Budapest Parliament Night Glow Countdown Timer

I took the river cruise because everybody takes the river cruise, and then I understood why everybody takes the river cruise. The Parliament building at night is genuinely absurd. Gothic revival on a scale that should not work, spires and arches and a central dome, all of it lit from below in green and gold, and the whole enormous thing doubled in the Danube so cleanly you cannot find the shoreline. I stood at the rail with a plastic cup of something and did not take a photo for the first two minutes. That is rare for me. The boat was full of people saying wow in six languages. Candles of light ran along the bank, one per lamppost, gold and green and gold again. Somebody told me the building has six hundred and ninety one rooms and I have thought about that number ever since. Who needs six hundred and ninety one rooms? Nobody. That is the point. The building is symmetrical, and somehow that makes it stranger, a perfect mirror of itself sitting on the bank with its own reflection. It was built to be too much, and a hundred and twenty years later it still is.