Budapest ~ Pearl of the Danube

June 28, 2018

Budapest ~ Pearl of the Danube

Karl's major commitment to his hometown gig during sabbatical was to be available to co-lead a January-term off-campus course, "Life After Communism." This year's course was the third iteration of the class. The off-campus portion was scheduled to start in Hungary, giving us all a reason to travel to Budapest and make sure Karl was securely installed in the hostel where the group would meet him.

Wednesday, 3 January, 22.00

Travel to Budapest from Prague takes about seven hours by train. We thought it might be fun to combine lodging and travel costs by taking an overnight train, thereby maximizing our days in Hungary but minimizing our time away from Prague. (The boys had some travel fatigue at this point.)

Compartments could accommodate up to 3 people, so Karl reserved one whole compartment for the boys and me and one berth for himself. Our understanding was that someone else might be able to reserve those empty bunks in his compartment. Of the four of us, we were prepared to expose only Karl to that possibility.

The boys in their berths. My bunk was under Ben's.

As it happened, we were assigned two compartments that were connected. We opened the passage between them for a little more wiggle room. And a lot more head room.

Karl's compartment

Sink and vanity

The sleeper car had a steward available to decipher all the intricacies of the compartment and give us a primer on using the bathroom key. He also took our orders for breakfast drinks (coffee, tea, hot cocoa?) which he brought with breakfast boxes at 06:30.

So, was it fun? Kind of. Unsurprisingly, we had not the greatest night's sleep.

Onward.

Thursday, 4 January

Arriving Budapest

First exposure to Hungarian. Suddenly, Czech didn't seem so impenetrable.

Entrance to Keleti Palyaudvar (railway station)

The boundaries of present-day Budapest were formed in 1873 when the three neighboring cities of Buda and Óbuda (west of the Danube) and Pest (on the eastside) merged. Districts retain the old names.

Óbuda is a small district north of Buda.

Our hostel was in Pest near the pedestrian zone. We stopped by there, dropped our bags, and headed out across the Danube to Buda.

It was a gorgeous day, so we wanted to capitalize on sightseeing that involved a lot of views: up to Várhegy (Castle Hill). Here's some of what we saw.

St. Stephen

Stephen I, or St. Stephen, is considered the founder of Hungary and is the country's patron saint. He was a member of the Árpád Dynasty and the son of the supreme Magyar chieftain Géza. Although he was born a pagan, he was baptized and converted to Christianity. So when his father died in 996, Stephen ascended to the position of ruler, following the Christian tradition of primogeniture succession. Árpád tradition, however, called for his cousin Koppány to claim the throne. So, of course, they battled. When Stephen defeated Koppány he had him executed as a pagan in the name of Christianity.

Ben, Garrett, and I listened to a guide near the statue suggest to his group that perhaps Stephen was more pragmatic than pious, noting that Stephen's best chance at becoming king was as a Christian. As such, he had the wealth and might of the papacy behind him. I imagine the truth lies somewhere between the two narratives. It's good to be reminded that history is written by the victors, recognizing that there's always another side to the story.

By the way, Stephen officially became King of Hungary on Christmas Day in the year 1000, and Pope Sylvester II presented him with a royal crown which is now known as the Holy Crown of Hungary or the Crown of St. Stephen. More on this later.

Church of Our Lady, more commonly known as Matthais Church

Matthias Corvinus ruled Hungary from 1458 to 1490. The Church of Our Lady was built in the 13th century but became associated with Matthias for a couple of reasons: it was renovated under his rule and Matthias was married twice in the church.

The raven of Mátyás Corvinus

The raven is something of a spirit animal for Matthias. According to legend, upon the death of the preceding king in the 15th century, Matthias' mother summoned 15-year-old Matthias, who was in Prague, by sending a raven with a golden ring from Transylvania. Purportedly the raven flew nonstop from Transylvania to Prague. The legend stuck, and the boy-king of ravens was crowned. The ring-with-raven motif was incorporated into the family crest, the monarch became known as Matthias Corvinus. Corvinus is Latin for raven.

The ring-and-raven theme can be found throughout the city.

St. Stephen's Basilica (over in Pest)

Fishermen's Bastion near the Matthais Church

Fishermen's Bastion gets its name from the guild of fisherman that were responsible for defending this section of the city in the Middle Ages. It was built in 1895.

RAAARRRGH!

Fishermen's Bastion enjoys a commanding view of the Danube and Pest.

Liberty Monument atop Gellért Hill

Completed in 1947, this statue was originally called Liberation Monument as it was dedicated to the Soviet troops who liberated Hungary. After the fall of 1989 it was one of a handful of communist-era statues that remained standing, but its name was altered from Liberation Monument to Liberty Monument.

The gorgeous and ginormous Parliament House across the river.

Construction of the Parliament House was completed in 1902. At that time it was the largest parliamentary building in the world. (Currently it's number three, I believe.) The size was meant to convey Hungary's independence at a time when the country was still under Austrian/Habsburg influence.

Went inside the Matthias Church for a peak.

Climbed the bell tower. (We're in Europe. Gotta climb towers.)

One of our better family selfies, even if I'm squinting and we're a little washed out.

City crest on manhole cover

After a late lunch at a Hungarian restaurant we returned to our apartment to catch a nap. Shopping at a grocery store for snacks and breakfast food really drove home the point that I could not intuit my way around the local language. Had a low-key takeout dinner (döners for boys, Thai for parents), followed by an episode from season 2 of Stranger Things on Netflix.

Friday, 5 January

We started our day at an exhibit integral to the history of Budapest: "Welcome Aboard — World Famous Titanic Exhibition!"

We thought this might offset an afternoon of religious sites for the boys. And it was pretty engaging, with models and actual artifacts from the ship as well as written and filmed accounts from ships' logs and survivors. There was also a section that explored Hungarian-related threads from the Titanic. It's a traveling exhibit, so I'm sure they make it relevant to the host cities.

In the afternoon we visited the Great Synagogue, the largest synagogue in Europe.

Great Synagogue, AKA Dohány Street Synagogue

Completed in 1859, the synagogue was restored in the 1990s after damage it sustained during WWII.

Synagogue Swag

Exiting the synagogue we saw the Tree of Life Holocaust Memorial sculpture (1990) by Imre Varga, built on and near the mass grave of roughly 8,000 victims of the Ghetto of Pest.

Designed in the form of a weeping willow, the tree has leaves that are etched with some of the family names of Hungarian Jews killed in the Holocaust. The memorial was sponsored by the Emanuel Foundation, a New York organization founded by actor Tony Curtis in honor of his Hungarian father, Emanuel Schwartz.

The synagogue is a short walk from St. Stephen's Basilica, which is where we headed next.

The domes of St. Stephen's Basilica and the Parliament building are both 96 meters, a nod to the mythologic story that the seven Magyar tribes were said to have crossed the Carpathian mountains and arrived in the Pannonian plain in 896. By law nothing in Budapest can be taller than 96 meters.

Enough already. Karl returned to the hostel. I took the boys for a treat at Gelarto Rosa.

Once gelato was consumed the boys took off ahead of me back to our lodgings, which was about one kilometer away. This is one of my favorite things about living and traveling over here: setting aside the fact that my children don't want to wait for their mother, Ben and Garrett have become quite adept at navigating around unfamiliar cities where they don't speak the language. There have been several times that Garrett has had to work his way out of a daunting transportation snafu in Prague. It makes me really happy to see them take charge and find their bearings with confidence in a new city or on a foreign metro system. Even if it means they're leaving me in the dust.

With Karl working on course material and the boys chilling with their books and/or game-thingies, I set out for some solo downtime at one of Budapest's classic coffee houses, the Centrál Káveház (Central Café).

This lovely retreat was just a couple of blocks from our hostel.

Founded in 1887, the Central Café was known as a meeting place for writers, poets, editors, and artists.

Renowned patrons keep watch over the place from the wall of fame.

Glad I skipped the gelato!

I enjoyed a cup of tea and piece of Dobos cake, described as a "vanilla sponge cake layered with chocolate buttercream and covered with caramel glaze." Dee-lish!

We reconvened and gathered our gear for a trip to the baths.

Gellért Spa

We started with the outside baths (I didn't to get any pics out there), and it was pretty chilly for our feet heading out there. Flip-flops did not make our packing list.

Inside swimming pool.

Warming up in one of the thermal baths.

When hunger overtook us, we dried off, got dressed, and went in search of a restaurant.

Emerged from the spa just in time to see the holiday tram turn onto Szabadság híd (Liberty Bridge).

Walked across the bridge back to Pest for a late dinner and returned to our flat.

Castle Hill from Liberty Bridge.

Saturday, 6 January

We had no idea that we would be in Budapest on the 40th anniversary of the return of the Holy Crown of Hungary, but there we were. Apparently the crown (remember the crown? given by Pope Sylvester II in the year 1000?) spent much of the Cold War locked up securely in Fort Knox, Kentucky. The Hungarian Crown Guard gave the Hungarian crown jewels to the U.S. army at the end of WWII in order to safeguard them from the Soviet Union. So as the Magna Carta emerged from its wartime retreat in Fort Knox for its triumphant return to the Lincoln Cathedral, the Crown of St. Stephen settled in for almost 33 years of sequestered solitude.

The crown is seen as the symbol of Hungarian national identity. And as time went on, the Hungarian government was eager to get it back, but the United States was reluctant to relinquish it to a country under the sway of Soviets. President Jimmy Carter leveraged the return of the crown and jewels in something of a diplomatic chess move, communicating to the Hungarian government: improve your human rights record, loosen your stranglehold on the people, and we'll talk. Hungary did improve its human rights record and eased travel restrictions on its citizens. Carter went ahead and approved the controversial decision to return the sacred valuables.

On Epiphany Day in 1978, a delegation travelled to Budapest and presented the Holy Crown and jewels to their rightful home in Hungary's Parliament Building. As a result, relations between the two countries improved. Hungary pulled further away from Moscow's influence and was subsequently granted Most Favored Nation status, which carried favorable economic implications with regard to trade.

Why did this matter to us? Well, we knew we wanted to see the Parliament Building. And it was being opened to the public for free viewings of The Crown in honor of this special anniversary.

In front of the Parliament Building

"Cool! We'll just head on over there and duck into the building," we thought.

Umm ...

Upon further consideration, we scrapped that plan and purchased tickets for the full tour of the building — which included a viewing of the crown — at 11.30. This left us some time to explore the vicinity.

Just south of Parliament on the embankment is a memorial to victims of terror inflicted by the Arrow Cross Party. In 1944, Hitler replaced the Hungarian leader with Ferenc Szalasi, a facist intent on emulating the führer. Szalasi created the Arrow Cross Party, an anti-Semitic organization that targeted Jews and Roma of Budapest.

From December 1944 through January 1945, more than 20,000 Jews were rounded up, brought to the riverbank, ordered to remove their shoes, and then executed by the Arrow Cross militiamen. The bodies fell into the bitter cold water.

Shoes on the Danube (2005) commemorates this sad and shameful event with somber dignity.

Statue of poet Attila József (1905-1937)

Equestrian statue of Count Gyula Andrássy

Andrássy, a 19th century Hungarian statesman who served terms as prime minister and foreign minister, was a significant figure in building the modern Hungarian state.

A statue in Martyrs Square of Imre Nagy looking toward Parliament

Imre Nagy, a key figure in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, was secretly tried, found guilty, and executed in 1958. Word of his trial and execution was made public as a cautionary tale to leaders of other Eastern bloc countries. Following that it was forbidden to utter Nagy's name, as he had become a symbol of freedom. His image was rehabilitated in 1989 toward the end of the communist era in Hungary.

We took a walk through Liberty Square, which could arguably be called Revisionist History Square (as this eviscerating New Yorker article by Masha Gessen implies). Again, history is written by the victors.

This statue of Ronald Reagan was erected in 2011 on Liberty Square in honor of “bringing the Cold War to a conclusion, and for the fact that Hungary regained its sovereignty in the process.” Okay ... so when's the statue of Jimmy Carter going to be unveiled?

Reagan's statue faces the memorial to Soviet liberation of Hungary, a monument the Soviets put up in honor of themselves (not to be confused with Liberation Monument on Gellart Hill).

The Soviet monument stands between Reagan and the U.S. Embassy.

Not long ago, the Soviet "liberation" monument required a fence around it to keep vandals from defacing it. Not anymore.

Current nominee in the category "Monument to Stoke Public Ire"

When the Memorial to the Victims of German Occupation was installed (having been proposed and approved by a closed cabinet session), public outrage shifted away from the Soviet monument. From Gessen's article:

"(the memorial) is interpreted by its critics, at best, as an attempt to gloss over Hungary’s complicity in the tragedy of the Second World War and, at worst, as a monument to the occupation itself."

"A makeshift counter-monument has taken up residence in front of the eagle: a row of small handmade displays that include photographs, personal items such as shoes and clothing, and printouts with private stories and public denouncements of the monument."

"Every evening at six o’clock, a couple dozen or so people come and set up folding chairs there and commence a conversation about what they believe really happened in Hungary in the 1940s. They talk about the six hundred thousand civilians believed to have perished in Hungary, of whom four hundred and fifty thousand were Jews and another thirty thousand or so were Roma. And they note that other Hungarian citizens carried out the Nazi policies that led to these deaths. They also talk about Miklós Horthy, who ran the country from 1920 to 1944, finishing out his reign as the head of a pro-Nazi government. As it happens, a monument to Horthy stands on the steps of a church just off Liberty Square, and he is protected by a fence." ("Ronald Reagan and Other Hungarian Heroes," by Masha Gessen. The New Yorker, 21 July 2015.)

We returned to Lajos Kossuth Square for our reservation with the crown (and more).

I kind of want to call them Thomson and Thompson.

We were glad we did the tour. The interior is beautiful, our guide was quite entertaining, and the line outside was still really long.

The gilded Main Hall

We reached the Crown of St. Stephen at noon, so we also got a bonus changing of the Crown Guard. Sadly, no pics allowed in that area.

Our guide in the Assembly Hall of the House of Magnates, explaining _________.

"Each representative has a seat in the chamber. At each seat there are four buttons to use for voting: Yes, No, Abstain, and I Don't Know."

Relic from communist days.

Walked down to the embankment and crossed the Danube.

Széchenyi Chain Bridge

Another relatively warm January day!

The money shot. We can go home now.

Lion statues guard each side of the Chain Bridge.

As the Nazis retreated toward the end of WWII, they blew up all the bridges in the city, including the Chain Bridge. The lions were somehow spared. Restoration of the bridge was completed in November 1949.

Headed back to the hostel. Some architectural ornamentation and embellishments along the way:

Art Nouveau building

Atlas and company

LOL guy

We topped off our family time in Hungary with another thermal experience, the Széchenyi baths.

Lots of outdoor and indoor pools and baths to try out.

Garrett, chilling in the 20°C/68°F bath.

Soaking up 40°C/104°F. I think Karl is trying to warm up after dashing in from the outdoor pool.

We spent some time in the outdoor pools as well.

Poolside readout: time is 1725/5:25pm, water temp 27°C/80°F, air temp 9°C/48°F. (Yes, it really was that warm.)

The outdoor pools featured places to hang out, lanes for swimming, a "whirling corridor" (we'd call it a lazy river back home), and poolside chess boards. The chess boards jut out over the pool so that players can stand across from each other in the water.

Plus lots of pretty buildings to admire.

After drying off and wringing out our suits we walked over to Heroes Square,

before heading back to our hostel. The boys and I collected our things. We all grabbed some dinner and then Karl saw us off at the train station for another overnight trip, this time back to Prague.