Budapest Parliament Golden Reflection Countdown Timer

The tram across the river is the cheapest way to see this building, and the best. You get on at one end of the line, the doors close, and for about forty seconds the whole parliament slides past the window in one long golden band. Most people on board are looking at their phones. I got off at the next stop and walked back along the bank with my hands in my pockets and stayed there until the last blue had gone out of the sky. It is a strange building to love. It was finished in 1904, a Gothic Revival pile with 691 rooms that nobody has ever needed, built at a time when the kingdom was half the map and wanted the architecture to say so. The dome is ninety six metres, which is exactly the height of the monument on the other hill, and that is not an accident. A city that measures its ambition in centimetres. The lights came on all at once along the water, or maybe they had been on all along and only became visible then. The river turned into a long orange ladder. Behind me a couple were arguing about where to eat. That is why people come here.