We had already planned on slowing
down the pace of our travelling by spending a week in Budapest before arriving
and so we booked an apartment just outside of the Jewish quarter in the heart
of the city. We were joined by my
sister, Rosie, and her partner Graham for the first four days of our stay who
helped to provide more company for us both after two months on the road. During our stay the Budapest Marathon was
taking place and so we expected the city to be a hive of activity but we didn’t
really notice a difference apart from watching the runners along the banks of
the Danube on the Sunday of our stay, although the lack of crowds may have been
due to the relentless drizzle that lasted for the duration of our stay. Despite
the weather Budapest was not tarnished and bought us into the central European
part of our journey. The city is beautiful with classical baroque and neo
classic architecture spanning a gentle curve of the river Danube. The Buda hills mark the last elevation before
the Great Plain that stretches on to Russia and the city felt like an important
point on our journey north.
Graham is a fine dining chef and
as such we spent the first four days enjoying the finer things in life, wine,
beer and food. We embarked on my
favourite way to explore a city, a cultural bar crawl. Around Budapest the old Jewish quarter (which
housed the last remaining ghetto during WW2) has re modelled itself and used
the remains of destroyed buildings to create unique ‘ruin bars’. Navigating our way around the ruin bars we
started the cultural voyage with local beers at Szimpla Kert, a huge skeleton
of a building that looked as if it was furnished at a second hand shop with old
bikes, toys and even a vintage car. We followed
this by heading to Taste Hungary, who
offered us the chance to get very drunk the chance to immerse ourselves
in culture and sample local Hungarian wines. I was amazed to discover Hungary was a major
wine producing nation and the fantastic wine, meat and cheese left me in my
element (unsurprisingly I cannot remember much about the wines we tasted). The place was very welcoming and the
sommelier made sure he sampled along with everybody else so by mid-afternoon
everybody was suitably drunk. Having enjoyed
this so much first time round we did a similar cultural expedition on our last
day, visiting a more up scale, renovated wine cellar buried deep into the rocks
below the Matthias Church. The sommelier
closely resembled Count Von Count from the Muppets and he proceeded to rub his
hands together and hunch over the table whilst teaching us about the wines in a
menacing routine. As I became more
culturally enriched Count von Count became ever more like the vampire form of Quasimodo
as he hunched over more tables pouring and explaining about the various wines. I
began to question the decision to be in a dark cellar with him (although my
fear may have been due to the recent trip to Transylvania) but we escaped
unscathed in to the cold afternoon. With
our greatly expanded knowledge of Hungarian wine we washed down some of the
excellent local food during our stay with more Bulls Blood wine (Hungary’s most
famous vintage) whilst sampling amazingly
flavoursome wild boar, mini sausages served in bread cones and incredible
strudel from the market amongst other amazing (and cheap) local cuisine. Much to mine and Hannah’s delight we also
found Heinz Beans and had our first fry up since we left England, a rare
novelty on the road.
As with the food the History
within the city is impossible to escape from and the city still bears the scars
of the last 75 years following Nazi and Soviet occupation, with many buildings
still showing bullet holes and damage to their exteriors. .Budapest’s own History mirrors the nation’s past
in terms of its relatively recent conception.
The city is a union of three old towns, Buda, Old Buda and Pest and was
only created in 1873 although the area has been inhabited for thousands of
years. As with the other nations we have
travelled through Hungary was controlled by the Ottomans after Sultan Suleiman
I annihilated the Hungarian forces in the 16th century. The Ottomans domination was short lived and
they were evicted as early as 1686 by the Archduke of Austria Ferdinand and
Hungary was swallowed into the Habsburg Kingdom. An unsuccessful uprising in 1848 sparked a
push for independence and following Austrian defeats to France and Prussia
Hungary was promoted into a dual monarchy (The Austrian Hungarian Empire) until
their defeat in WW1. As resentment at
the harsh terms of the peace treaties of WW1 grew (Hungary lost 2/3rds of their
territories) Hungary fought alongside Germany in WW2 from 1941, although the Jewish
community were relatively unharmed until Germany occupied Hungary in 1944 and
installed the Arrow Cross Party. Fierce
fighting led too much of the country being destroyed as the Soviets devastated
all in their path en route to Berlin in 1945 and their domination of Eastern
Europe. We visited the Terror House in
Budapest which accommodated both the Facist and Communist regimes secret
police. The museum has a wealth of
information (we spent over 3 hours reading!) about the regimes and their
actions and a lift to the basement contains the old cells and torture devices. It is a very moving museum and videos play
interviews with former prisoners reinforcing the brutal nature of the regimes
that terrorised Hungary for 50 years. My
favourite resistance to this oppression was pointed out to us on a walking tour
of the city when we passed a very suspicious looking fountain that closely
resembled a penis. Known as ‘Budapest’s
Public Penis’ the sculptor was apparently requested by the communist regime to
create a monument to commemorate Budapest’s 100 year anniversary and his
creation was an apparent deliberate effort to show his contempt at the Soviet
occupation.
Another not to be missed activity
in Budapest are to visit the local thermal bath houses, especially on a rainy autumn
day. We visited two baths dating to
different periods and offering very different experiences. We visited the Rudas
Baths with Graham and Rosie whose central part is housed in a sixteenth century
Ottoman, octagonal building with a huge domed roof. The bath house was very atmospheric (apart
from the English guy on a stag do trying not to throw up with a heavy ball
chained to his foot) and we relaxed whist sitting in the steam rooms and the
pools (which went up to 42 degrees!). A
particular highlight was tipping freezing water on yourself from the old
buckets that were suspended on a pulley within the chamber. We also visited the more modern Szechenyi
Baths built in 1908 in a huge neo-classical palace in the city gardens. The city gardens contain many of Budapest’s
sights and begin with the imposing Hero’s Square, one of Budapest World
Heritage sites. They also house the
Vajdahunyard Castle, an amazing building created using architecture from
different time periods which provided an unexpected find for us on our
walk through the park towards the baths. The
Szechenyi baths themselves were colossal and contain 18 pools, 3 swimming pools
and 10 saunas and it was very cool sitting outside as the steam rose up from
the pools on a cold day. The baths
became something of an endurance challenge as I embarked on a mission to last
as long as I could in 55 degree steam rooms followed by freezing cold plunge
pools but this was nothing compared with trying to avoid permanent mental
trauma by witnessing overweight men in grape smugglers clambering in and out of
pools. Budapest had been a great stop
for a week to relax and re charge our battery’s for the next leg of our trip as
we have to rush towards Russia for mid-November through central and northern
Europe, although by now we are both slightly concerned about the cold weather heading our way.
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