Here’s what you have to know about these two cities spilt by the Danube:  Buda is home to castles, museums, and rich history.  Pest is home to bookstores, bars, hotels, and coffee shops.  In other words, Buda is a nice place to visit, but we’d want to live in Pest.  And truth be told, Budapest is such a lively, happening city, pulsating with the energy of a recently liberated society that we could actually envision living there.  We were there for three days as the city was held in the last fierce grip of winter with stinging winds blowing along the Danube — but you could still sense the vitality of the city.  There are artists, young people, movies being made there, the streets pulse with creativity and life.  For a city with a deeply tortured history in the 20th Century — held under the steel boot of the Nazis, then the Soviet Union — we found the place to be like a teenager bursting into adulthood, full of potential and fun, a city finding its new dynamic voice in the 21st Century.