Flowers and Castles

March 8 was one of the first days I was in Budapest. All around town I saw men carrying flowers. At first I didn't really notice it until I saw more and more and more men carrying flowers and then I wondered if it was Hungarian Valentine's day or something. Later I pointed this out to someone else and they told me it's International Women's Day and it is tradition to give a flower to women (or I guess a particular woman) on this day. Wow! Not even people who celebrate Valentine's day give flowers like this on this scale anymore.

So I went on some obscure 2-hour bus trip trying to look for Janos Hill. In the end I didn't find it but I did see another tourist suffer because of the same bus route. So I got on 22, and as the tourist got on the bus he asked a local woman, "This goes to Buda Castle?" "Yes, Buda Castle," she nodded. Already I was wary because this bus went the opposite direction from the castle but I didn't know where I'm going myself so I didn't say anything. In any case, after 30 minutes, far from the castle, the tourist finally figured out that this is NOT the way to the castle and he started freaking out saying, "Please, please, take me to the castle! I want to go to the castle!" I then passed a street sign that said: Buda Keszi and I guess that BudaCastle said with an accent sounds exactly like Buda Keszi. So that local woman wasn't wrong; we were going to some version of Buda Castle...