Castle District

My morning began as the bells rang for the 10:00 Mass at the Matthias Church. I do not consider myself religious by any means, however I felt that attending a service would add another layer to my Budapest acculturation. Approximately 70% of the Hungarian population is Catholic, 20% have a protestant affiliation with the Hungarian Reformed Church and 5% comprise the small Lutheran following.

The service I attended was about an hour and a half long and in Latin and Hungarian. Even though I didn't understand much, I was in awe of the sheer splendor of the building. It is one of the very few churches in Europe that is not ornamented with gold leaf; rather, every inch of the interior is painted. The look is very gothic, but in no way simple.

Afterwards, we walked around the castle district. I found a wonderful little bakery on a backstreet that smelled so delicious I just had to walk in and try something! I can't recall the name of what I got, but it was oh-so-good and looked like this... mmm! There was some sort of tomato on the inside too- very tasty.



After returning to the main sqaure, we decided to go our seperate ways. I scoped out a Turkish Bath that I would like to try sometime, and then headed back to the flat to meet with Dr. Mandy. We both agree that our situation is much, much better than before, and any issues or problems that remain will be addressed within the next few days. Despite our first day or two that left both of us feeling very blue about the situation, Dr. Mandy has been wonderful in taking care of us. She literally came over to our flat today with flowers for each of us and asked, "What can I do to make things better?"


I think things will get better, especially since school starts tomorrow. Quite frankly, I don't think there's any way for it not to get better because we pretty much started at Ground Zero of this experience.