Night at the museum, cont.

I'm so glad I did it. I was so exhausted when we were finished, at about 1am. It was nice to have free public to take us between the museums, but they went in the most inefficient routes, where we could have walked back to the car and been half way home by the time the bus finally brought us around to our stop. I could have organized it so much better... =).

Okay, so, what we DIDN'T see were Ben Stiller or Owen Wilson. Sad.

What we DID see:
The mirror image art museums, one modern, one more traditional. Both overrated. There's so much modern art that should not make it into museums that you would have to pay for. And the other museum was filled will more frescoes and madonas and pieta's and annunciations. I have seen so many of them that I'm afraid they've lost their fascination. I acknowledge their beauty and the amazing skill behind the works, but I would rather spend my time elsewhere. Is that so sad? I still loved the musuem, however, for it's beautiful architecture and detail. It's a beautiful building. It's a work of art in itself. And then the Modern Art Museum held my favorite exhibit of the night. It's a "project" by Hungarian artist Antal Lakner, and it consists of these devices that you can use to stay strong and healthy in our convenience-ridden society. For example, he made a device (comes with a carrying bag) that you attach to a subway holding post and stand on a stationary surf-board, so that you basically surf your way to work on the metro. It could work! I got to try the prototype =). It's just ridiculous, which is his intent. The picture of a guy in his suit coat doing this on a metro with a totally serious look on his face was hilarious. He also developed "elevator stretching", pictured left. But my favorite was a portable pommel horse that you would place on the escalator and do hand stands and other pommel horse exercises as you were passively taken down to the next floor. So funny.

We also saw the transportation museum. Lots of steam engines and motorcycles from the past. I thought of Grandpa and Great-Grandpa Blomquist. We saw the natural history museum, which would make for an ideal venue for a Biology class field trip. And we saw the House of Terror, the museum set up to comemmorate the time when Hungary was reigned by Hitler and then Communist Russia. This museum is a hard one to go through, but there's so much documentation and footage of all the horrors that went on that it makes it much more real and personal, not just something of the history books. It is appalling, the capacity for evil that exists in man's heart. Thank you, Holy Spirit, for your work of renewal!

Over all, it was just such a beautiful night, and there were bands playing and fire twirlers attracting crowds. Everybody was out. I expected to hear a lot of English, but surprisingly (or maybe not so) I heard mostly Hungarian. Good times.