Budapest

In order to facilitate the posting of this blog, I have basically just copied Megan's letter home about our trip to Budapest. Her message was much more thorough than I could have hoped to write, so I will let her tell our story. So please enjoy...

Day 1: The night before we left, our friend and fellow Glossa teacher, Anne, left Prague forever. She’s moved to Berlin so that she can earn real money before heading back to the states. With any luck, we’ll get there at some point to visit her. Anyway, Mark and I didn’t stay long, one because it was an outdoor event and it started to rain; and two, because we did have a train to catch the next day. Anyway, our train left a little before 1pm. It’s about a six and a half hour trip, though the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic before arriving in Hungary. So, I now have two Slovak stamps in my passport, even though I never got off the train. Other than being crowded, the trip was alright. Our train arrived right on time, at 7:30 and we headed right to the hostel.

Unfortunately, our first encounter with a Hungarian was also our first encounter with a rude, unhelpful service-person. We wanted to buy a book of ten metro tickets, because every time you get on a train or a tram, you have to validate a new ticket. Of course, we only had big bills because we had just withdrawn money, and the minute the woman saw that, she “forgot” all of her English and absolutely refused to help us. Luckily, we found another ticket counter with a much nicer lady, and were soon on our way. A note about Hungarian money here, the basic unit of measure is called a forint. 10 forints are equal to 1 Czech crown; and thus, 200 forints make an American dollar. I withdrew approximately 20 000 forints, or 100 dollars for the weekend.

Anyway, we found our hostel without trouble; they gave very good directions. After dropping off our bags we headed to Ferenc ter, a large square covered end to end with restaurants. The one that we wanted to go to was packed, so we ended up at pretty good pizza place instead. Where the Czechs specialize in beer, the Hungarians may well have come up with the whole idea of wine. Needless to say, I was pleased; over the weekend, we tried at least five Hungarian wines, red and white, and enjoyed all of them.

After dinner, we decided to see one sight before calling it a night. We walked down Andrassy Boulevard, the main street of historic Pest (in case you don’t know, Budapest is actually two cities, Buda and Pest, separated by the Danube), to Hero’s Square. In former times, the Communists staged State events there, complete with parading soldiers and tanks and such. The center of the square is a tower and statues commemorating the Magyar conquest of Hungary in the ninth century. The mounted horsemen along the bottom of the statue are the tribal chiefs who led the invasion, and believe me, they are a scary lot. One of the amusing things we noted was that the Hungarians have a much more militant history than the Czechs and they are quite proud of it. Around the outside of the square are statues of 16 historical leaders of the Hungarian people, such as King Stephan I, the first Christian king (I think the son of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, but I’m not sure) and the leader of the 1858 anti-Hapsburg rebellion (the Hapsburgs, of course, being the ruling dynasty of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until it was dissolved in World War I). After taking bunches of pictures, we headed back to the hostel, as I was cold and tired.

The hostel was pretty nice, much cleaner than the one in Cesky Krumlov. We had a bed in a large dorms, with something like 8 people in each. The beds were a bit hard, but nothing out of the common European way; the pillows, however, would be dwarfed by the average throw pillow in Mom’s house. In other words, they were small. I was asleep before my head hit mine, so not-to-worry too much.

Day 2: I was awoken Friday morning by singing! Our hostel was across the street from a music school, and every morning, there was singing and pianos and all kinds of lovely sounds. One of the lovely things about this hostel is that it provides breakfast, unlike our last one. It wasn’t much, just a bit of cereal and bread with butter, cheese, or jam. There was also the bitterest coffee I’ve ever tasted; apparently Hungarians like it that way [I liked it too]. Anyway, after a filling breakfast and a bit of getting ready, we headed out for our first full day in Budapest.

We started our day in an area of Pest called the Inner City. Our first stop was actually a peak at the Underground Railway Museum. Budapest is home to the oldest underground metro line still in operation in Europe. We used that particular line a lot, and you can feel the age of it; the trains are shorter and narrower than other lines and the stations have a decidedly Victorian era look to them. It took about five seconds for us to realize that Mark was not doing his usual impeccable job of navigating, so I commandeered the guidebook and did my best to keep control of it for the rest of the trip (every time Mark got his hands on it, we got lost!). From the museum, we headed out to see a plethora of churches, an 18^th century university, and a handsome park (I took flower pictures just for Mom). We also saw the Pest County Hall, which is now an EU government building at some point. I was a bit hesitant to go in, as there seemed to be guards and such. We started in but someone immediately asked us something in Hungarian (an impossible language, which I did not even attempt, beyond “ turn left on the street with the long name; then right on the street with the longer name”). I called to Mark to stop him, as he was a bit ahead of me. The man hesitated and then asked if we were tourists. We admitted as much, and then he said “Oh, please, please, go right ahead.” Can you believe it? That’s the nicest reaction I’ve ever gotten to being a tourist. Anyway, the inner courtyards, the purpose of our visit where lovely, brightly decorated walls and lovely statues.

Anyway, our midday stop was the Central Market Hall. The ground floor is a regular food market – so we got to watch some elderly Hungarians do their shopping – and the top floor is a tourist market. We wandered round there for a while, and I was sorely tempted to get Ben a Hungarian costume (I decided against it, since I thought his Daddy might object to puffy sleeves). We ate lunch in a cafeteria style restaurant on the second floor (which despite it’s casualness had a violinist). We both had peppers stuffed with sausage and rice, mine with rice and Mark with potatoes. They were quite tasty, not at all spicy and I believe quite Hungarian.

From there, we saw more churches and historic buildings, including a pharmacy with old fashioned wooden drawers and cabinets, a Serbian Orthodox Church, and the main pedestrian street, Vaci utca. The Orthodox church was quite interesting, as I have never been in one before. There isn’t as clear of an alter, and where we would have a crucifix, there is a wall covered in painting of different Biblical figures and scenes. We ended the Pest walk at the Chain Bridge, which was the first permanent span across the Danube, built in 1849. Like every other bridge in Budapest, it was dynamited by the retreating Nazis at the end of World War II. It was restored and reopened 100 years to the day of it’s original inauguration in 1949. At both ends of the bridge there are growling stone lions. Legend has it that the sculptor committed suicide on realizing that the lions’ tongues had been forgotten. So, across the bridge and beautiful Danube to Buda we went. We took the funicular (a peculiar train-sort-of-thing that takes one up steep hills) up the hill to the castle district, while enjoying the view of Pest across the river). At the exit, there is the statue of an eagle perched on a high tower; this is Turul, the mythical creature that lead the Magyars to Hungary. The palace has now been converted into museums, but is still quite lovely. From there, we headed up to Holy Trinity Square, which should be home to a plague column (cf Cesky Krumlov), but it has been taken down for repairs. It is also home to one of the most beautiful churches I’ve ever seen, known as the Matthias Church. The Hilton Hotel of Budapest is also there; it is an award winning structure which incorporates two ruins. Now, what I don’t understand is why, if they are capable of building something so beautiful in Budapest, they built the monstrosity that passes for a hotel here in Prague. Behind the church and hotel is a hundred year old structure called the Fisherman’s Bastion, named such because if was built on the site of an old fish market. Mostly, it’s a viewing point from which to see Pest. It’s pretty enough in itself but decidedly new.

So at this point we were understandably foot sore and tired. So, we stopped at a little café-bookshop for a rest and a drink. I had more lovely Hungarian wine, while Mark sampled the local beer, no Pilsner but palatable enough. At the point the battery in my camera died, so Mark was responsible for pictures for the rest of the day; luckily, I brought my charger so I do have pictures from the next day. From there, we saw a Medieval Jewish Prayer House, which was turned into apartments after the Jews were driven out of Budapest after the Christians retook it from the Turks in 1686. Another highlight from the castle district is described by the guidebook thus: “This is one of the two streets in the Castle District that are best suited for viewing a mysterious Hungarian contribution to Gothic architecture: niches of unknown function that were build into the entryways of medieval buildings.”

Next came the Mary Magdalene tower, once part of a larger 13^th century church that was destroyed in World War II. After this we tried to go to the medieval tunnel network that runs underneath the entire castle district (it’s 15Km long!), but they were having a private event and it is a lot of walking, so we decided to wait until the next day to tour it. Our final stop was the Museum of Military History, since Mark likes that sort of thing and it was free. On the way, we passed large groups of children playing the most inexplicable game. They had numbers tied around their foreheads, and it seemed that any time groups with different colored numbers encountered one another, everyone had to press their number against a tree. Crazy Hungarians! Anyway, we weren’t in the museum long, as it closed at 5 and we got there around 4:40.

We headed back to the hostel to get ready for dinner. I was looking forward to a bit of sitting, on the funicular and then on the metro. Unfortunately, the funicular was broken, so while we got a full refund (even for our ride up!), we had to walk all the way down the hill. We did eventually find our way back to the hostel and after a couple of minutes of sitting and complaining about our feet (well, I was complaining anyway), we went to dinner. Following the recommendations of the guidebook, we went in search of a traditional Hungarian restaurant. Unfortunately, when we found the recommended place, there was a sign on the door thanking people for their patronage but explaining that after 25 years in business, the owner was retiring. Fancy that. Luckily, we had picked a backup restaurant, which was not closed. It actually turned out to be wonderful. We ended up sharing a couple of dishes – Paprika chicken (so entirely different from Mom’s that we need to change the name of one of them!) and stuffed cabbage (a cabbage leaf wrapped around multiple types of meat and cooked cabbage) – along with red wine this time. The waiter was excellent. He’s been at the restaurant for over 30 years and is a wonderful, old-world, proper sort of man. It was all terribly tasty and filling. After dinner, we found a lovely little pub near the hostel and had a couple more glasses of wine while chatting and local-watching. We ended up having another early night; I’m sure I was asleep before midnight.

Day 3: Saturday was our last full day in Budapest, so mostly we knew that we needed to see everything that we had missed Friday: St. Stephan’s Basilica, Parliament, the Labyrinth, the Terror House, and a bathhouse.

After breakfast, we started out towards the Nyugati Railway Station. It was built by the Eiffel company (best known for the Parisian tower of the same name), but the Hungarians are not overly concerned with its upkeep. It’s a bit dirty and now home to a McDonald’s and a disco. From the station, we headed out to St. Stephan’s and Parliament. St. Stephan’s, named for Hungary’s first Christian king, is the largest church in the country. It is absolutely stunning, and apparently so sturdy that it was used to safeguard important documents and artwork during the bombardments of World War II. The decoration is stunning (gilding, gilding everywhere) and on such a scale that I can’t imagine the mind that conceived of it.

Parliament is equally impressive; “it mixes a predominant neo-Gothic style with a neo-Renaissance dome” and is the most identifiable landmark on the Pest side of the Danube. Unfortunately, do to an unruly protest the previous week (in which the state television station was temporarily overrun and 150 people, 102 of which were police officers, were injured) the building itself was heavily guarded, with barricades preventing anyone from getting too close. When we were there, the protests had turned into a cultural fair. Crazy Hungarians.

At about 11am, we arrived at the House of Terror, 60 Andrassy Boulevard. This seemingly innocuous residential building was home to political torture and murder under two separate, bloody regimes. Near the end of WWII, the Nazis set up a Hungarian puppet regime, know as ArrowCross. Under this government, Budapest’s Jewish population, which had thus far weathered the war relatively intact was set upon with an unmatched vehemence (including people being tied together and thrown alive into the freezing waters of the Danube). In addition, anyone considered politically dangerous was imprisoned and tortured and at times executed at 60 Andrassy. As the Soviet Army rolled through Hungary, which much difficultly, especially in moving from Buda to Pest, they brought with them the obligatory political officers, whose first task was to set up a political police (indeed, Orwell’s “thought police”), which immediately took over the Andrassy building, settling into nearly 50 years of uninterrupted savagery. Boys as young as 16 were imprisoned, tortured, and executed here. One famous case had to do with a priest and several Catholic schoolboys, accused to killing Soviet soldiers (a ridiculously invented charge), the priest and three of the boys (ages 16-17) were executed and the rest sentenced to hard labor. It was an incredibly moving, difficult tour. The history, the suffering of the place was incredible.

The final room of the tour was the “hall of victimizers” where the pictures of members of ArrowCross and Communists were hung. I was amazed as to how many of them were alive and seemingly unpunished. I really want to believe that at least some of those people were not truly “evil at heart” but instead maybe through coercion, confusion, or simply the need to protect those closest to them, ended up in a role they didn’t really want. But then, who really knows?

So, after the Terror House tour, it was about 1pm and it was lunch time. We actually ended up back at the same restaurant that we couldn’t get into on Thursday. It was maybe the best meal I had in Budapest – chicken with mozzarella and tomatoes and potatoes. It was lovely. Anyway, the Terror House had taken longer than we anticipated, so we were left with some choices to make. There were three time-consuming things left that we wanted to do: the caves, the bathhouse, and Statue Park (where all the old Communist statues are on display). After some discussion, we decided that we were Communisted-out so was nixed Statue Park and compromised on the other two – the caves we would do that evening and go to the bathhouse the next morning, since our train didn’t leave until 2:30.

The caves were quite interesting; they are a natural formation, though further excavated and fortified by generations of people. They are now decorated in a kind of “evolution of humanity” theme, starting with reproductions of cave drawings until you get to what’s called the Renaissance grotto, with a fountain that flows with red wine instead of water (a waste of perfectly good wine, I think). There’s also a sort of puzzle room, intended for kids, but I found I was almost too much of a wuss to do it myself. The game is that, while you were exploring the caves, someone has stolen the sun, and you have to find it again. You enter through a door and grab hold of a little cord along one wall. Once the door closes, you are plunged into absolute darkness, and you have to follow the cord around a maze to “find the sun.” It’s quite an experience if you’ve got a bit of claustrophobia or you’re just a big old scared-y-cat (like me), because at times, it feels as though the walls are closing in around you or that with your next step you’ll drop off the face of the earth. Neither happened, thankfully, and we eventually “found the sun” and our way out. The final section of the caves was the “caves of the future” which was a mock archeological dig from 40 million years in the future. They found things like shoe prints, cell-phones, and coke bottles embedded in the rock. Very amusing, though a bit silly.

The caves took us several hours to complete, so it was nearly dinner time before we got out. We wandered around the castle district and looked at some souvenir shops (I ended up buying myself something, I can never resist spending money) before heading on a tour that would take us towards our chosen restaurant in an area of Buda known as Watertown. We walked for a bit down a prettyish main street known as Fo Utca until we reached our dinner destination for the evening, which was a French restaurant. It was a bit more expensive than I had hoped, but the food was very good and the service excellent. In general, we were amazed by the level of English and general politeness that we encountered. Most places like Prague get a bit tired of us tourists, but we were made to feel very welcome in Budapest. Mark had some sort of sweetbread thing (which I think is not really bread, right?) and I had a turkey and curry dish. It wasn’t the least be spicy but still quite tasty. So, after dinner, we headed out around Watertown to see several churches, a Capuchin Church and two Catholic ones – St. Anne’s and St. Elizabeth’s. St. Anne’s was almost destroyed in the 1950s by the communist leader who thought that Stalin would be offended by seeing it from the Parliament windows across the river. Fortunately, that plan was never carried out. We ended our pleasant, if not spectacular walk at the Margaret Bridge (there’s also an Elizabeth bridge!) and headed back to the hostel. We were both so exhausted that we turned in almost immediately on getting there.

Day 4: We got up very early and pack everything we could, except our bathing suits, so that we could head to the Gellert Baths for our last morning in Budapest. Gellert is both a stunning, five star hotel and Budapest’s most famous bathhouse. The entry fees are a little confusing, but in the end we figured out that for 3000 forints each, we got up to four hours in the pool and thermal baths as well as private changing cabins (one for each of us, of course!). If we stayed less than four hours, we would get a bit of a refund. After changing, we headed into the main pool area. It’s absolutely beautiful. Our first stop was the mixed gender (thus fully clothed!) thermal bath area, where we sat and enjoyed the waters. It was just perfect after two days of hard walking. After relaxing, chatting, and people watching, we went into the pool for a while. The water was so cold, I almost couldn’t get in. To own the truth, Mark had to pull me in. We swam a couple of laps and enjoyed the jets and cool water for a while before heading back to the thermal bath again.

Unfortunately, we could only stay about 90 minutes and then had to leave so that we wouldn’t miss our train. After a good shower to get the sulfur water out of my hair, we left and headed back to the hostel for lunch and our bags. We went to a restaurant recommended by the hostel manager, which was quite good but turned out to be very expensive. In fact, we ran out of forints! Thankfully, we both had Euros on us and they let us pay the remainder in that. Unfortunately, the waitress did the math very wrong and charged us 20 Euro for what should have been 2 Euro. It was clearly an honest mistake which we didn’t catch until after we left. I was really upset, and Mark offered to go argue, but I figured it wasn’t worth it.

So all that was left was to go to the train station. The beginning of the ride was nice and quite comfortable, until we reached Bratislava. I think the entire population of Slovakia got on the train. There were people and bags completely filling the hall. I was getting hungry, but we decided to wait until Brno, hoping people would get off. Enough did to let us squeeze up to the dining car. Unfortunately, however, it was full, mostly with people not interested in eating, who just wanted a place to sit. I can’t blame them entirely, in retrospect, but at the time I was so hungry and exhausted that I just lost it and started crying. We stood at the door to the dining car for about 30 minutes when finally somebody from first class got up and left and we took their table. The food was passable, if not great, and mostly it was food! After eating, we went back to our seats for the end of the journey. I got home around 10, I think. Exhausted but pleased. Pictures.