made in Budapest
so I don't mind especially as it's a very nice spirit at 47% alcohol, although it's easier to drink mixed with lemonade.
It was then time to board the plane and so we all went to
separate gates, Horacio and I heading for Frankfurt on our
way back to Manchester, Nick to Birmingham and Alexiei (who came on his own from a different hotel) and Angelo who where
heading home to Malta.
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The rest of the journey home was uneventful with trains free of football supporters and we arrived
safely back in Sheffield
just after two o'clock in the afternoon. A very interesting and fun trip to Budapest was over, I had presented my
first paper at a conference and was now looking forward to more trips to more conferences all over the world...
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