Well, it's now gone from 'a little bit chilly' to damn right cold. The heating in the trams seems to be for decoration purposes only. Peter's hand went bright red due to the chill; unsurprisingly, he found this wacky.

Today – November the 1st – is known as the Day of the Dead in Hungary, which means people walk around looking depressed, wearing black, and visiting graves. Well, since we're pretending to be cultural anthropologists we decided to go find a stonking big graveyard and have a (somber) look about.


An 'off-the wall and zany' grave

We started off by walking in the wrong direction for 10 minutes in the pissing rain. By this point, I no longer had to pretend to be depressed to fit in. Having found the entrance we were greeted with a plethora of market stalls, busy cashing in on the day by selling flowers. Flowers which they probably stole from the graves the night before. Stop it Philip, no need to be cynical – I'm sure they're going to church funds or graveyard upkeep.


Flower-stealing capitalists


A crypt -- exciting


Some sort of God-priest-thing -- Even more exciting

We saw tombs, crypts, graves, shrines, mounds and even pits. If we were playing the 'ways you can be buried bingo', we'd have won at least £5. I dared Peter to walk down the main street whistling the Benny Hill Show tune. He refused, he's a big girl. I would have done it if my lips weren't sore! Honest.


I can't believe it's more tombs!

Anyway, after the exciting afternoon of grave-spotting, we decided to go find somewhere to eat. We went to the Westend shopping centre and had a Turkish meal. The plastic plates the food was slapped on went soggy from all the fatty oils.


A scary looking hospital. We'll be there if we keep eating this crap food.



Aforementioned crap food

The BKV - The Budapest version of Transport for London - are total rubbish. If you trot past their ticket inspectors with a confident stride, they'll not bother you. BKV, when they can be arsed, will have two inspectors hiding at the bottom of a popular metro station escalator. They look about as threatening as an old lady who won't take no for an answer when you refuse a cream cake. But then, sometimes, they'll pitch up a big row of fat, burly, 'lesbian blonde' inspectors and it feels like your papers, not validated tickets, are about to be demanded. In a cold-induced daze, I walked past them this afternoon singing “BKV, lalala BKV, lalalala BKV”. My tickets promptly demanded, then a smile exchanged.

By popular demand here's that cake I made: