One Saturday night when buses are as crowded as during the day, B-town’s hustle and bustle is at full swing and people all over the country flood to the capital to satisfy their hunger for culture and/or save some money on their museum-related expenses by using one tic for several admissions. Someone visiting Budapest for the first time on the Night of Museums, might mistakenly suppose they’ve found a city that never sleeps, just like NYC.
My “Night of Museums” strategy usually involves targeting venues I otherwise wouldn’t have the chance or the urge to see. This serves a double purpose: I don’t only get to see something unusual and (sort of) out-of-the-ordinary, but I also manage to avoid long lines, which suits and soothes my impatient soul.
The Hungarian Meteorological Service (HMS) required advance registration and offered a professional guided tour (held by experts working for the institution), which meant no standing in lines and the chance to gain some meaningful insight into the work and world of forecasters and climate experts. Hm, sounded like this suited my needs exactly, so I decided they deserved my attention and we made our way directly and assiduously to the HMS building. And it was a perfect choice! During the nearly two-hour long guided tour, we learned about the activities and responsibilities of the service, we took a look at past instruments used by the experts (now artifacts on display), saw a presentation on the growing number of extremeties of weather conditions in Hungary and had the chance to put ourselves in the shoes of a weatherman in the blue box (it’s harder than you’d think!). Wanna know why a blonde woman’s hair is more useful for predicting weather than that of an African man? Then HMS should be one of your destinations next year.
We predicted the weather would be too hot to spend our time in the open for a while, so we decided to descend to the depths of the Labyrinth of Buda Castle. Here we experienced art at its earliest form on the walls and were constantly scared by the motionless figures creepily awaiting us in corners of the cave! We made it just in time to see the last visual painting show on the walls of the National Gallery, then strolled across Chain Bridge to take a look at the interior of the Hungarian National Bank, which is breath-taking even in these financially difficult times… We also saw the safes where the highly valuable Hungarian forints are kept but all we left with were some shredded forint bills we received as goodbye gifts from the bank. No problem though, at least we felt a million experiences richer.