Goodbye to the Goulash City

After making our way (yes, we cheated and bought the lift passes) to the St Stephen Basilica Dome, I took in the varied architecture around the city. Our guide Magdi pointed out to us on many of our walks, that the city is a mish mash of architectural styles, some Art Nouveau, next to Barouque with a Communist style concrete building squeezed between. From the top of St Stephens, this cacophony of styles is quite noticeable as are all the red roofs. I mentioned that the mixture along with the red colors reminded me of the goulash and and other local foods made with the ever-present paprika and my brother in law, N said "it's the Goulash City!"

After hoofing around the city for 2 days, it was fun to come up and have a birds eye view; indentifying landmarks and buildings we had visited.

Here is a traditional Hungarian Goulash we enjoyed at a restaurant called Pest-Buda, (Fortuna Utca 3) in Buda's Old Town on our first day in Budapest. All of the food we enjoyed that day was described as "Grandmas home style Hungarian kitchen", and all of it was orange or red! I think of warmth, when I see red and orange, like the hot paprika peppers used in the cuisine, but when I look across the city's red roofs, I also saw warmth and hospitality we experienced here. And that is the feeling I leave with after visiting this "goulash city".  A feeling of hospitable local people, laughing as we mangled their language, helping us find our way on the public transit, and especially when serving us the wonderful food and drink we enjoyed in the city.  

(And to be sure the food is not all paprika based or red! We found many wonderful restaurants and cafes representing every ethnic possibility as well as traditional food!)

A Monumental Day In Budapest

We had a "monumental" day in Budapest,  Hungary, we toured with Magdi Pelech, a private guide we hired to take us to see the city and Momento Park. At every turn we saw monuments. In a country that has had a long history of changes in rulers and governments, there are lots of monuments to wars, uprisings, liberations and commemorations of people who have died during the horrors of all these changes. We even saw old monuments from the communist era that have been removed and warehoused in their own park where they can be seen with a wry eye to the propaganda they represented. 

Today I'll share a few of the monuments we saw and what we were told by our guide Magdi about them. 

Liberation Monument

This is the Liberation monument on Gellert Hillin Buda; which was sculpted by Strobol and was set up to commemorate the liberation of Hungary by the Russian Army in 1945. Of course this is the same country that at the turn of the next century rejected Communism, and put the statue of a Russian soldier that was on the lower pedestal away in a separate park out of town.  If this was a Face Book relationship status it would read : "it's complicated". 

At Momento Park, Communist monuments usually depict unidentifiable "workers"; always happy and moving forward quickly. 

Just outside of town is Momento Park. I had read about this and had the sense it was just warehouse for all the Communist statues that were removed from around the city after the fall of Communism. But in reality, it's a very well designed park, set up to give one the feeling of the hopelessness and paranoia that exsisted  under Communist rule. The paths are infinity loops, the park ends in a brick wall, and statues are redeployed in a rueful way, such as one with Lenin, put aside, and his Communist Soldiers, who once stood guard at the base of his monument finally getting to lie down on the job. 

An old statue of Lenin and the frescos of soldiers lying down on the job.

There are also monuments to terrible times before that. We stopped at the banks of the Danube on the Pest side just west of the Chain Bridge to see this heartbreaking memorial  sculpture, called the Shoes on the Danube Memorial. During Nazi rule in Hungary, Jews were made to remove their shoes and coats and stand at the rivers edge, where they were shot. It's sober and horrifying to imagine the bronze shoes lining the banks of the Danube representing real people who were killed simply because of who they were. 

A detail of the Shoes on the Danube  Memorial on the banks of the Danube

Jumping forward to one of the newest monuments, we also saw one of the most controversial. This monument was erected by the current governing party in Hungary over the objections of many local activists and descendants of Jews killed or interned during WWII by the Nazis.  The objection to this monument, which was just installed just weeks ago, is that it claims to honor the dead, while picturing a huge eagle (a known symbol of the Nazis) and other language that activists feel does not properly respect the feelings of the people's for which it was designed to honor. Citizen activists are staging an ongoing protest of the monument, and many people have created an ad hoc memorial made up of stories and symbols of their family's real story in hopes to counter act what they see as a flawed attempt to memorialize their loved ones. 

The new memorial and the ad hoc memorial displayed by protesters near the Parliment building. 

So at the end of the day, we learned a lot about Hungary's complicated history, and even more about man's ability to brutalize eachother. Interesting and sobering at the same time, but I have a strong belief that remembering this difficult history helps us to stand firm in preventing it in the future. 

Arrival in Budapest

View from the Marriott concierge lounge towards of the Chain Bridge over the Danube and St Matthias (on Castle Hill on the Buda Side) 

We made it to Budapest - I'll have more details on our guide and driver on my more comprehensive "after" blog, but we had arranged with our Budapest Guide Magdi Pelech to have her driver pick us up at the airport at 7:15 PM (that's 19:15 for the military types and folks in Europe!)  At 35 euros for the transfer, it's more costly than a group transfer or the local bus, but possibly less than a taxi, because you could get one that doesn't treat you right. And after a long day in the unfriendly skies, there is nothing like seeing someone waiting for you at the airport with your name on a placard! Arranging a transfer for our first night in a place is one of those splurges well worth it. 

Our trip from the airport, along the Pest side of the Danube at night was a beautiful introduction to Budapest, and we could see the river cruise ships heading out of port and doing their "drive-bys" of the monuments at night. We saw ARosa, Viking, Grand Circle River Ships, and we weren't even looking that hard! We also saw the party cruises and night site seeing cruises traveling up and down the river. One can see why the river ship lines start or end many of their cruises here, it is really lovely and scenic!

A view to Elizabeth Bridge from our room at the Marriott

Our room is on the top floor concierge level (making all those stays in anonymous Residence Inns in college towns all over the New England and NY worth the effort for the free upgrade and access to the concierge lounge with included breakfast and snacks! We stopped in tonight for a late snack and a quick look at the panoramic view from the lounge. 

Tomorrow we meet Jeff's sister and BIL, K&N for a full day of touring with Magdi Pelech and the driver we met this evening!