Once our train got into Vienna
Margot and I rushed to our hostel, hastily throwing our bags in our lockers
before embarking on the longer than expected walk over to Dana (Margot’s mom’s)
hotel. Months before, Dana had decided that she was going to meet up with us
for a week somewhere along our Eurotrip and after some calendar collaboration,
Margot and Dana had decided that she was to meet up with us in Budapest to do a
road trip through all of Hungary. She had three extra days at the beginning of
her trip though, which she decided to spend in Vienna. Unfortunately, we told
her that we were unable to join her in Vienna due to an already determined plan
to visit Slovenia. However, while traveling through the Czech Republic, Margot
and I expressed our mutual disgust with the fact that we would have to do an
overnight train to get to Ljubljana and then another one to get over to
Budapest two days later. The alternative option being that we could enjoy a
three hour train ride down to Vienna, surprise the shit out of Dana, and then
take another brief three hour train ride down to Budapest. So as we were
briskly walking over to Dana’s hotel to take her out to a fancy Viennese dinner,
she had no idea that we were even in the same city as she was.
It
couldn’t have worked out any better; we arrived at the hotel and found Dana
standing right there in the hotel lobby checking out a map. Margot casually
walked right up next to her and said, “How’s it going tonight?” After
performing a double take, the wide eyed Dana responded with,
“Holllllllllyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy SHIT!” After an exorbitant amount of screaming and
hugging and jumping around, we finally got Dana out of the hotel and down the
street to a nice Austrian Restaurant. With a brimming smile, Dana quickly made
friends with the Austrian waiter while hugging Margot and continuously
uttering, “aw, you guys,” at Margot and I. We drank a bottle of delicious wine
with our meals, which only made the light mood of the evening even lighter, and
we experienced one of the many lively discussions that would become common
place during the next thirteen days of our trip. After dinner, we dropped Dana safely
back in her hotel lobby and after prying Margot away from her loving mother’s
grasp we hoofed our way back across the city to our hostel for the night.
On October 17th we were
feeling a little lazy and slept in just a tiny bit before heading back over to
Dana’s hotel to hang out with her for the day. While getting ready for our day
we struck up conversation with the two Canadian girls in our room, who had been
travelling for about four months at the time. During our walk over to Dana’s
apartment we joked about the Canadian girls’ huge 40kilogram backpacks, the
fact that they were straightening their hair in order to go do hot yoga in
Vienna, and that they refused to visit any more churches or museums that
required them to pay an entrance fee. To
each their own, I guess, but for the umpteenth time during this trip I found myself
thinking about about how lucky I was to be travelling with Margot. After
successfully joining up with Dana, we set off on a walk in the general
direction of St. Stephan’s Cathedral, enjoying the sights we stumbled upon
along the way. We walked past the Natural History Museum in the middle of the
Maria-Theresien Platz and popped out the other side of the park on the front
steps of the Austrian Parliament. The stunning building was a completely marble
structure, with a magnificent fountain in the foreground of the building’s
eight white marble columns, soldiers riding in chariots on the rooftops and
statues of young men punching horses in the face by the majestic front steps.
Don’t ask me why they had sculptures of men punching horses, but I kept finding
them all over the city. Parliament was truly a beautiful building, but it
shriveled when compared to the City Hall building down the street.
Looking west from Rathauspark, this
majestically huge building displayed one huge main tower that was flanked by
two smaller towers to either side. Not even mentioning the soldier statues that
are posing around the top floor of the building, the perfectly symmetrical
engravings and reliefs that highlight the face of the building, and the
incredible designs and carvings around the top of main towers spire, the
building is still fucking mind blowing. After town hall, we took a gander at
the Burg Theatre just across the way before heading to Leopold’s for some
lunch, where I had an Austrian pork cutlet with sauerkraut and a dumpling.
After lunch, our eyes finally got
a chance to rest upon the absolutely stunning sight of St. Stephan’s Cathedral.
Although they were in the middle of
renovating the Cathedral, I actually found it interesting to see the blatant difference
between the dirty black stained lower portion of the cathedral and the
blindingly white renovated upper portion. I also learned a little bit about the
renovation process that they were using on the centuries-old stone surfaced cathedral.
They clean all of the black silt and dirt off of the building by power spraying
the building with sand, which simply removes the dirty top layer of the
building’s surface. Inside, it was an amazing sight of hand carved wood work,
made visible by the small rays of light sneaking their way through the dozens
of stained glass windows. We stood there taking in as many of the designs,
sculptures and paintings as we could before walking outside to try and find our
way up to the top of the Cathedral where we could get a better view of the
city’s skyline. I’d like to say that we walked around the building twice
because it was just so beautiful you couldn’t take it all in and truly respect
what you were seeing unless you saw it twice, but we simply couldn’t find the
entrance to the tower until our second loop around the Cathedral. After huffing
and puffing our way all the way to the top, we got an amazing view of Vienna
and slowly skipped our way back down the stairs, content with the amazing view
that we had each super-glued to the back of our minds.
After St. Stephan’s Cathedral we
went down to the metro to get a ride out to Schönbrunn Palace, but Margot, the
ever-knowing tour guide, made us stop to look at this underground Church that
was only discovered in the late 20th century when they were
constructing the metro stop. The scientists involved in the excavation assume
that it was at one point part of St. Stephan’s, used for leaders or people of
importance to pray in private. After looking down on it from the metro platform,
we grabbed our train for the short ride out to the beautiful Viennese palace.
Once at the palace, we had a
delicious dinner of boiled beef and öpfelküachle, coupled with some wine and martinis before we made
the short venture across the Palace square and around the bend to the famous Schlosstheater.
Here, the place where six year old Mozart is said to have jumped up and kissed
Maria Theresia after completing his night’s performance, is where we were to be
experiencing our night’s performance. The concert turned out to be spectacular!
The orchestra was absolutely incredible, no doubt due to the erratic movements
of the composer, and the music was frequently paired with opera singing and
even typical Austrian dance. The dancing was quite interesting but I was much
more intrigued by the opera portion of the concert. There was this petite
little gal who had a voice that could reach the extent of the Palace’s extensive
grounds and a guy who had a pretty impressive voice as well, but more
noticeably had a smile that never quit. Dana had set the three of us up with
first class seats in the front row and during the intermission we even received
a free glass of champagne. It was a spectacular night and I had an amazing time
with my two travel buddies.
The next day, Thursday the
18th, I had intended on visiting Bratislava while allowing Margot to
have a girl’s day with her mom, but instead decided to just stay in Vienna and
cover the city in more depth. First, I took the metro out to the St. Charles
Church, which became a gorgeous view while looking at it from across the mellow
fountain that spanned out to the east of the amazing dome structure. After
resting on the steps of the fountain and admiring the reflection of the Church’s
dome and bas-relief columns off the perfectly still water, I made my way around
the fountain to enter the beautiful baroque style church. Inside, I was
introduced to the 18th century Church built under orders of the Holy
Roman Emperor Charles the 6th, who wanted to build the church for
the patron saint Charles Borromeo, revered as a healer for plague sufferers
during the Black Plague epidemic that had just ravaged the continent. The main
altar inside the Church was an amazing collaboration of marble and gold,
displaying St. Charles’ ascension to heaven, which was highlighted by the Hebrew
Yahweh in front of the window just above the depiction of Charles’ ascension,
symbolizing God’s omnipotence and love.
When I was done gazing at this
amazing altar decoration, I turned towards the scaffolding in the middle of the
church, realizing that I could take a glass elevator up to the top of the
building and from there take the scaffolding up into the middle of the
humongous fresco that covered the entire dome of the church. A couple minutes
later I found myself inches away from the incredible 250 year old dome frescos.
And since frescos have become a particular interest of mine while visiting all of
the Cathedrals, Basilicas, and Churches throughout Europe, it was pretty
amazing to finally see the fresco that covered St. Charles’ dome up close in
such vivid detail. It was an absolutely incredible experience to say the least.
After St. Charles Church I took a
brief stroll down to the Belvedere Palace to see the amazing gardens that
occupy over 30 square city blocks right in the middle of Vienna. I bought a
ticket to go inside the Upper Belvedere building whose 1720s structure was
decorated with very simple white on white ceilings and walls. The simple
decoration gave the building an elegant and beautiful appearance that I enjoyed,
even though it wasn’t as exciting as some of the other Palace buildings that
I’ve visited. The Upper Belvedere also contained the world’s largest collection
of art by Klimt, whom I had never heard of before visiting Vienna but have a
thorough knowledge of now. Although the entire Klimt family, consisting of
seven siblings, was artistically special in one or another, much like the
family of W.B. Yeats, whom I had learned about in Dublin, the oldest brother
Gustav Klimt was the most talented and acclaimed of the three brothers. Gustav
was born in a suburb of Vienna to an impoverished gold engraver named Ernst in 1862.
When he was twelve, his five year old sister Anna died, sending his mother and
sister, Klara, into depressive states. He would take care of and live with
these women for the majority of his life. He attended the Kunstgewerbeschule,
which is a famous art school in Vienna, with his brother Ernst in the 1870s and
the brothers worked closely with another classmate named Franz Matsch during
this time. By 1880, the three friends created the Kunstlerkomagnie (Artist’s
Company) and started earning small commissions on mural paintings in Vienna. They
finally landed a major job with the painting of the Burg Theatre staircase in
1886, which Gustav would later receive the Emperor’s prize for accomplishing. However,
in 1892 Gustav’s father suffered a stroke and his brother Ernst passed away.
The death of Ernst not only ended the life of a promising young artist, but
also destroyed the Kunstlerkomagnie. The culmination of these events lead
Gustav into a self-induced painting exile that lasted about five years before
he once again returned to his artwork, but as a much different man. At this
point he was taking care of his entire family, plus his brother Ernst’s widowed
wife. He grew irritated by the similarity and simplicity of Viennese Art and
helped create the Secessionists in 1897, whose goal was to reform the
mainstream rut that art had fallen into in Vienna. His weird and unique art
style was something completely new at the time, which initially induced the
popular artists of the time to belittle and discredit his work. In 1905 the
Secessionists split and in 1917 he suffered the same fate as his father and died
of a stroke. He was recognized as a truly great painter upon his death, but his
art’s popularity has only grown greater as the distance from his death grows
longer. It’s worth mentioning that, growing up surrounded by woman, Klimt grew
accustomed to their company and became quite the womanizer, never marrying during
his life but fathering roughly fifteen children. A large majority of his
paintings are dedicated to the female body and therefore he encountered many
female models through his work, who he often enough took to his bed. It’s safe
to say that Gustav lived an odd life, which is probably why his art was so odd
as well, but walking through the Upper Belvedere I found it undisputable that
he was a master at what he did. I’ve never felt a stronger urge to rip a piece
of art of the wall, jump out the window, and hightail it home just so I can
nail it to my living room wall.
After checking out the Upper
Belvedere I ran around the gardens, quickly digesting all of their beauty, as I
had promised to meet up with Margot and Dana back at the hotel so we could
spend the afternoon together. After jogging to the metro and navigating my way
to the hotel I went upstairs, grabbed Dana, and returned to the metro so that
we could go out to see the entirety of the Schönbrunn Palace. We wandered
through the elegant rooms and hallways of the palace, where I got my first true
introduction to Sisi, Empress of Austria, and Franz Joseph, Emperor of Austria.
As Emperor of Austria, Joseph, who was born inside Schönbrunn Palace by the
way, was also King of Bohemia, King of Croatia, King of Hungary, King of
Galicia and Lodomeria, and Grand Duke of Cracow. And while Sisi despised her
husband and the Austrian territory he was from, she fell in love with the land
and the people of Hungary. While walking through the state rooms of the palace,
I learned about Sisi’s ankle length hair, the eating disorders she endured in
order to retain her beautiful figure, and the hatred that she held for her
husband, Emperor Franz Joseph.
After enjoying the amazing rooms
inside the palace, Dana and I ventured out into the extensive palace gardens.
Wandering through the endless paths lined with trees trimmed in order to create
a perfectly flat wall, we came upon this odd tropical looking fountain that was
made 90% out of stone, with little marble sculptures and reliefs appearing
randomly upon its surface. Continuing on, we made it to the top of the gardens,
where the view from the Gloriette encompasses the entirety of the Palace
grounds. Dana had mused at the time about why they built the palace down at the
bottom of the hill rather than up on the top. Well, the initial plan was
to build the palace atop the hill rather than at the bottom, however when
Ferdinand II died in the 1630’s his wife built a palace at the base of the hill
instead. Leave it to a woman to screw up the construction of a beautiful
palace, am I right? Maria Theresia had the palace remodeled with new expansive additions
in 1743, and also built the Gloriette at the top of the hill out the remains of
the old palace.
After returning to the hotel and
picking up Margot, we walked down the street and grabbed some dinner at this
Italian restaurant where the owner/waiter spoke zero English and seemed to be
slightly irritated with the fact that we had failed to learn German. But we
didn’t let his sour attitude ruin our meal as we enjoyed some delicious drinks
(try Schladminger beer if you ever get the chance) and great pasta. After our
meal, we meandered back up the street and grabbed a beer and a slice of
sachertorte (two layers of chocolate sponge cake on either side of a layer of
apricot jam) at this bar where the waiter had actually heard of Boulder,
Colorado.
The next morning I woke up and met
Margot and Dana at the train station, where we caught our ride from Vienna,
Austria to Budapest, Hungary. Once we arrived into the Budapest train station, I
fetched our awesome driver, named Leslie. During our drive to the hotel, Leslie
taught us that the Danube River separates the Buda and the Pest sides of
Budapest, that the city is pronounced Budapesh unless you’re a stupid
foreigner, and that in four days Hungary would be experiencing a national
holiday celebrating the failed revolution in 1956. Leslie also filled us in on
the fact that he lost his wife a couple of years ago when she left him for a
huge burly policeman, but Leslie said that it was okay because he is still a
very popular man and on the weekends he goes from party to party enjoying
himself. He also kept referring to Dana as my mother-in- law and after telling
him several times that Margot and I were not married, he finally said with a
huge smile, “ohhhhh, in the future you can have your honeymoon in Budapest
then.” In addition, he informed us how to say ‘thank you,’ ‘please,’ and ‘I
love you,’ in Hungarian and as we were flying down the Hungarian motorways
enjoying this crash course in Hungarian culture, Leslie just leaned over and
un-buckled my mother-in-law’s seatbelt, telling her that she didn’t need it
because he had never been in an accident before. All in all, when we finally
pulled up to Hotel Carat, we were all laughing and smiling, happy to be among
each other’s company in such a wonderful city.
After we checked into our hotel
and changed our clothes from pants and jackets to t-shirts and sunglasses, we took
a lackadaisical walk down the streets of Budapest soaking in so much sunshine
that it seemed more likely that we were in the Bahamas during July than in
Budapest during October. Eventually we stumbled through a construction site and
into this restaurant called Bob’s (or Dob’s, we can’t remember) and I had some
Hungarian beef stew with spatzle noodles. After getting our fill, we continued
our walk down the wonderful streets of Budapest until we arrived at the Dohány Street Synagogue, which is the largest
Synagogue in all of Europe. It was built during the 1850’s and though the
inside was very beautiful (and I got to wear a yarmulke), I found everything
surrounding the outside of the Synagogue to be much more interesting. For
instance, in 1944-45, when the Arrow Cross Hungarian Fascists were controlling
Budapest, the Synagogue served as a Jewish Ghetto and offered shelter for many
Jews. However, during the course of WWII, about 2,281 Jewish people were
murdered or starved here and were buried in the twenty-four mass graves in the
garden just outside of the synagogue walls. There was also the Memorial of the Hungarian Jewish Martyrs outside
of the synagogue, which is a copy of a weeping willow tree whose leaves bear
the names of many of the 400,000 Hungarian Jews who were murdered by the Nazi
regime.
After wandering around enjoying the Synagogue and its encompassing
grounds, we walked over to the St. Stephan’s Basilica and wandered into one of
the most amazing Cathedrals that I’ve seen during this trip. The use of blue
and red marble was ridiculous and the gold and yellow dome was absolutely
stunning. The enormity and elegance of the building was engrossing to anyone
who stepped under its roof and leaving its beauty behind as we walked out the
doors may have been the hardest thing I’ve had to do in Europe. After checking out the inside of the Basilica,
we took the elevator up to the treasury, which contained the national icon, St.
Stephan’s mummified right hand, called the Holy Right. Stephan I became the
first King of Hungary in the year 1000, and during his reign accomplished the
expansion of Hungarian control, broadly established Christianity in the region,
and founded the Kingdom of Hungary. He created the Holy Crown, which has its
own story that I’ll divulge in when we visit Parliament later on, but when
Stephen died in 1038, his uncorrupt right arm, which he had used to hold up the
Holy Crown on his death bed while asking the Holy Virgin Mary to become Queen
of the Hungarians, was dissected and given to European Royalty. His hand
however, was kept and preserved as a holy relic. To this day, his mummified
hand is annually paraded around town in order to honor the first King of
Hungary.
After the treasury, we walked up the stairs to the very top of the Basilica
and saw the striking sun set over the Buda side of the city. You may be
wondering what the difference between a Cathedral and a Basilica is at this
point, as Margot, Dana and I were as we walked back from St. Stephan’s, so
allow me to spread my limited knowledge on the subject. First of all, the two
terms are not mutually exclusive, so a Cathedral can be a Basilica and a
Basilica can be a Cathedral. However, achieving the status of a Basilica is
usually a little tougher than the title of a Cathedral, especially in the
Catholic Church. In all other religions, any church building that is designed
in the shape of a cross, that is there are two aisles that intersect in the
middle of the church, can be called a Basilica. However, in the Catholic Church
the only way for a Cathedral to become a Basilica is if an archbishop decrees
it so, which is only attained if the Cathedral is of some special religious
importance. St. Stephan’s Basilica attained the status as a Basilica Minor
by Pope Pius XI in 1931.
After watching the sunset over the
city from the top the Basilica, or actually during the sunset, this lady came
up and walked around shrieking, “hello…hello” while cattle herding everyone
into the stairwell that lead down to the ground floor. The Basilica was now
closed, so we walked back to Hotel Carat for some rest before going out for
some dinner at this nearby restaurant called Bohemiana. I had pork with a
mushroom sauce and spatzle while Dana got serenaded by a violinist with a side
of Unicum (a special Hungarian liquor that requires an acquired taste). Actually,
we all had a shot of Unicum, plus some Napoleon Brandy and several glasses of
wine. It was a fantastic meal and many humorous stories were traded across the
table.
The next day we woke up early and
took a tour out to Gödöllo Castle,
about 45 minutes to the East of Budapest. Since Sissi blatantly voiced her
disgust with Austria and her love for Hungary, she and Franz Joseph spent a lot
of time in Hungary at Gödöllo Castle.
When I got into Austria, I was under the accord that Sissi was this amazing
woman loved by all the people. But the more and more that I learned about her
during this trip the more my opinion became split, with half of me thinking
that this image was a façade and she was actually kind of an immature spoiled
brat, while the other half of me thought that she was just a very strong willed
woman, which I respect. I will grant that she was thrust into a marriage at a
very young age when she naively thought she was in love and was harassed by her
step-mother after the marriage, but she was still a Queen and although Franz
may not have been her ideal husband, he was still kind and respectful to the
woman that was writing about how much she hated him. In fact, when Sissi was
murdered by the Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni in
Geneva simply because she was of Royal blood, Franz Joseph was said to be
inconsolable, exclaiming “you don’t know how much I loved this woman!” Sissi
also had ankle length hair that took her half the morning to take care of each
day, she travelled extensively, dressed elegantly and overall lived a life of luxury
and ease. Yet she was never shy to express her hatred and anger towards her
husband, the one who was providing all of this for her. Maybe I’m biased
because Franz Joseph had the coolest beard in history and thus I’m forced to
side with him on the matter, but Sissi appeared to me to be a bit ungrateful
towards him.
I don’t want to hate on Sissi too
much though, because I really respect her attitude and determination. I learned
that throughout her life she performed horse tricks while riding side saddle,
something that takes skill and a lot of balls to do. She also learned the alien
Hungarian language, which I call an alien language not because it was foreign
to her but because the language is so odd that it literally may have descended
from aliens. After vocalizing her disgust and desire to leave her husband Franz
Joseph, she returned to the marriage solely due to the fact that this meant
Franz and herself would become King and Queen of Hungary, lifting Hungary up to
an equal status with Austria. And she stood up for herself against her dreadfully
awful mother- in-law while speaking her mind about her husband. But it’s when I
learn about things like filling in all of the ponds around Gödöllo Castle because she suspected
she had asthma, or frequently skipping meals in order to keep her figure, while
gorging herself in private before throwing the meal back up, that I lose
respect for Sissi.
While walking through the Castle/Palace,
admiring such things as the tiny tunnels in the walls that were used by small
children to feed the fires in various rooms without disturbing its occupants,
the beautiful old church attached to the palace that had a balcony so Sissi
could watch the church service in comfort, and the infinite amount of portraits
of Sissi and Franz Joseph, I was also receiving a detailed history lesson on
the life of the Emperor and Empress by our tour guide, Beate. After our tour of
the palace and a short walk through the gardens behind the palace, we hopped
back on the bus and returned to Budapest a short while later. While driving the
bus back into Budapest, Dana struck up a conversation with Beate about the cross
country road trip that we were about to engage in, astonishing Beate when Dana
told her that we would be driving all the way out to Tokai on Tuesday. Suddenly
skeptical about our plans we asked her, “Well, how far is the drive?” To which
she responded, “ohhh my, it’s like two to three hours! But why would you go so
far away?” “hahahaha,” was all I could think, compared to the traveling Margot
and I have had to endure during this trip, three hours in a car is like a trip
to the grocery store.
Once we got back into Budapest we
decided to venture over to the Buda side of the Danube and get some exercise.
After crossing Elizabeth Bridge, we were
standing in front of the Monument to St. Gellert, who has an interesting story.
In the 11th century Saint Gellert was attacked by pagans, taken to
the top of what is now Gellert Hill, placed inside a spiked barrel, and thrown
down the hill and into the Danube River. After passing the Gellert Monument, we
saw a statue of Sissi, which is apparently a pretty popular statue that was
tucked in this park between the Elizabeth Bridge and Gellert Hill.
Continuing up Gellert Hill, we
eventually reached the top of this ginormous mound sitting next to the Danube
and arrived at the Liberty Statue. The statue was originally erected in 1947 to
commemorate the Soviet forces liberating Hungary from the Fascists, with the
original inscription below the statue translating to, “To the memory of the liberating Soviet heroes [erected by] the grateful
Hungarian people [in] 1945.” However, sentiment towards the Soviets soon
died out and after the failed revolution of 1956, followed by a successful
transition to a democracy in 1989, the inscription was adapted to read, “To the memory of all those who sacrificed
their lives for the independence, freedom, and prosperity of Hungary.”
Several of the statues were removed from the display and relocated to Memento
Park, which we would visit later. From the top of the hill you got an amazing
360 degree view of the entire city and the surrounding hill lands. It was a
spectacular view and after the hike up, we didn’t mind taking a break to just
sit down and soak in the sunshine while staring out over Budapest.
After catching our breath and
regaining some energy, we walked back down the hill and over to the Buda
Castle, which meant even more stairs and inclined walkways. However, it was
totally worth it when we reached the top of one of the Castle walls and
witnessed the sun slowly set over the expansive hilly landscape just west of
the city. And after we ventured back down from the Castle, we got to walk
across the Chain Bridge while it was lit up, which was a stunning sight. I
think it was about halfway across this bridge when I looked at the Pest part of
the city all lit up, the bridges shining over the Danube to the south, and the
castle lit up on the Buda side of the city, that I realized that this was one
of the most amazing cities of the entire trip. Contrary to everything we had
heard before this trip, I would visit Budapest twenty more times before ever
returning to Prague. This awe-inspiring landscape landed Budapest a place on my
top five cities of the entire trip, which in no particular order goes as
follows:
·
Budapest
·
St. Petersburg
·
Brussels
·
Stockholm
·
Copenhagen (updated list contains Istanbul
instead of Copenhagen)
Once we got back to the hotel, we
were stoked to try out the sauna, putting on our swim suits for the first time
during the entire trip and marching down stairs, only to be defeated by the confusing
sauna operating system. It seemed easy enough to heat up the sauna, you just
turn the heat on and start the timer; but no, nothing could be so simple.
Instead of using the sauna, we laid on the rec room floor listening to a CD of
new age music that I’d found in a boom box in the corner, while the sauna made
a feeble attempt to heat itself up. After throwing up our hands in surrender,
we decided to go grab some dinner at a small restaurant right next to St.
Stephan’s Basilica.
The following morning, we woke up
and wanted to go see Parliament, the beautiful grand building right on the
Danube that Margot had instantly fallen in love with since we had arrived in
Budapest on Friday. Every time we spotted it over the river, her eyes would
glass over and her jaw would hang open, which just goes to show you that even
after three months of backpacking through Europe, there are still architectural
masterpieces that can impress the shit out of you. However, when we showed up
to buy our tickets for a tour through Parliament, we learned that the entire
day’s tickets were sold out and we would need to show up early the next morning
in order to get tickets to go inside. So we turned our heels and headed across
the street to see the Ethnography Museum, which was showing the World Press
Photo exhibit, consisting of over hundreds of pictures from around the world
that year. This spanned from the hangings of convicted rapists in Iran to home
foreclosures in Longmont, Colorado to the earthquake and tsunami in Japan to a
women’s rights movement that performed all of their protests while topless. It
was a pretty interesting and emotional collection of photographs, each being
presented with a small paragraph about the incident being depicted.
After walking through this exhibit
I was forced to go through the exhibit on rugs and carpets, which if truth be
told was surprisingly not my favorite part of the museum. The next exhibit that
we saw covered the full extent of Hungarian folk culture, which was actually
really interesting. At the end of the exhibit, they had this television running
a movie displaying old Hungarian traditions, including this odd tradition where
it appeared that the men would run around town throwing buckets of water on the
women, who would in turn give the men food and drinks. Upon further
investigation we discovered that this was an ancient Hungarian tradition
performed on Easter. The day before Easter, the women clean up their home and
paint a bunch of eggs, in preparation for the following day when the men come
around pouring buckets of water and sometimes cologne on the women. After the
women get cleaned up, they feed their male guest(s) alcoholic drinks, Easter
eggs and anything else they might need after a hard day of throwing buckets of
water on women. The women even compete to see who gets the most buckets of
water thrown on them during the day. I think it sounds like fun but Margot
stubbornly disagrees.
After leaving the Ethnography
museum we grabbed lunch at this place that Margot spotted just up the street
from the Basilica and had a humongous meal. After a lengthy and large lunch we
went back to our hotel to rest and get ready for the Ballet. We had tickets to
see, “The Karamazovs” at the
Hungarian State Opera House and it was a completely new and unique experience.
I had never been to the ballet before, if you don’t count my sister’s dance
recital in 4th grade, and didn’t know a lick about the story I was
about to see unfold, but I couldn’t have enjoyed this experience any more than
I did. It was incredible! The theatre, with its gold designs, ceiling frescoes,
and the gold Hungarian crest hanging over the stage created an unmatchable
atmosphere! It was an absolutely amazing night! After the ballet we stopped for
some dessert and drinks on our way back home before we passed out.
On the 22nd Dana got up
early to get tickets so that we could get a chance to see the inside of the
humongous Parliament building, which she successfully accomplished. While admiring
the building, it struck me as quite odd that the Hungarians would need such a
huge Parliament for such a small country. Well, just like so many other Eastern
European countries, Hungary used to contain a much larger territory before the
two World Wars, and thus the Hungarian Parliament was built for a much larger
population then it currently serves. As we entered the Parliament building and
walked up the grand and glamorous royal staircase, we walked past the bust of Imre
Steindl, the architect of the building who died weeks before its completion. Then
we arrived at the sixteen-sided central hall, which contains the statues of all
the Hungarian Kings and rulers. The first Hungarian King, St. Stephan, is
followed by seven more Kings of Hungary, ending with Matthias Corvinus, who was King until 1490. The region then came under
the rule of the Transylvanian Monarch, Stephen Báthory, who was seceded by
three more Transylvanian Monarchs. These were then followed by three more Hapsburg
rulers. In the middle of this central hall are the crown jewels, which include
the scepter, the orb, the mantle, and most importantly, the Hungarian crown,
which, during WWII, was actually stored in Fort Knox for safe keeping. Sometime
during the 17th century, the cross that sits atop the crown was
knocked crooked, which instead of fixing, the Hungarians simply accepted and
let it be.
After going through the rest of
our tour of Parliament, Margot had finally achieved the most important conquest
of her trip here to Hungary and the three of us walked away from Parliament
amazed with our experience there. We encountered the memorial to Nagy Imre
along our walk, which, as a heads up, means that his name was actually Imre
Nagy. They place the last name before the first in Hungary. He was thrust into
an important position of power during the beginning stages of the 1956
revolution when, on October 24th, the then Prime Minister fled to
the Soviet Union, leaving Imre Nagy to take his place. Inexperienced and new to
his title as Prime Minister, he handled the situation better than the Hungarians
ever could have imagined. On the 28th he made a radio statement on
behalf of the new government declaring the following:
·
That the government would assess the uprising
not as counterrevolutionary but as a “great, national and democratic event”
·
An unconditional general cease-fire and amnesty
for those who participated in the uprising; negotiations with the insurgents
·
The dissolution of the AVH (The Hungarian
Communist Secret Police)
·
The establishment of a national guard
·
The immediate withdrawal of Soviet troops from
Budapest and negotiations for the withdrawal of all Soviet forces from Hungary
On November 1st, he
formally declared Hungary’s withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact as well, which was
probably a major factor in Khrushchev’s decision to smash the revolution. At
three AM on November 4th, Soviet forces occupied Budapest and by 9
AM, they had occupied Parliament and had control over the entire country. Imre
Nagy was executed by the Soviets two years later after undergoing a secret
trial. His memorial was crowded with Hungarian flags with a hole in the center,
symbolizing the Soviet Communist symbol that the Hungarians cut out of the
middle of their flags during the 1956 revolution.
Once back at our hotel we decided
to get some rest for a little while before venturing out on a long stroll down
Andrassy Avenue. At the end of the Avenue you arrive at the imposing Hero
Square. The huge obelisk in the middle is called Millennium Memorial and it is
dedicated to the memory of the heroes who gave their lives for the freedom of (the
Hungarian) people and (their) national independence. Behind this are the
statues of all the Hungarian Kings.
After Hero Square the three of us
enjoyed a picnic in City Park under the beautiful afternoon blue sky. Then we
walked across the park and the street to the Széchenyi Medicinal Baths. There were supposed to be medicinal
baths all over the complex but we somehow managed to miss every single one of
them, instead opting for the lukewarm pools outside, each containing a whirl
pool of fat, wrinkly Hungarians that had no problem plowing you into the other
fat, wrinkly Hungarians if you weren’t moving as fast as they desired. Floating
on the outside of the pool, where the current was the fastest, looked
deceivingly fun, although it turned out to be a sure way to create daunting
recurring nightmares that would last the extent of a Eurotrip. Imagine slipping
into the fast outer ring and enjoying the speed, laughing and waving to your
friend and her mother while the current takes you faster and faster, until you
suddenly look around and start realizing that these fat, wrinkly Hungarians are
just not picking up speed as fast as you are. You snap your head forward just
in time for your face to be engulfed by the wrinkles of an old hairy Hungarian
man who you may or may not have seen standing over the jet in the middle of the
pool with a creepy smirk on his face a couple of minutes earlier. Besides the
whirl pool though, the sauna was quite enjoyable and the architecture was
actually really cool. The old statues and building decorations gave away the
old age of the baths and there were even stands above the bath meant for
sprawling out and soaking in the sun.
After the baths we walked back
down Andrassy Avenue, stopping at a place on the Andrassy Avenue to enjoy some
dinner. This was where Margot and I enjoyed our first shot of Palinka, an amazing
traditional fruit brandy from that is common in this portion of Eastern Europe.
We had plum and apricot Palinkas, preferring the apricot this time around.
After dinner, we went back to hotel and went to sleep.
Tuesday the 23rd of
October was our last day in Budapest and our first day of the road trip, as
well as being the anniversary of the 1956 Revolution. We found it suiting to
visit the House of Terror on the holiday celebrating Hungarian resistance to
Communist Russia, as did the rest of Budapest. The line outside at 8:30 AM,
thirty minutes before the museum opened, was a hundred meters long. However, it
moved faster than expected when the doors finally opened and we were all
admitted for free. After visiting the House of Terror we took a taxi out to Hertz and rented a beautiful gold Saab for our week-long road trip across Hungary. Since neither Margot nor I had an international driver’s license, it was up to Dana to do all the driving, while we tried to help out as much as possible with navigation.
The first day of our trip took us
northwest of the city to a town called Eger. Here we saw St. Anthony’s Church,
whose beautiful pink front façade was in dire need of some pigeon defense,
while the interior was a striking mixture of pink and white marble, as well as
an array of stunning ceiling frescoes dating back to the 18th century.
After visiting St. Anthony’s, we grabbed some lunch on the town’s square, just
below Eger Castle. Here we enjoyed several glasses of Egri Bikavér, which is a local red wine that’s nicknamed Bull’s Blood of
Eger. During a Turkish invasion, under the rule of Suleiman the Magnificent, in the mid-16th
century, they found themselves laying siege to Eger Castle and amazingly, their
efforts proved futile. In order to motivate and support the small group of
soldiers during the siege of Eger Castle, they were served delicious
food and a lot of red wine. Among the Turkish soldiers it was rumored that
bull's blood was mixed into the red wine, as otherwise the strength and firm
resistance of the town and castle of Eger could not be explained. Finally the Turks
gave up, leaving Eger and its bull’s blood-drinking inhabitants alone. While
enjoying several glasses of bull’s blood, our food was attacked by a hungry bee
that ate double his weight in ham off of our meat platter. Shielding my food
from the bee, I enjoyed some raw bacon, mustard marinated pork, and whatever
the ladies didn’t finish, which was becoming so much of a trend that they
started to call me the ‘garbage disposal,’ making garbage disposal sounds
whenever they decided they were done eating. I would’ve been upset but I was
too busy eating free food, fending off bumble bees, and drenching my beard in
bull’s blood to care about any of their jabs.
After our meal we walked over to
see the town’s minaret, which is one of only three left in the entirety of
Europe, and then climbed up the hill to see the castle. After this, we came
back down the hill and across the city to the huge statues and entrance columns
that created the imposing yellow Eger Cathedral, which may or may not have been
closed, but probably was. We came in the side door and had to walk through a
darkened gift shop to get into the Cathedral, which was also dark and
completely empty. We ventured in anyways and it was totally worth it. Red and
yellow pillars were scattered along the walls while the ceilings were covered
in light, delicate-looking frescoes that utilized fresh yellow and peach
colors.
After the Cathedral we jumped back
in the car and continued on to Tokai, where we checked into our rooms and
rendezvoused downstairs to enjoy a scrumptious dinner together. Here we each
enjoyed another palinka - Margot and I actually enjoyed several - before we
received our meals and some exquisite wine produced by the vineyard in the
extensive hills that made up the back yard of our hotel. After enjoying our
meal and asking our waiter how to say ‘cheers’ and ‘thank you,’ We made our way
to the lounge area where we enjoyed a glass of wine on the house that had a sugar
content of over 200%. Even though I tend to stay away from sweet wines, it was
actually really good, as were the rest of the wines we sampled that evening.
The following morning, Dana
stepped her already high level of pampering and treated us each to a massage.
Margot and I enjoyed a nice breakfast while Dana received her massage, and I
went on a hike up through the vineyards to an old and poorly maintained church atop
the vineyard hills while Margot received her massage. Then I was up. I couldn’t
have asked for anything better to cure me from the beating that travelling had
been subjecting my body to. I came out relaxed and healed, ready for some more
travelling to beat the shit out of my body again.
I rendezvoused with Margot and Dana
at the hotel after my massage and we made our departure from Tokai with Szeged
as our day’s final destination, with a pit stop in Debrecen. In Debrecen, we enjoyed a lunch of pizza and
beer, visiting a couple of churches in the area before driving onwards. We arrived
into Szeged late and went directly out to dinner at a local bar called John’s
Bull Pub. We all enjoyed some palinkas while we watched Real Madrid vs. Borussia Dortmund (“Are those Hungarian teams?” – Dana) on the
television. After dinner Margot and I discovered the sauna, which would act as
a spark, inducing a sauna frenzy just a few days later.
On Thursday the 25th, we enjoyed
our hotel’s complimentary breakfast before heading out to see Szeged. We saw the Votive Church of Szeged, Hero Gate, the Stefania
promenade, Szechenyi Square, and unsuccessfully attempted to see the old
Synagogue. After walking through the tiny town of Szeged and
enjoying everything it had to offer, we were back on the road again. After
stopping in Kecskemet for some lunch, we headed straight for Lake Balaton,
where we would be spending the next few nights. We still got in relatively
late, discovering that we were a bit outside of town and that the hotel
restaurant was already closed. However, the hotel had already ordered us a
welcoming platter full of cheese and meats which we enjoyed with our basket of
bread and several bottles of wine.
The next day was one of the first
times during the trip where I did absolutely nothing productive or
worthwhile. It was glorious. The top
floor of the hotel that we were staying at was entirely dedicated to being a
spa. There was this amazing pool, hot tub, sun deck, massage rooms, sauna, and
steam room. Dana had already made reservations for the three of us to receive
another massage in the morning and when we discovered that the weather was so
poor we couldn’t even make out the lake through the rain and fog, we decided to
take a mental health day and rejuvenate ourselves at the spa. After my massage,
I ran into Dana and Margot outside of the sauna room, which they were raving
about. So we went in to the sauna for about twenty minutes, took a dip in the
frigid cool pool, put on our bath robes and with reclining of our seats simultaneously
melted into a cloud of ecstasy for twenty minutes or so. After this, Margot and
I said good bye to Dana, who had important matters to take care of, and we
repeated the previously stated process for approximately seven hours, with a
short break where we enjoyed a bottle of water, a smoothie, and a Greek salad.
We returned from the spa just in time to catch dinner at the hotel restaurant
before it closed for the night, which, by the way, had an underground entrance
from the hotel, allowing us to dodge fresh air for the entire day. Although
this day of relaxation may have also been a fit of laziness, we really needed
the rejuvenation and it made taking on the next two months of our trip that much
easier. After our spa day, I felt like I did on the first day of the trip
again; I had boundless energy, my body felt amazing, and my mind was alert and
attentive.
The next morning we went down to finally enjoy the lake for which we had traveled all the way out here to see before setting out with the intention of driving straight for Sopron, but when we saw
this majestic-looking castle on top of a hill that was sprouting up literally
in the middle of nowhere, so we just had to stop and check it out. It turns out
that we were in Sümeg and the
castle on top of the hill was built by Béla
IV, King of Hungary, during the 13th century to escape the Mongolian
invasion. After visiting this fortified masterpiece, we visited the beautiful
Franciscan Church inside the town before continuing on to Sopron, a city in northwestern
Hungary whose city is so close to the Austrian border that in 1921 the town,
which was then considered part of Austria, voted to instead become a Hungarian
city.
As we were checking into our hotel
in Sopron, I was led to my room by the woman running the family business. I assumed that she was the daughter. As she
took me into my room however, the following dialogue took place: “These are the
light switches, one for the hallway,” click, “one for the bathroom,” click, “and
one for the bedroom,” click. “There is the mini-fridge and here is the remote
to the television. Here are your keys and if you have any questions,” she said
with a delightful smile, “don’t bother to come down and ask me.” “Ah yes, what
does this remote here on the key chain operate?” “Oh, don’t worry about that, I
already told your wife how to work it. Bye.” I found it humorous that for the
second time during our time in Hungary, Margot had been mistaken for my wife;
however I found it even more hilarious when, upon relating the story to Dana
and Margot later that night over dinner, I was informed that in fact Dana had
received the instructions on remote operations, not Margot. After recovering
from our initial laughter, we continued chuckling when Dana received a wiener
schnitzel the size of her head, and the good times rolled as we drank palinkas
and beers while singing along to the 1990’s pop music that was playing on the
restaurant, Paszcha’s, television.
The next day, walking along the
streets of Sopron in the cool morning mist with our hands shoved in our pockets
and our heads turtling down inside our jackets’ collars, we discovered snow on
the tops of the city’s buildings, which I found suitable, since we had turned
our clocks back the previous night in recognition of it now being Winter. The
first sight we encountered were the ruins of the city’s historic castle,
followed by a visit to St. Michael’s Church, where some sort of service was
taking place. After enjoying the altar decorations and the hand-carved wooden
benches, we waddled our shivering bodies over to see the Goat Church, and then
to see the Old Synagogue.
After exploring the Old Synagogue,
we packed our backs and placed our asses back in the ass grooves that we had each
created since we picked the car up in Budapest 5,000 kilometers ago. Today was
unfortunately the last day of our road trip and we would soon have to say
goodbye, but frst we made a stop just outside of Budapest to see a statue park where all of the communist statues that had been torn down were moved. Included was the statue of Stalin that had been toppled during the 1956 revolution, leaving simply his boats which were promptly filled with Hungarian flags.
We drove back into Budapest after this, dropped off the car, and took a
taxi to our hotel which was this time on the Buda side of the city. We had a nice dinner at the hotel’s
restaurant, enjoyed our last Hungarian palinkas, and each had a glass of Egri Bikavér wine. We spent the rest of the night looking through all of
the pictures from our road trip until our eyelids could no longer muster up the
strength to remain open any longer.
The next morning at 5 AM, Margot
and I said good bye to Dana as she set out for the airport to catch a plane
back to the states. I went straight back to bed when she left, while Margot
stayed up registering for her classes. After finally walking up, we spent the
day planning the next leg of the trip, writing blog posts, and filling out
internship applications before heading down to the Budapest train to catch a
train to Transylvania, where we intended to spend Halloween.
