Budapest

For Steve's last day in England we went with Matt and Tim to Walmer Castle in Dover, which was once a residence of the Duke of Wellington. It was pouring rain but we still had a nice walk around the gardens and in the evening we went dancing. Pretty much had to put a gun to Steve's head to get him on the floor - but that was half the fun. 

The next day Steve and I were off to Budapest, we only got there in the evening so we took a taxi to our air bnb place. An adorable stuffie of the Indominus Rex awaited us, along with an amazing view of Fisherman's Bastion on Buda hill. They also had a cat who was very insistent on staying in our room. We had to chase it out by tactically using the hair dryer to scare it away. 

Keeping with tradition, day one is always a walking tour so that we can get our bearings and gain a basic appreciation for all the attractions we'd otherwise just walk past. Budapest has a very solemn history, particularly the last century, and it's memorialized all over the city. The parliament building is one of the prettiest I've seen, it was the winning design in a contest, but just outside it is a memorial to the massacre in 1956. Similar to Tiananmen Square, the massacre began as a student protest but turned bloody when the Soviet tanks began firing into the crowd. This sparked a full on revolution that was successful for a time but eventually crushed. So in an underground bunker very near the front doors of the government building is a memorial to the victims with a video collection of personal stories of the survivors. Farther away, near Hero's Square is a memorial to WWII, there's a monument that continues to cause controversy. The public claims that it is trying to rewrite history, making Hungary seem like a victim of Fascism when, for the majority of the war and during their occupation, they were allied with Germany and compliant with the anti-Semitic laws and the resulting horrors. And so across the road, the people of Budapest have made their own memorial to the victims, acknowledging the responsibility their country bears in that. Another melancholy memorial are the bronzed shoes along the Danube, where Jews and dissenters were shot so that their bodies fell into the river.

The main memorial is the House of Terror, which we went to on another day, the building that was Nazi headquarters, then Soviet headquarters in the city. The entire building is now a museum giving the timeline and testimony of many stories linked with the Communistic government. I can't imagine living with that level of fear in day to day life, the constant threat of gulags, secret police, and torture from a society that claimed to be for the people. In the solitary cells, there are so many photographs on the walls and you try to make that image into a person in your head, give them a story and characteristics so they're not just a black and white face. It reminded me of "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch," a book we read in high school about literally a day of someone in the gulags and just the mentality it took to make it through, where many didn't. I also thought of "God's Smuggler," which was from Bode, and Andrew's true experiences of sneaking back and forth across Communist borders with his car loaded with Bibles. At the end of the walking tour, before the final memorial, there was the "Hall of Victimizers," images of the people responsible for what went on in the building and government. The lack of dates after the dash, the thought that these people are still alive probably old but still living with what they had done to their country men is a strange one. It was good to see the sun again after the tour. 

The whole walking tour wasn't doom and gloom, after their national millennial in 1896 tons of beautiful buildings were constructed and a Hungarian national identity was beginning to form. St. Stephen's Cathedral, the Opera house, Parliament, Fisherman's Bastion, Buda Castle, and tons of other buildings around the city look lovely.  Fisherman's Bastion was definitely one of my favourite places in the city. We went up there numerous times just because the view and the sandcastle-like building was so great. There were a bunch of pedlars or various crafts and a dungeon that had a 3D theatre in it that gave you a basic video game cut-scene summary of Hungarian history.  It's on the Buda side of the Danube and just behind it, down the hill a way is the hospital in the rock. Because of the geology of the hills in Buda, there are a whole network of caves underneath which have been used as homes, cellars, prisons (including a cell that held Vlad the Impaler aka Dracula), air raid shelters and a massive working hospital, especially during the revolution. The set up reminded me of the one in Dover but on a much larger scale. Steve bought a gas mask in the gift shop because it's best to be prepared. We walked to Hero's Square, and there was a Steve McCurry photography exhibit in the gallery near by so it was really cool to see giant versions of the images I've grown up seeing in National Geographic. Most of them were from his time in India, might have to be my next trip cause that looks amazing. 

We walked to "Budapest's Disneyland" which is a giant castle that shifts in architectural design from medieval to renaissance to baroque and so on. We also passed the thermal baths and stuck our heads in, basically a fancy swimming pool that was a bit over priced so we decided to pass. Shaved my legs for nothing. One evening we went to a ruin pub, since there are some unowned buildings in the city that have fallen into disrepair, people have come and set up temporary pubs. This one had no roof so they had colourful sheets of fabric as cover, it was like drinking in a blanket fort! The decor was surreal, honestly I think they took any furniture or junk that was left in alleys; broken typewriters, computer monitors, old cars, disco balls hanging from the roof, and graffiti covering every surface. 

On the 13th, we had a walk around Margret Island, and around the street markets in Pest. We had sweet chimney cakes and special garlic cheese bread. Steve tipped some water on me so as revenge I went into every souvenir and clothing shop until my pants had dried out. Crossed the river again to get to the Church in the Rock, a chapel in the Buda hills, and then around the park up to the Hungarian Statue of Liberty. We headed back to our place to have dinner at the restaurant next door. The owner and cook was en elderly Hungarian gent in a waistcoat, who after we had had our order, kept bringing us stuff to try, paprika chicken, a Hungarian plum whiskey, an apparently Hungarian dessert but I couldn't tell you what it was, and, upon Steve's request, a shot of Unicum, even though he protested that it was "medicine." We were mildly concerned that we were never going to get out of there if he kept bringing food. 

For the last day we had to switch to a hostel, and the street it was on was perfect; gelato store, kebab place, a military store with swords and guns and a Magyar shop that we spend a good long time walking through. We did another lap of the main points in the city, took more pictures as well as clips for Steve's dancing video which I'm sure will be unleashed soon enough. We caught a night cruise up the Danube and the commentary was the funniest thing ever. The woman leading the tour would tell a series of stories and local legends but ended them all with "this is of course, not true" as well as the depressing commentary "the four main posts of this bridge have the Hungarian eagles on their top, which is where people jump from when they commit suicide,"   and pointing out the obvious: "the university has wings named alphabetically, for example E and K." Our commentary on her commentary went on for a while. 

Before we headed to the train station to go to Vienna, we went up to the Bastion again where there was a small outbreak of violins, lots of musicians began playing as we walked past, and we were passed by a majestic topless man on a motor scooter. Steve got really sick on the train ride, he blames the goulash but I had the exact same food so who can say. We managed to get to the hostel with periodic stops where I just chatted to whoever was around while Steve was indisposed including the bus driver who used to own a private business and travelled to Canada a lot and the Welsh hostel receptionist who was really helpful about getting stuff from the pharmacy.