The Buda Diaries... - May 28, 2007

(from Budapest)

SATURDAY

Still cruising toward Budapest as we woke. Despite the feeling of a cold coming on, I put in my usual pleasant solo time up top—a brief meditation and an update for this travel log. A cup of fruity hot stuff instead of my usual English tea—I normally avoid anything that masquerades as “real” tea—and woke Ellie in time for a shower and breakfast in the dining room.

At 7:30, Frank’s voice on the p.a. system invited our presence on deck to witness the ship’s arrival at its final destination.



And indeed Budapest was a very fine site, with the captain guiding us down past Margitsziget, Margaret’s Island, the playground of the residents of the city; on past a splendid view of the Parliament on the Pesht side of the Danube and the royal palace and castle district on the Buda side, to the right. A quick change as we docked, and out for a last official guided tour of the trip, boarding the familiar line of three buses at the quayside.

The tour was a good introduction to the city. On the Pesht side, we drove inland through a commercial district to the new football stadium and the venerable old east railroad station, then on to the “Hero’s Square” with its monumental buildings and statues, the great plaza swarming with gypsy women anxious to sell us maps, guide books in English, hand-knitted traditional Hungarian blouses… A short stop for photos, then down the major tree-lined boulevards, past embassies and the art and music schools, ending up at the river again with a different view of the parliament buildings, this time from the land. Then across the Margaret bridge to the Buda side, through narrow streets, and up the steep incline to the group of palaces, castle walls and churches, where the parapets offer a spectacular view of the entire city of Budapest and the Danube River.



P beginning to feel very under the weather with his cold by the time we returned from the tour for lunch, but managed to tuck into a delicious Hungarian goulash before retreating for an afternoon of rest and recuperation. We had been scheduled to join another bus tour out to the country to a diamond factory and an art colony, but alas, I lacked the energy and decided to remain back on the boat for a good rest. We did manage, Ellie and I, a long walk through the back streets of the city closest to the boat, and began to scout out the area where we’ll be spending the next couple of days, after we leave the Viking tour. It’s a less well-tended city than some others that we know—like Vienna, for example—but we attributed that in part to the continuing recovery period from the communist regime. There’s a lot of work to be done to bring it back to what was clearly its original beauty.

Instead of our customary daily briefing with Frank at 6:45PM, we gathered for “A Time to Say Goodbye.” P nursed his cold with a glass of single malt scotch whiskey, and we all got a bit sentimental about the journey, our fellowship on board, and the pleasure of the cruise. At the end, Frank invited us all to celebrate with hugs all around, and we gladly complied. A last dinner with Tom and Danette, served by our always friendly and efficient waitress, Ivana,



and a fond farewell to them: they leave at 4:30 tomorrow morning. Then a few moments on deck, and an early bed for P, with hopes for better health in the morning.


SUNDAY

I woke feeling much better than last night, but earlier than I would have liked. Made my way to the upper deck with the laptop, intending on a half hour’s meditation before writing down the events of Saturday. Shortly into my meditation, though, I felt drops of rain on my head and didn't want to risk giving the computer a shower, so I chickened out and found a space under the shelter of the bridge to get on with the log.

Not an exciting beginning to the day: we had to squeeze everything back into our bags again for the next leg of the journey, and Viking nicely organized a taxi for us to the Keplinsky Hotel in the center of Budapest—on the Pesht side of the river. During the ride, one of my two batteries and a memory card apparently slipped out of my camera case, and we were surprised and delighted that the driver took the time to bring them back to the hotel. Chalk one up for the Budapest taxi driver.

We were soon unpacked and spent a while trying to agree on an itinerary for the afternoon. P still feeling very much under the weather—this is now unambiguously a nasty cold—but not wishing to waste precious time on our vacation. We decided that a thermal bath might be just the ticket, and headed out in the direction of the Gellert Hotel, a spa that had been highly recommended to us.

First, though, a lunch stop at the Gerbeaud restaurant close to the hotel, and a long, slow walk down mostly narrow side streets, admiring some fine examples of both art nouveau and art deco buildings.







Well at least the bones are there, for the most part. The details have often weathered badly through both weather and war, and many of the buildings are in a sad state of disrepair. Again, I suspect, also a heritage of the communist period. We encounter many signs of poverty in our wanderings, from ill-kept, dusty parks populated with obviously suffering humans, to crumbling buildings and dirty streets.

Speaking of which, the Gellert spa, when we reached it, seemed no exception to this rule. Talk about faded grandeur! We ante’d up what we thought was a rather expensive entry fee at over $15 a person, but then were asked to fork up another 10,000 forints (about $60) for a towel for each of us—1,000 for the towel and 4,000 deposit. We didn’t have that kind of cash with us, and the women at the cashier’s desk tried in vain to make our credit cards work. Lacking any sign of success, we had to make a side trip to the nearest ATM, and returned with cash in hand.

The baths were certainly pleasurable. We stayed mostly in the big thermal mineral bath, where at least three dozen people didn’t seem to be too much of a crowd.




The adjacent swimming pool proved too cold for this sick soul, so we passed on that, but we did find a spot in the sun by the outdoor pool to relax for a while amidst the holiday crowd. (It’s Whit Sunday over here, in Catholic country, a big festival, it seems, for children, and there were many of them with their parents at the baths, contributing a pleasantly joyful energy to the afternoon.)

We headed back to the hotel around six o’clock, with P’s energy visibly wearing thin along the way. I was grateful when Ellie suggested staying in our hotel room for a light dinner, rather than going out to one of the many local restaurants. Our hosts had already left us a nice assortment of hors d’oeuvres, so all we had to do was order a soup and salad—which we watched as Serena Williams vanquished a French Open rival on the television. We opted not to watch a movie, which would have cost us some $30. Everything here seems incredibly expensive, though the revenues from the tourist dollars are not evident either in the appearance of the city nor, so far as we can tell, in the lives of many of the people. The results of the inefficiency and waste of the old communist system are everywhere in evidence, and we wonder how the less fortunate Hungarians survive—particularly, we have heard, the pensioners, who earned little under the post-war regime and who, today, receive pathetically small retirement income from the government.

Ready for bed. The air conditioner in this expensive hotel is not working, and it seems hotter than hell in here. Still, it’s not hard to remember that our woes are small by comparison. Malfunctioning air conditioning? What a tragedy!

The Buda Diaries 2 - May 28, 2007

MONDAY

Ah, yes, that air conditioner. They sent a pair of technicians up at ten o’clock at night to see it they could fix it for us. First problem: the panel that gave access to the inner workings of the machine was blocked by a protruding picture frame, so firmly attached to the wall that it took all of the technicians’ skills and perhaps a half hour of labor to get it off. Then, no luck. The telephone rang. The deputy manager for the night shift. Abject apologies. Our problem turned out to be a serious one, that might take days to fix. He would like to offer us an alternative room, and we could move there this very night, if we so chose.

Travel weary, exhausted from the day, and ready to believe that the heat would break for at least the duration of the night, we opted for an open window and a move tomorrow. And we received, this morning, another call, this time from the manager himself, with the renewed offer of a new room (we accepted, repacked with some disgruntlement) and begging us to accept a “gift” in compensation. We accepted… and left before the gift arrived.

A good breakfast, and a long consultation of the maps and tour books on Ellie’s part, whilst P hied himself to the business center to post yesterday’s handsome piece, with pictures! (The ethernet connection in the room is not functioning, and this is a holiday weekend: Whit Sunday, Pentecost, followed by a national holiday today) so it won’t be fixed before tomorrow at the earliest. We are learning quickly that there is a good deal of malfunction in Hungary.

Ellie’s research paid off handsomely. It’s good to have some sense of purpose in a foreign city—aside from wandering from tourist site to tourist site, and for us in Budapest the theme has definitely become the art nouveau and art deco architecture. First, though, a visit to the synagogue, the second largest in the world, which we had been warned would certainly be closed on a national holiday. Pentecost? I doubted it.

We found it open, and mobbed with tourists joining guided tours in English, Spanish, German, French, Japanese… Amazing. The building is clearly of great historical as well as architectural interest, having survived WWII virtually intact. At least the exterior. The interior was gutted, used as a stable and a barracks, with—irony of ironies!—the Gestapo headquartered in the capacious balcony. Left in a shambles after the defeat of the Germans in 1945, it regained its stature as a working synagogue even though the restoration process did not start until 1991, with funds from the Hungarian government aided by a foundation led by the actor Tony Curtis—originally a Hungarian Jew.





Today, it is splendidly restored to its original state, a glowing tribute to those who put so much time, love and money into the process. Our guide gave us an excellent history of the building, and much information about the Jewish quarter that surrounds it. She led us around the side of the building to a cemetery, where the date of death on every grave marker is 1945.



The fate of the Hungarian Jews is particularly poignant, since they were the last to have been subjected to the Nazi treatment, and only in the last days of the war. Walled into a ghetto around their synagogue, the Jews of Budapest died either by random execution or by starvation, and many were left lying in the streets—a health hazard the Germans resolved by allowing them all to be buried in this tiny cemetery, six thousand of them in the space of seven weeks.

We also visited the Holocaust Memorial Tree behind the synagogue,



along with a memorial to Raoul Wallenberg and numerous others, Hungarian and other Christians, who risked their very lives to save the lives of others. Upstairs, in the museum, we found an exhibit in memory of one resistant Jew, along with numerous large-scale photographs of that grim period in European history. All in all, a sobering and moving highlight of our trip.

Then we roamed the streets—first the old Jewish quarter—armed with maps to locate buildings of special interest. We found them for the most part, as usual, dingy and in sad disrepair.





The money is simply not available to restore them. Even in the richer area, up toward the city park, where many foreign embassies are located, walls seemed to be crumbling, details lost to the effects of pollution, paint peeling. We took a lot of pictures, and stopped for a very indifferent lunch at a restaurant in the lively Franz Liszt Square, where restaurants jostle with each other for space on the busy sidewalks under the shade of a multitude of umbrellas and trees. The adjacent



Franz Liszt music school is supposedly a remarkable example of nouveau architecture, but when we ventured in for a look inside (a rich, teasing glimpse) we were rudely expelled with the explanation “Closed building”—despite my indication of our interest in the architecture.

Further north, at the edge of the city park, a rather spectacular memorial



to those who lost their lives in the 1956 revolution against the Soviets—but sadly ill-kept, the purposefully claustrophobic spaces between its vertical steel beams filled with trash and, worse, human waste. You had the impression of people shitting and pissing callously on a heroic moment in their own history, as though despising the freedom it was intended to gain, and which they have now finally achieved.

A stop at the Kunsthalle, nearby, after admiring the “biggest hourglass in the world”



—a monumental sculptural piece that is supposed to keep time for centuries to come. P found a comfortable seat while Ellie perused the bookshop. We were grateful to have happened on this convenient and comfortable shelter when the rain started, minutes later, a veritable downpour that flooded the huge square outside. It lasted only a few minutes, so we were able to continue our architectural adventure



on the way back south towards the hotel, ending up with a long walk down Andrassy,



reputed to be the Champs Elysees of Budapest, where we passed a film crew busy making a period movie—shades of Hollywood, where massive movie trucks often impede your driving in familiar locations.

Back at the hotel, we found our “gift”—a small plate of fruit, to compensate us for our pain and suffering—and I luxuriated in a soak in the capacious bath. Then down to the lobby for our complimentary glass of Hungarian wine, before heading out to a restaurant we had spotted earlier in the Jewish quarter, the Spinoza. A very nice, very Hungarian meal—goulash for P, breast of goose for Ellie—with a glass or two of Tokay, served by a charming young waiter who forgot to bring one of our courses—but did not forget to charge us for it at the end! Very sweet about it, though. And when, on our return to the hotel, I discovered that I had left my sweater there, they gladly offered to drop it off at the hotel.

The Buda Diaries 3 - May 29, 2007

TUESDAY

I have not been reading email while away—I have left that chore to my excellent assistant, Cardozo. I have, however, been reading comments on the blog and have been delighted, as always, to hear from Carly, who has been following our journey from afar and offering tips gleaned on his own visits to some of the cities along the way. I have been searching eagerly in Budapest for the Esterhazy torte that he mentions—but so far, no luck. Maybe this afternoon, our last before leaving for England tomorrow. Thanks to Carly, anyway, for the hint.

True to his word, our friend at the Spinoza had brought back my sweater to the hotel, and we picked it up from the concierge on our way to breakfast. Always good to be reunited with something that was lost. We enjoyed an excellent breakfast, as usual, and left in decent time for our day’s tour. First stop, the city market, open today for the first time since our arrival because of the holiday weekend. Ah yes, the shops are open. Having spent the past two days desperate for a cough drop—my cold has tail-ended into a nasty and persistent cough—I am finally able to go to a pharmacist for some relief. Never did cough drop taste so good, I promise you!

The way to the market led down the now-familiar Vaci Utca (pr. Vatsi Utsa, so far as I can tell,) the main north-south tourist drag that parallels the Danube, and we made a mercifully brief stop at a Marks & Spencer-type department store where Ellie had spotted, through the window, a couple of blouses that appealed to her, and which she was now able to try on—and buy. We also kept an eye open for an inexpensive carry-bag to accommodate that seemingly ever-expanding load of our travel gear, and found one, eventually, at the market itself, whose upper level was devoted to non-edibles.



The interior of the building that houses the market proved to be a huge, open structure, with a complex of iron-work beams and stairways. The ground floor was filled, wall-to-wall, with market stalls selling every imaginable type of fruit, vegetable, meat and baked ware



(alas, not an Esterhazy torte to be found!)—a rich and colorful display that demanded countless pictures on the digital camera. We spent perhaps an hour there, enjoying the bustling sights and sounds, not to mention the intense variety of smells. A feast, then, for the senses, as markets are wont to be.

Map in hand, we wandered afterwards in the direction of the Museum of Applied Arts, a building



designed by the dean of art nouveau in Budapest, Odon Lechner, and a truly beautiful example of the genre, inside and out.



We skipped the current exhibit on Tiffany and Galle, but spent enough time within to get a good sense of the space, then headed north again for lunch in Raday utca, a long, narrow, attractive street shaded with sidewalk restaurant umbrellas that we had come upon by accident on the way down. We each chose a salad, both of them as simple and tasty as anything we have had for lunch since our arrival here. Then a long walk back through the side streets to our hotel for a nap, to recover for what is likely to be our last outing, to the area just north of where we are staying.

Post nap, we did indeed set out in the intended direction, and found a different Budapest from the one we have so far explored—this one clearly more affluent than the other areas. We made an initial stop at St. Stephen’s Basilica, with a wonderful, spacious,



light-bathed and decoratively paved plaza stretching out before the steps leading up to the west end entry. Inside the cathedral, an evening mass was in progress, and visitors were permitted only a sidelong view, but we could see enough to be impressed by its grandeur.



Out on the plaza again, we headed north through streets lined with buildings that were evidently better tended than those we are now used to seeing in this city—though small signs of the wear caused by both human and natural agencies are still visible, just patched over rather more successfully. We reached the splendid Szabadsag Square, with its many trees and lovely shaded walkways and its mostly magnificent surrounding buildings, then turned back south briefly to visit the masterwork of the architect Odon Lechner, the former Postal Savings Bank,



whose façade boasts intricate painted floral motifs and multiple reliefs, and whose roofs and parapets offer a fantastic display of colorful tile and ceramic flourishes. Impossible to photograph well, in part because of the height and angle of the building, in part by the wealth of deciduous trees that surround it with their greenery.

Back through the Szabadsag Square toward the river, then south a couple of blocks to the Gresham building, recently renovated as the luxury Four Seasons Hotel, another great example of the architecture,



and one that shows what can be done. Ellie is convinced that the whole city will be “radiant” in a few years. Maybe. We stopped at the (cheaper!) restaurant, and had a very pleasant supper sitting at a window table,



watching the sun set over the Buda side of the city. A huge police presence that we attributed—wrongly as it turned out—to the need for security at such a tourist mecca.

Then, after supper, we ran into the Queen of Spain. Really. I was waiting for Ellie in the lobby, watching a growing crowd of dark-suited men and elegantly dressed women whom I assumed to be part of some kind of business convention—along with a number of large men with bulging suit jackets and communications earpieces. When Ellie joined me, there was a stir and a parting of the crowd as this nice-looking women made her appearance from a stairwell and started greeting members of the assembled party with a gracious courtesy. “That’s the Queen of Spain,” Ellie said immediately. You could have fooled me. I wouldn’t have the first idea what she looked like, so I scoffed somewhat at the idea. Shortly after, though, the crowd flowed out of the hotel and into a parade of waiting cars, which sped off with two dozen police cars in escort. Naturally, I inquired of the hotel staff who this might be and he told me it was “the Spanish royal couple.” We had missed the king but what the heck; we saw the Queen of Spain, no more than an arm’s length from our very selves. No pictures, though, Sorry. I didn’t have the presence of mind to get the camera out. Besides, those security goons might not have been too pleased.

Excited, we got lost on the way back to our hotel. But did find it. And got to bed in decent time in preparation for the next step of the journey: England.