The key thing that I wanted to do today was go to "Memento Park", where they have collected a lot of the communist-era (1949 - 1989) statues. Memento Park is an open air museum with statues of Lenin, Marx, and Engels, and several Hungarian Communist leaders. The park was designed by Hungarian architect, Ákos Eleőd, who won the competition announced by the Budapest General Assembly (Fővárosi Közgyűlés) in 1991; he described the park this way: "This park is about dictatorship. And at the same time, because it can be talked about, described, built, this park is about democracy. After all, only democracy is able to give the opportunity to let us think freely about dictatorship."
It is a bit of a hike to Memento Park, with a tram ride from the city centre followed by a bus ride to the park so all up close to an hour (even leaving the Budapest city limits); however, it was worth the effort.
It seems that it is obligatory when faced with statues like these to attempt to recreate the pose, at least to some extent - if nothing else, it will give you an idea as to the overwhelming size of some of them!
Overall, if you have the time to spare in Budapest (you need a good 3-4 hours including travel from and back to the city centre), Memento Park is well worth the time and effort, if just for the sheer size of these gigantic statues.
Back to the apartment, where I had been allowed to leave my bags and a quick chat with the hose Gergo who was waiting for me, and then off to the train station for the 3-hour train trip to Bratislava, about 200km north-west of Budapest. Bratislava sits in the far west of Slovakia, very near the border with Austria.
Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia and, with a population of about 500,000, the country's largest city. Bratislava is in south-western Slovakia, occupying both banks of the Danube River and the left bank of the Morava River. Bordering Austria and Hungary, it is the only national capital that borders two independent countries. The city was the capital of the Kingdom of Hungary, a part of the larger Habsburg Monarchy territories, from 1536 to 1783.