Hungary-Budapest

To the left, Buda, with Pest on the right side, both sides separated by the Danube

During our brief visit to this city it almost snowed all of the time. Large lumps of ice floated downstream on the river Danube which added a postcard quality to the already impressive scenery.

Bridge across the Danube, with the Imperial palace in the background

Statues of heroes, Heroes Square

This group group of seven mounted figures looked even more heroic because of the snow. representing the Magyar chieftains who led the Hungarian people into Hungary. In the front is Arpad, considered the founder of the Hungarian nation. Behind him are the chieftains Előd, Ond, Kond, Tas, Huba, and Töhötöm (Tétény). Little survives in the historical record about these individuals and both their costumes and their horses are considered to be more fanciful than historically accurate.

Vieuw of the houses of Parliament across the Danube

View of Pest across the Danube seen from the Imperial Palace

Streetcar

Little less heroic are the yellow streetcars, and the people who ride them. Even with temperatures below minus 10 degrees, there's no heating. Like the subway cars, they all date back to communist times.

In Hungary they do things differently. Here we seeLittle Red Ridinghood
and her grandma, riding home after having dealt with the wolf

Snow cleaning gang

All over town we saw many of these snow cleaning gangs busy shovelling the streets. We'd like to praise them but we're not sure if they are regular civil servants with decent pay. Hungary's present government has a reputation for forcing jobless people into unattractive labour arrangements.

Opera Building

In this lovely bonbonniere we saw a production of Mefistofele which was very modern, with tons of people on stage. In one scene, Mefistofele put a European flag over his shoulders, which aroused bursts of laughter in the public. Are they happy they still outside that Euro-zone and were they mocking our worries? We didnt have any chance to ask.

Gellert Baths

Among the best must-do are the wonderful baths, you should really see one, get into the steam bath and rinse off the overdue dirt out of your pores. This is the Gellert Bath, adjacent to the Hotel with the same name and it houses a spacious Jugendstil bath, with pools, steambaths and sauna. It's a wonderful way to relax and get totally clean.

Outside wall of the House of Terror, with pictures and names of fallen resistance members
of the anti-communist uprising of 1956.

Hungary has ad only brief encounters with deomcracy. It's present day government by mr. Orban receives al lot of critique -domestic and from abroad- because of it's authoritarian nature and measures it takes. Since the fall of the Habsburg Monarchy at the end of WW 1 until 1989 Hungary has seen nothing but dictatorships. A wonderful museum is dedicated to this stretch of time. It's called the House of Terror. It's called like that because it first was a centre of detention and interrogation of the Hungarian Arrow Cross nazi movement and after the war it was used by the communists. In film, documents and with many artefacts (among which a Soviet tank smack in the middle of the patio) it portrays the mechanisms of repression by the subsequent regimes.

Detail of the wall of infamous

Patio of the House of Terror

Plaquette, we don't know why it's been covered in paint

A sign in Hungarian

Like in all languages there must be beauty in Hungarian too. However, it's unintelligble because this language has no similarties with any other European language. It looks like the language most close to Klingon we know.