The Ides of March

It might have been a bad day for Caesar, but it's a holiday for Hungarians, one of the three national days as a matter of fact, alongside August 20th and October 23rd. This might mean they're an indecisive bunch- or they just love to celebrate. And if I am to choose one, I'll definitely go for the 15th of March. The weather is usually mild and there's so much spring in the air, very befitting for a holiday celebrating a revolution, more precisely that of 1848. On this day the poet Petőfi Sándor (whose statue can be seen in the shot) read out his "National Song" (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1848hungary-natsong.asp, could not help but smile at his name being translated as Alexander...) and the 12 points, which formulated the wishes of freedom and self-determination of Hungarians, were read out by fellow writer Jókai Mór. The whole thing did not end too well, and the uprising was repressed by 1849, the Hungarian revolutionaries laid down their arms on August 13th at Şiria/Világos, right next to my hometown,Arad.