HUNGARY

Hungary is not at all what I expected it to be. For whatever reason, I envisioned a small little country of huts and village homes. Well, part of the Hungarian countryside consists of small villages with huts, but whoa! Budapest is sprawling and quite metropolitan. It's a mish-mosh of old meets new and it's lovely. There is art, religion, wonderful outdoor cafes, shopping and just a few blocks from all this, bullet-ridden buildings from the 1956 uprising against Russia. Hungary was the first of the Eastern Bloc countries to open its doors to the West in 1989.

BUDAPEST - APRIL 2005