Gyula

Our first weekend in Hungary, we went to go visit people in Békéscsaba and because we were so close, we decided to go visit Gyula, which is nearby and has a castle in it.  This kind of logic didn't serve us well when we decided that we would try to go into Romania, because we were so close.

The only problem was, they decided to have a Shakespeare Festival that same day, and they were performing one of the plays inside the castle, which meant we couldn't go inside.  This may not seem like a big deal, but this was at least the fifth or sixth time I've been to this castle and I've never been inside (mostly due to the fact that our p-day was Monday and on Monday practically everything is closed in Hungary).  Needless to say, I wanted to get inside.

Since our plans were foiled for that night, we decided to go check out everything else Gyula has to offer, which is pretty much limited to some cool fountains and a world clock.

You may or may not be able to see it, but around this large sphere are roman numerals showing what time it is in that particular place.  It was about 9pm over there when we took this, which mean it was 1pm in Utah.  Unfortunately, they have no respect for Utah, or any other state in the United States inside the Mountain time zone for that matter, as the time is labeled as Calgary (right by my left forearm).  The other US time zones were all represented by US cities (New York, Chicago and Los Angeles).

If anyone thought a festival celebrating some Shakespeare dude was going to hold us back from getting inside that castle, they were wrong.  We went back the next day, scoring one of our very few student discounts within Hungary, and finally got to see the inside.  

I guess I had never really thought about it before, but the inside was pretty much a small city.  It had rooms for everything from a place to hang up your pig to a church.  It's all a museum now, so you don't have to worry about the pig parts that are hanging in the butcher area - they're not real (but if you would like the authentic stuff, you could probably find it in a Hungarian house out in the country).

Sarah's favorite part was the armory.  Why is that, you ask?  Because that's where we took pictures.

Sarah likes her swords like she likes her men - straight

Bryan also likes his swords like he likes his women - curvy

Bryan's other favorite was this chair.  I'll leave it to you to look closely and figure out why.

Sarah also enjoyed posing for the Hungarian speaker she convinced to take this picture.

If only you could have seen his face.

Now I'm sure the only question running through your minds is "well, what in the world does the outside of this castle look like?"

For those of you who were wondering, I've included a picture below.  For those of you who weren't, this post ends here.