Hungary
Trip Start
May 24, 2005
1
19
25
Trip End
Ongoing
Budapest,
Hungary
Saturday, July 30, 2005
Thus spake our American companion in Bulgaria, who promptly set us off imagining streets where mosaic'd mosques jostle for supremacy with the golden onion domes of orthodox churches and the spires of gothic cathedrals; where cafes serve kebabs, falafel and stonking good hot chocolate followed by a hookah pipe...
But Budapest is something quite different. A 'meeting of east and west' in the sense of communism and western democracy yes - the city's soviet realist statues are collected in a 'communism park' outside the city - but architecturally, culturally, and politically this is Europe, with a rather large and repetitive helping of 'Soho'. Graceful, sweeping, and imperial, Budapest echoes London, Paris, Florence. The parliament looks like the architect (Imre Steindl?) laid out the plans of London's Houses of Parliament, pencilled St. Pauls' Cathedral in to the middle of the building, whipped up a few extra gothic spires and then placed it delicately on the Pest side of the Danube so it could for reternity reflect on its 'fusion' grandeur.
After a disastrous visit to the 'Terror House' (yes, the name should have given it away) where Helen wrote an essay in the Guest Book telling the management just what she thought of the drum-and-base audio accompaniment to the exhibition of Communist tortures), we tried to find a way to learn Something about the history of the place. The museum of Budapest history gave us an insight into the bronze age, roman, medieval, turkish, jewish settlers (up to 1940) but the stifling heat got to us, so all we really took away was a blurred image of coins, distorted heads, and maps, maps, maps. Oh, and they had camels in the city at one point..Nowhere, however, could we find an explanation of 1940 - 1945. Silence supreme.
Although sweating in the history museum had done us a world of good, we thought we'd do it properly and stripped down to waddle and wade with the Budapest pensioners in one of the city's many thermal baths. To be honest, the entrance hall offered better eye candy, with its shimmering mosaics depicting roman bathers in golds, indigoes and greens but there was no denying the relaxing effect the 37 degree sulphurous waters had. It would have been a bit more relaxing for Eoghan had he not stripped completely, only to find once he'd taken the plunge that everyone else was wearing loincloths or swimsuits!
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
We were soon woken from our rapturous - and slightly eggy - slumbers by the guy at reception at the Yellow Sub Hostel. Having learnt his English from watching repeat Scorcese films, our little Hungarian mafioso wanabee put on a performance which could have won him an oscar had the subject matter not been quite so mundane: "Breakfast eight tirty to ten, check out nine AM. ANy quesCHuns?" No? Good. NEXT!" Helen ventured a question about needing to salute, or wear a uniform, but immediately regretted it : "What? What's that you sayin'?" he yelled. We scarpered.
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Food
A whole post about Hungary without mentioning Hungarian food?