This Entry Rated: NOT KOSHER

I'm in Budapest! Dorot flew all the fellows here to do some learning around Diaspora Jewry (and give us a chance to recharge and refresh).  Then afterwards Sam and I are extending our vacation to Vienna and Prague :)

I'm loving it so far!  Here's a little of what we've done...

Kiyomi, Sam, and Louisa! We went to a Christmas market. Well, we tried to go. It turns out that there's the huge Christmas market, and there's a spillover into a smaller christmas market, and then there's the spillover of THAT, and THAT is where we went! Jews failed at the Christmas market. We're going to the real one tonight :). But even the #3 market was cute and fun! We got hot mulled wine, which you can see in this giant vat here.

And there were PILES of MEAT, which we ate. Not kosher WHATSOEVER. But 100% delicious. 

I'd just been saying how I escaped the Christmas craziness, living in Israel and all, but it's in full swing here in Central Europe.

Cuties strolling down the beautiful boulevard!

We did a lot of linked-arm walking and generally annoying poor bicyclists. 

Hero's Square

I think this looks like Hogwarts, with the ice skaters on the lake and all. 

AND THEN, we went to the Hungarian baths! They were crazy. It was in this HUGE palace-like building. The inside looks like a 1940's insane asylum... long, white tiled hallways with sturdy Hungarian women dressed as nurses guiding people about.  And in the bath area there was room after room after room of different kinds of baths, with the various temperatures and contents (mineral water, sulfur, etc) labeled on the wall. There was one pool with lots of people with weights doing some kind of aerobics.  And there were tons of sauna rooms, too.

And outside...

Holy shit whoooooa! Gorgeous. There were three outdoor pools, with beautiful statues all around. It was terribly romantic. I highly recommend Budapest as a honey moon destination. And I'm pretty sure we saw one couple making full use of the privacy the steam semi-afforded. 

Gorgeous!

In one of the pools there were concentric circles of pools within pools, and on one side there were very strong jets coming from below that gave a kind of massage, and in the inner pool there were these crazy side-jets that whirled people around in circles  and everybody was bonking into each other and laughing, it was really fun.

More gorgeousness.

And THEN I got a massage.  The first part was just a nice, simple oil massage with very little pressure.  More relaxation than medicinal. 

And THEN she flipped me over. And the massage became a full frontal massage. And by full frontal, I mean, above the waist, FULL frontal. It's like my chest was play dough. She just went for it. I'm a little speechless about it still.

And then she moved my arms all around and sat me up and pushed my back this way while pulling my arm that way and I didn't know my limbs bent like that, but apparently... THEY DO!

Just learning tons of new things about myself in Hungary :D.

Tomorrow the seminars start and things will turn grim, but for now, sausage and invasive massages for the win!