Parliament upon the Danube

Budapest will soon be in my rear view mirror.  Before I leave for Krakow, however, I felt I should at least detail my experience a bit more.

Half a mile from the county fair and the rain keep pourin down

Naturally, after raving about the weather here, it turned slightly sour on Monday evening.  Since my plans revolved mainly around museums and churches for Tuesday, the irony didn’t irk me too much.  What was frustrating, was the back and forth of the day.  Whoever is running the water department up in the sky couldn’t make up their mind.  It was off and on all day.  Just when I thought I could start singing the part about getting dry, it just came tumbling back down.

I began Tuesday with a ramble across the Margeret Bridge and down towards Parliament.  From there, I hopped on the subway and rode it a stop or two illegally.  This was a total accident and I was quite lucky I didn’t get busted and fined for my ticketing error.  You haven’t seen stern until you’ve looked into the coal black eyes of a Hungarian ticket checker.

The Fist of God

My justice for (accidentally) flaunting the law?  I promptly began walking the wrong way out of the subway.  And since it was raining, it was not the best of mistakes.  After a block or two I realized my mistake and began moseying back the opposite direction towards St. Istvan.  The church itself isn’t one of the more impressive I’ve seen, but they certainly win the award for the strangest relic.  On display in a back chapel is the dark stump of St. Istvan’s right hand.  For roughly two bucks you can get the case illuminated (flash isn’t allowed) and snap some photos.  As you can tell, I dropped the coins in and snapped some some very grainy photos.  Not sure what was up there, but I hope you can get an idea of the oddity of seeing a fist that is around 1,000 years old.

House of Terror, 1st Floor

From here, I walked down Andrassy (back to sunny) to see the House of Terror Museum, which details the terror and brutality of the Iron Cross (Nazi supported Hungarian regime of the 1940s) and the Soviet supported post-war communist government.  The house, located at 60 Andrassy, was the former home of the secret police.  As such, it was the sight of countless interrogations, not to mention numerous murders and torture sessions.  One of the oddities of the sight is that the street upon which the house sits is arguable the most fashionable boulevard in Budapest.  It is somewhat odd that it would be the choice location for secret police dealings.  The museum itself is a powerful, powerful exhibit.  There’s no nuance, instead it-pardon the uncouth pun- bludgeons you with the realities of the horrible devastation perpetrated by the two regimes.  It’s worth noting that, despite being an excellent exhibit, the museum is a somewhat divisive topic in Hungary.

**I shan’t go into detail about why as it would require far too much discussion of the current political climate and other miscellany that I’m sure most are uninterested in reading.  That said, if you would like to know more, feel free to drop me a line or check out the wiki page of the museum, as it gives a decent overview of the issues.**

Opera dome featuring mythological scenes

From the museum, I stopped for lunch at a somewhat swanky joint called Mensa, just off Franz Liszt square.  This was partly because I wanted to relax and regroup, and partly to kill some time before the English tour began at the Opera down the road.  Sitting in the cafe, watching people move by certainly buoyed my spirits a bit after experiencing such a testament to the dispiriting possibilities couched within humanity.

Prior to going to the Opera, I had been informed by an old friend’s fiancee that it was the best he had seen.  Let it be known then that I had some fairly high expectations and they were still surpassed.  It was a gem.  And no offense to the complex-addled* Austrians in Vienna, but it blew their larger house out of the proverbial water.  *When it was constructed, Franz Joseph donated money with the stipulation that it be smaller than the Viennese house.  It is no doubt smaller, but they spared no expense on the interior and it shows.  Also, due to it’s location on the Pest side of the Danube, it suffered no ill-effects from WWII, a fate that the Viennese opera did not share.

Feeling rather rejuvenated amongst such gilded splendor, I decided to head up towards the Buda Castle again so I could see the interior of St. Mathias.  At least for the time being, the sun was hanging high as I made my way up the tree lined paths towards the fortress walls.  After such exertion, entering the cool and dimly lit church was a small piece of salvation.  It is a fairly remarkable church, but it still probably wouldn’t enter my top five.

By the time I returned back to Dani’s flat, I was beat.  I had spent the majorit of the day, like most all of those in the previous week, entirely on my feet and welcomed the chance to relax for a few hours before our dinner at the “communist” pizza parlor.  The restaurant is unassuming, adorned only with a small’ish red star hanging from the entry way.  Created in a seeming fit of irony, the restaurant was opened about a year or two after the fall of the Berlin wall.  And as you can probably infer from the picture, it is plastered throughout with recreations of Soviet era kitsch.  With our Dreher beers and shots of Unicum, this was more than enough.  That the pizza went well beyond edible and dove right into delicious? Well, that was just a large cherry on top of the experience.