Human Peace Sign
Trip Start
Sep 2007
1
5
6
Trip End
Ongoing
Budapest,
Hungary
Saturday, March 29, 2008
First up, last Sunday was rather strange, even by Budapest standards. As you do, I got up at lunch time, wandered over to meet my friend for some food (yummy yummy new Mexican place, mmmmm burritos!), then we walked over to Heroes' Square to take part in a giant human peace sign protest. With flaming torches. As you do. Heroes' Square is, as the name suggests, a square dedicated to heroes (the guys that founded Hungary). It's a pretty big space, at the end of the main promenading street in town - Budapest was waaaaaaay posh back in the day. So anyway, very big, posh square in the middle of town.
When we arrived it was still definietly daylight - clearly, it needs to be dark to see the torch flames, so we had to wait around a while (I think someone forgot about the clocks going forward...). Plenty of stuff to look at though! There were thousands of people running around, trying not to get run over by the cars still trying to get across the main road in front of the square, handing out leaflets, dancing, singing, generally being a bit hippy-ish. Various groups of people were trying to out-do each other with who could have the biggest banner I think Greenpeace won in the end (although that's no real surprise). As we waited for dark there were lots of speakers - all in Hungarian, clearly - talking about various issues. Tibet being rather topical, that was the most prominent.
Then, at about 8ish, just as it was getting really dusky, it all got started. Everyone stopped dancing around the crazy old lady that looked like she was havingthe time of her life and scuttled back into the peace sign, torches at the ready. A Tibetan monk arrived, appartently having carried a torch the whole way from Athens (it was way cooler than the Olympic torch, but not sure if I really believe it came all the way from Greece). There were a few more speeches, then the outer ring parted to let him though to reach the central point of the sign, where he lit some torches. It was a bit like a Take That concert or something - everyone was straining for him to light their torch. Admittedly, it was rather more refined than the pop concert!
The flame was passed on from person to person in a ripple effect, slowly lighting up the whole sign. It was strangely chilled out - no one was really saying much, just standing together, thinking about things. Very calm. It was a nice feeling - so many people standing together for something good, all thinking about the same ideas.
Sadly I didn't get any photos, but I'm going to try to get some off a friend. In the mean time, here's a video of it from youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNp13wEMEX4&feature=related Enjoy!
