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Budapest
Entry 7 of 20 | show all | print this entry |
We left by train for Budapest on Monday, February 9 and returned Sunday, March 15, from Bratislava. We were happy to learn that most people working in stores and restaurants and hotels and subways speak English, because Hungarian is an unusual language, and we could not say a word. (The people were also very pleasant and helpful, which we had heard in Prague, where people are not always very pleasant and helpful.) The language was brought by the seven tribes of Magyar people who invaded from the East from 900-1000AD , and it is unrelated to almost all other European languages, except that spoken in part of Siberia, part of Estonia, and Finland--distantly related; it originated in Siberia. So English is more closely related to German, French, Czech, and Russian than it is to Hungarian. All the European and East Asian languages, except Hungarian, derived from one spoken in pre-historic Europe called Indo-European, but never written down. Our tour guide spoke Hungarian, English, German, and Russian, and worked as a translator in the Communist era.
The influence of countries near Hungary is very clear in the food, including fastfood. You can buy Greek gyros at fast food counters, along with Turkish dishes like kabobs. In Budapest restaurants typically give you large portions, mostly meat but some potatoes. One restaurant we liked called Fatale's served unbelievably large proportions. Marty's schnitzel was like a 12 inch pizza; it came with a mound of potato salad on top, but he couldn't eat that; we had made the mistake of having soup first--a huge bowl of browth with the largest liver dumpling we had ever met. It was all good, but we didn't dare finish the soup. My main dish was stuffed cabbage, which came in a medium-sized saucepan--this restaurant had lots of unusual and amusing ways to present food. Mine was good, but had a few strands of hot green peppers, which I assumed were sweet peppers; I couldn't get them down, and the taste was for me almost unbearable until the hot sensation went away in a minute or two; they often put in these hot peppers, but you can easily avoid them if you know. Apart from the peppers it was good, but they gave me enough for the two of us to eat and then have leftovers. I also had Hungarian goulash there another night; it is stewed beef pieces in a tomato sauce and served with small pieces of Hungarian pasta, but I was surprised that it didn't have much flavor; I suppose for Hungarians the flavor is in the hot peppers. Another popular dish there was for two people, but the family at the next table served it to two adults and three children, and it was more than enough. It was a huge platter with breaded pieces of meat, ribs, and vegetables. When food arrived at a table, people often started laughing at the enormous proportions; another woman had a thick, huge steak with a mound of fried onion rings on top; her plate looked almost as full when it went back to the kitchen as when it came out, but she did get a bag and take it home.
Many restaurants many are in basements as in Italy and Prague as well as Budapest; they may have a small area on the street level, which is more expensive to rent, and a larger basement where most customers sit.
Another meal we enjoyed was fried chicken filets and fried rice patties. This restaurant was decorated as if we were in the oldest subway line in Budapest, completed in 1900. Both the restaurant and the subway line had tile walls, white with maroon edges; the restaurant also had a subway track in the floor. The seats in both the subway stations and in he restaurant were park benches with the slats done in natural and maroon finishes. The subway station also had lots of finished wood, a whole row of wooden doors in the wall of the station, though we couldn't imagine what could be stored there. The sign in the station was glazed tiles with a floral decoration. The whole station was a miniature of a modern subway station--perhaps 50 feet wide, and the trains were short enough so that the whole subway opened on to this little platform. The cars were small, and tall people could not have stood upright. The subway station and the trains were also spotless, so it was a beautiful antique subway line, the oldest in Budapest, we were told, the second oldest in the world, following an earlier one in London. All the other lines were much more like the ones you see in other cities--huge in comparison to this tiny, grandmotherly-like little train line. It was also a shallow subway line, particularly compared to those of Prague, which tunnel deep into the earth and have some of the longest escalators we have ever seen. This antique subway did not have homeless people in its stations, but all of the others did, and they seemed to live there; the police did not bother them; they had big piles of blankets, and these were always in the corners of the stations along with shops that sell food and flowers and clothes, along with lots of people.
Budapest was actually two different communities on two sides of the Danube until about 1870; Buda is the hilly side around which the river bends; it has the castle and beautiful parks and lots of beautiful views of the city, and so people who can afford to prefer to live in Buda. We walked from the river up to the statue at the top, a Russian statue to honor the soldiers who died liberating Budapest in WWII; the statue of a muscular Russian woman holding a palm leaf is now the picture you see on many postcards of Budapest; our Hungarian guide wasn't too happy that a Russian statue played this role. Buda also has the church of St. Mathias, one of the most revered medieval rulers of Hungary. Next door is the Hilton; we asked how the Hilton got to be on the top of the hill next to the beautiful old church; we were told that the hotel owners were willing to pay for the spot, and the Communists were happy to take their money.
Pest historically was on the other side of the river; for a time the city was called Pestbuda, but then they got it right. Pest is a plain in comparison to the hill of Buda. It has the commercial section, the Parliament on the side of the river, and the theaters, and most of the housing and industry. At night many buildings are lit, and the view of the city from any angle, particularly including a view of the river, is very beautiful.
We took a bus and walking tour on our first day; one highlight was the Basilica of St. Stephen, the first Hungarian king. It is a large church which seems to be built entirely of marble in maroon and gray, but the tour guide said it was not real marble, except for the statues of the saints in white marble; it is very beautiful, though; including the dome in the center.
We missed this tour at first; we arrived at the basilica to start the tour, but the only tour going on was in another language, so we took a subway back to our hotel to complain. The owner of the company claimed that we had failed to see the tour guide who should have been easy to see, and he came to the hotel to bring us to the basilica to begin again, but we knew that the tour had simply been cancelled because there were no other takers.
Hungary is still in the process of selling off all enterprises, which under Communism were owned by the state. Our tour guide said that the railroads of Hungary would be the one business that they would not be able to sell, because they don't make money.
One highlight of the trip for Marty was the hot mineral water baths. The water is as hot as bath water and occurs naturally, so that several public baths, one going back to the period of Turkish rule, have been a part of Budapest for hundreds of years. We went to the Gellert baths, which had areas for women and children to be "natural"--without swim wear, for men and women to swim, and for men in one and women in another to enjoy the hot mineral water. There is a charge to cover costs, and the men's area included showers, the two large pools at slightly different temperatures (about 100 degrees F.), beautiful tiles in the pools and walls, a steam room too hot for me to handle, and a man reading a paper; we though it would quickly get too wet, though he was not in the steam room. The tour book has a picture of men playing chess in the hot water, but we didn't see that. It soothed Marty's sore knee, and he was very happy with that.
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