March 16, 2017
The train to Budapest stopped at Curtici to clear outbound Romanian immigration. I said "bona ziua" to the officer, who asked if I spoke Romanian. I said no, only three words: bona ziua (hello), moltsumesc (thank you), and papanaş (a Romanian dessert that is something like a creamy jelly donut). He had a laugh about the third Romanian word I knew.
A man sitting across the aisle from me had a 1/5 of some brown liquor that was 40% alcohol. Within 3 hours, he had drained the bottle.
Upon arrival at Budapest Keleti station (1), I walked to the hotel and then walked to find a place for lunch. At lunch, I asked the owner of the restaurant what kind of wine he had served me (the wine was quite tasty). He rattled off a name too fast for me to understand, then said it is his favorite wine, and he has at least two bottles a day at home. I hope he does not live alone!
A bike tour of Pest (2) was next on the agenda. Being so early in the season, the group was just the guide and I. We pedaled out to the area of the city that was the site of the 1896 exposition. The exposition was supposed to be in 1894 to mark the 1,000 year anniversary of the arrivals of the Hungarians (Magyars) in the area. When delays arose in preparing the exposition buildings, historians were asked to recalculate the Magyar's arrival date to be 896, 1,000 years before the expedition was ready!
There was a castle that that was designed to represent the various architectural styles of Hungary (which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time). I said that one of the towers reminded me of the town of Sigişoara (3) in Romania which I had visited two years before. As it happens, the tower in Budapest was a replica of one in Sigişoara, which the Hungarians assert was part of Hungary at the time (4).
The tower at the 1896 Exhibition Palace based on a tower at Sigişoara.
The House of Terror is in this area. The building was used to interrogate people by both the Nazis and the State Police during the communist era. Small pictures of those killed in the building have been placed below the windows.
Pictures of victims on the exterior of the house of terror
We also visited the Parliament building. In the late 1800s, there was a architectural competition to design the Parliament building. There were three entries, and the selection committee liked all three so they built them all. The first prize winner became Parliament, the second prize design became The Hungarian Museum of Ethnography, and the third prize winner now houses the Agriculture Ministry.
Exterior of Parliament
My bike tour guide
Throughout the city, there are various reminders of the 1956 invasion of Hungary by the Soviet Union. Hungary had begun to chart a separate course from the Soviet communism model. The Soviets were not pleased and invaded Hungary to ensure that it remained a Soviet client state.
Memorial of the 1956 Soviet Invasion
In the evening, I attended a concert by the Budapest Festival Orchestra, which performed Mendelsohn's Italian Symphony and Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde. The concert was at the Bartok Bela (5) Concert hall, a modern venue on the south side of town.
(1) Keleti station was the site of a large migrant camp during the European refugee crisis in the summer of 2015.
(2) Budapest is actually two places: topograpgically flat Pest on the east bank of the Danube, and hilly Buda on the west bank.
(3) Sigişoara is best known as the birthplace of Vlad Tepeş, who served as the basis of Dracula in the novel by Bram Stoker.
(4) The Magyars (as Hungarians call themselves) have never forgiven the world for the Treaty of Trianon, which defined Hungary's borders upon the disillusion of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after the first World War. The treaty left a large number of ethnic Hungarians outside the country's borders, especially in Romania and Northern Serbia.
(5) Bela Bartok is Hungary's best known classical music composer. In Hungarian (as in Chinese), the family name generally comes before the given name; hence the Bartok Bela Concert hall.
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