Szentendre and the Marzipan Museum

On Friday, afterwork, Max and I took the suburban train, the Hev, to Szentendre.

Szentendre is only 20 km outside of Budapest. But it took about an hour to get there on public transit. It was a very long, hot hour I'll tell you. The suburban trains do not have air conditioning. The windows do not blow any air into the car, and the whole train creeps along very very slowly through the city. Albeit, less stops than the regular metro, but still slow. very slow. I literally melted in the car as I stood by the caboose (we made the train connection by less than a minute, so we had standing room only tickets).

Szentendre itself is a cute little town, and it was nice to get out of the hustle and bustle of Budapest. We went on a Friday afternoon, so there was a good mix of locals going about their business and tourists going about theirs. The city is known for the 'budapest day trip' crowd, but I didn't really find it so bad. Other than a couple of streets with serious 'I love hungary' souvenirs, it was pretty relaxed. Other than the really interesting architecture (churches that were red, yellow and white respectively), and the vanilla-custard flavoured ice cream (called Májkrém), the sea side feel without the sea side, the people per square kilometer ratio closer to the Canadian average rather than the European average, and of course, the vapour fans at the cafes, the highlight of Szentendre was most definetly, the Marzipan Museam.

Yes. Although RS told me not to, told me it was for kids, we decided to ignore the man and go. (actually, since the RS failures of Barcelona, and the fact that RS is very North American-centric, Max was very happy to ignore RS that day).

Also, did I mention that it was air conditioned?

Having walked around for about 3 hours, enjoying the little town, climbing up a large hill, and being barred from every single church (they don't seem to like tourists very much), we headed to the Marzipan Museum. It is a very small place and the whole exhibit is on the second floor of a two story building. Once you pay your entrance fee (400 HUF), you are given an sample of marzipan, and then you are free to wander. The first thing we saw were two women working on their next masterpiece in the 'work shop'. Up the stairs, there was a large cake. Made completely of Marzipan. Apparently to reproduce such a cake, one requires exactly 970 eggs. oh, and 35kg of sugar. and 15kg of chocolate.

The Museum also had life sized figures of Lady Diana and Michael Jackson. made of Marzipan. All of the frames on the wall, life sized furniture, characters from children's stores (including the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Smurfs, Mickey Mouse, and apparently an array of eastern European/old soviet characters that max became very nostalgic over). There was also a room entirely devoted to Hungarian history. Really, I saw the Marzipan versions of every single person that the down down metro stops are named after (Kossuth Lajos, etc), and Sissi, Franz Joseph, the whole crowd was there. all made of candy! it was really neat.

There was also a replica of the Hungarian Parliament. The details were fantastic! Really, I have waaay too much fun in these places! (you see in the photo of parliament all those faces? yup, marzipan!).


I will have to admit, RS was slightly wrong about this Museum. Sure, it was exactly the Tate, but hey, it was fun! and in reality, I think RS underestimated the skill required to create these almond masterpieces!

After the Museum we went for a sor (beer) and a break at a Gorog (Greek) Pub by the Duna (Danube) then headed home.