Parliament & Protesting

I thought today I'd go over to parliament for the afternoon and take some pictures. I figured it would be peaceful and quiet since it's Saturday. I got there and all the roads were closed which made the wandering a little easier but I figured there was a reason.

I walked around the whole thing. I just love it. The flag below flies on the lawn in front of building. There used to be a coat of arms in the middle but they cut it out after the fall of communism.

Eventually I ran into the reason why all the streets were closed...yet another protest, except for this time they made their signs a little more tourist friendly.

It was so interesting. This group of protesters were darker skinned making it easy to guess why they were protesting. Eventually they ran into another group of people protesting the same thing except they were all really old. There was another group that met them that were all fair skinned and young. I'm guessing that the older people were protesting against age discrimination but the third group I have no idea. This time the riot police brought their horses. I'm pretty sure this demonstration was a little more scheduled than the last one. Not only were there plenty of police but the protest route was clearly marked AND they had a little separate route for the tourists and photographers so people could continue on with their sightseeing OR stand and watch without being in the middle of everything.

People were handing out pamphlets and stickers. They were pretty persistent but I didn't want a sticker. What do you do when things go bad and people start running. It's a little hard to explain to the police that you were just an innocent bystander when you're covered in stickers supporting whatever it was they were doing.

Notice the tall white guy meandering in the midst of all the people? I'm guessing he was just another tourist along for a stroll oblivious to everything going on around him and wondering 'wow, these Hungarians sure are patriotic...hey, I'm on TV!!!!'

All of this brought back this memory of one time we had some volunteers in Khartoum and we were taking them shopping on a Friday and had to cut through downtown to get there. It was a particularly unrestful, anti-American point in time but we thought that since it was a Friday and people didn't usually protest on Friday we would be fine. All the sudden one of the volunteers says 'hey look. They're having a parade. Let's go see it.' We definitely told our driver to turn around and take a different way. I'm fairly certain that could have turned into a totally different kind of protest experience than the one today.