Danube Extravaganza: No Longer Hungary - Days 3 & 4

As I’m typing this up, I’m sitting on my train heading for Vienna.  My first international train trip!  I took 4 different trains in Spain back in 2014, but I never left the country.  And I had a little knowledge of the language.  From what I can tell, I’m on the correct train, which is a start.  I’m like 95% sure it is open seating in 2nd class, but am not 100% sure.

So back to Day 3 of my Danube Extravaganza!

Day 3 was busy (is any day on my trips not?).  I got up bright and early to head to the Hungarian Parlament (not a typo, that is the Hungarian spelling).  The only English tour tickets they had left were at 8:15 and 8:30, but there were only 2 tickets left on the 8:30 tour.   Because my credit card company was being super careful about an international transation when I was trying to book a ticket online, they sent me a verification code via my cell number.  Problem is that I don’t have access to my phone service while I’m on my trip and could not get my verification code, meaning my only option was to get my ticket in person, which meant I needed to be there when the ticket office opened so I could make sure I could get my ticket, which meant the 8:15 tour.  So I was up at 7 and out before most other people seemed to be awake in the city.  

They only get to use this stairway on the very first day of a new legislative session.

My timing was perfect and I arrived at the Visitor Center about 10 minutes before it opened.  So the first thing I did on Day 3 was tour the Hungarian Parlament building.  While it is a gorgeous building, I’m not sure it was worth the ticket price.  I think if I was an EU citizen the price would have been worth it, but for the non-EU price, I think it was not.  Unless you’re a big fan of seeing a historic royal crown and such.  The building is huge and it is symmetrical, so we toured the half that isn’t really used for any diplomatic purposes.  I learned that while Hungary had a bicamaeral legislature early on, including when the building was built, following its experiment with Communism it never went back to having two chambers.  This means there is a whole half of the building that is really only used for tours and certain special events.

There are a lot of beautiful paintings and gold lined artwork in the building.  But you can tell the thing they’re most proud of is the central dome area where the old crown is kept.  No photos were allowed in that area so I don’t have any pictures.  The crown dates back to I believe the 1200s is what they said.  It has a cross on the top of it, and the funny thing is it it crooked.  At some point in its history, someone somehow accidentally bent the cross, but no one knows who or even when.  I also learned that for a few decades after the end of WWII it was held in Fort Knox in the US to keep it protected from people who might want to get their hands on it, so apparently someone didn’t trust the party in control.

After my trip to Parlament, I  moved onto St. Stephens Basilica.  This church being named after the same guy that Stephen’s Hall was named for in the Castle; the first monarch in Hungary.  This church was a completely differnt sort than Matyas Church the day before.  This one was very much a more traditional church with your painting in specific naves, but not entire walls and columns painted.  Lots more marble and such too.  I liked the other one better.  This one though is obviously very important to the Hungarian people because it is named for their founder.  It even has St. Stephen’s right hand…which if you’re Catholic you know that each church usually has a specific saint that the church has as its saint, and it has a piece of them, usually in the altar.  It is one of those rather weird and creepy things about the Church.

I then went from church to synagogue.  I visited the Dohany Street Synagogue, which was only about 2 blocks from my hostel.  This synagogue is the largest in Europe.  Besides being large, it was designed by someone who was Christian so it has some things more often found in churches than synagogues, such as rose windows.  One thing you can tell is they find it very important to share the story of their synagogue, the Jewish district, and the Jewish faith because they had tours every half hour in 6 or 7 different languages.  The first part of the tour took place inside the synagogue and our guide talked a bit about it.  He answered questions about the Jewish faith too.  Then we followed him out of synagogue and around to the garden on the side.  This garden more than a garden though.

History lesson time…during WWII Hungary sided with Germany and was able to avoid being invaded and taken over.  However, in early 1944, the Hungarian government had decided they were going to sign an armistice with the Allied forces.  When the Germans and the Hungarian Broken Arrow fascist party got wind of this, they forced a sort of coup in the country.  This occured in the spring of 1944.  Over the next few months things got harder for the Jews in Hungary, which were numerous.  Pre-war, around 18% of Budapest was Jewish.  Those in the rural areas were hit much worse.  Around 90% of them would end up being killed in concentration camps.  Budapest lost about 50% of its Jewish population.  In December 1944 the Jews of Budapest started being forced into ghettos.  The major one being the area around the Dohany St. Synagogue.  Over 70,000 were forced into an area of just a few blocks with 10-14 people living in each room.  They say somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 ended up dying during the nearly 2 months the ghetto was in existence.  It was an extremely cold winter and they had no way to make fires.  There wasn’t much food available and only a few taps to get fresh water from.  People fell ill from typhoid and cholera due to poor conditions. When they were liberated by the Soviets in January 1945 the dead were just piled in the streets.

Now back to the garden.  In the garden area, which once had been a memorial to Jewish soldiers who had fought and died in WWI, they started buried the dead in mass grave, though they soon ran out of space.  Around 2000 people were buried in the garden, most of whom were unknown.  Some people were later identified and their surviving family placed markers in the garden.  

Also behind the synagogue was a memorial to those who risked their lives to save the lives of the Budapest Jewish community.  Raoul Wallenburg was a Swedish diplomat who is said to have save at least 20,000 by getting them papers to get them out and to safety in the months after the Germans took over.  People from Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland were also recognized there.  

On the base of this memorial out back of the synagogue were letters from families who escaped saying thank you to those that helped save their lives.

An interesting story from our guide.  The Dohany Synagogue was known for being more liberal, with goers tending to lean towards assimilation into Hungarian society.  Some people were not into that and were more conservative so they built another synagogue just down the road, as in, you can see the other one from the first.  Two of the members of that synagogue would later go on to have a child who is best known as Estee Lauder.

The last thing I did before leaving the Synagogue grounds was go through their exhibit on the Budapest ghetto and life for the Jews of Budapest during and after the war.  It was a very good exhibit.  Unlike the Hungarian Parlament, I feel the price for the Synagogue was totally worth it.

At this point since I was so close to my hostel, I headed back there to take a break.  I had figured I had been through most of the things on my list in Budapest and would finish up the following day, so I bought train tickets out for the following afternoon.  I also booked my hostel in Vienna, as well as a river cruise for the following morning through Budapest.  

This playground at City Park looked fun.  I wanted to go play too.

Then after this I headed out for City Park.  City Park is Budapest’s Central Park, I would say.  Lots of space.  There are playgrounds, basketball courts, areas to work out, to play soccer, as well as a zoo, food, concert venues, an art gallery, an ice skating rink, and a weird castle.  The castle is called Vajdahunyard Castle, but was never actually a castle in the sense that royalty lived there.  It is more of a play castle in the park.  While in City Park I got a langos, which is a fried dough with toppings on it.  The common theme of toppings was sour cream, cheese, and something else of your choosing.  I had a ham and cheese one.  It was good and filling.

From there I headed to Szechenyi Baths, which are a series of thermal pools filled by the thermal waters found in the Budapest area.  There are a bunch of different thermal pools found around the city, but the Szechenyi ones are perhaps the biggest and best known, so I had to go to those ones.  They also happen to be located in City Park.  After soaking in various pools for an hour and a half it was back to the hostel.  

Szechenyi Baths

On the last morning in Budapest I started out the day by sleeping in. After packing and leaving my luggage at the hostel storage area, I head down to the large marketplace.  The main floor was filled with food stalls.  Lots of meats and veggies, and baked goods, with a few other random foods.  Also, lots of paprika stalls.  Paprika is, like, Hungary’s thing.  It is one of the things they are known for.  It also just so happens that I had paprika on my list at home because I’m almost out, so I bought a three pack with two types of sweet paprika and a spicy one.  It shall be interesting to see how they compare to the cheap paprika I had previously.  

From the market I had a little time to wander before my river cruise started, so I found a chimney cake.  This time I got a filled one with apple strudel inside.  It was so good!  

My last Budapest activity was the river cruise.  It wasn’t part of my original plan, but after I decided to skip on Margaret Island, I decided this would be a good filler, plus it circled around Margaret Island.  I don’t think I missed out on much, by not going there.  Things I read said it is much more enjoyable with more to do in the summertime, so I decided it wasn’t worth the effort to get there.  The river cruise was a nice chance to see the city in a different way.

River Cruise time!  I went with a slightly more pricey line (as in like an extra Euro) and the boat was way nicer than the other I saw.  Legenda Duna Bella.

The one thing I didn’t see was a place called Momento Park.  It is way out on the edge of town, which is why I didn’t end up going out there.  It is basically a place where they took all the statues celebrating the communist age of the city and put them out of the way where they weren’t present in everyday life.  They weren’t melted down or anything, but put way outside of the main part of town where you had to make effort to see them.  

And now here I am on a train heading to Vienna.  We’ll see what Vienna holds and how long I’ll stick around there!

I'm on a international train ride!!

Danube Extravaganza: Day 1 & 2

 Oh look!  She's at it again!  Krystina's travel alarm kept going off because it was time to hit the road again.  

This trip is my Danube Extravaganza!  Well...except that only two of the cities I'm visiting are on the Danube...I'll admit I didn't look close enough when naming the trip to notice that the river running through Prague is not the Danube, but the Vitava River.  Too late now, because it's been the Danube Extravaganza for too long in my mind.

So why am I visiting Central Europe in the middle of winter?  Because it is the off-season and things are cheaper.  And I heard that these cities were beautiful places to visit no matter the time of year.  I'm not actually sure what hostel prices are in the high season, but I'm paying $45 for 3 nights in Budapest.

I left very early on Valentine's Day because I love myself.  When I booked my flight, I was set to leave Wichita around 11:15 am, but by the time travel day came around, that flight had gotten moved up to 5:30 am.  Yay!  Because I love getting up when the first digit on the clock is a 3!  Not!  I was able to get a Lyft to the airport at 4:15 am, which was a miracle that saved me $120 in parking cost, so I gave my driver a little extra tip because I was excited about saving money by not having to park at the airport.

My flight to Atlanta went off without a hit.  In fact, we got there 15 minutes early, which meant my layover was 7 1/2 hrs instead of just 7 hours.  I walked every terminal of ATL and the walkways in between.  I stopped from time to time along the way.  I read up on the history of Atlanta between Terminals B and C.  Eventually I made it to the international corner where I found a quiet corner to lay down.  I got on my flight to Amsterdam and it turns out I had an empty middle seat!   Yay for flying on a Tuesday in mid-February to Europe!  Anyways...didn't sleep a wink on the plane.  I ended up watching two movies and then trying to sleep, but not succeeding, as my seatmate commented...he was also unsuccessful.  

We arrived in Amsterdam and my next journey was to figure out how to get out of there.  The person at customs person didn't even ask me for my point of visit, which was about 6 hours in the city of Amsterdam (if I should chose to spend all I could allow there).  And then was the fun of figuring out how to catch a train to the city.  That was only an ordeal because somewhere between me purchasing my train ticket and finding the luggage storage place, I lost my ticket, so I had to buy another one.

I got into Amsterdam Centraal some time around 7:20 am, before the sun rose.  One thing I noticed was that Amsterdam seemed to have these weird ramp escalators instead of stair ones.  I soon figured out that was because that way people could go up and down them with bikes.  My plan for my first ever visit to Amsterdam was really to just wander the canals, so that is what I did.  I walked up and around the main canals in the central part of the city for a few hours as the city woke up and started riding their bikes.  There were bikes everywhere, by the way.  There was a 3 story bike parking garage outside the train station.  After a while my body started to slow down, obviously saying to me "24 hours with no sleep is too many.  I need a break."   So i then headed back to the train station, got a pick-me-up hot chocolate and then found the train to get me back to the airport.  

Once at the airport, I picked up my luggage and went through security (which is so much better laid out than the ones at American airports).  After a little wandering, trying to find a place to lay down, I found myself a bed to curl up in.  By which I mean a 2.5' by 2.5' part of a couch, where I soon fell asleep.  Two hours later it was time for me to find my plane to Budapest.  

Yes, I fell asleep here.

On arriving at the airport, I quickly found the line to get on the bus to get me from the airport to the city center.  That bus was nearly an hour of standing.  Research beforehand had said it was a half hour trip, but I think we hit rush hour traffic.  It was a hot, miserable hour full of sudden slamming of breaks and weird turns (I think the driver was using GPS to try to get us into the city quicker, but it took us around a lot of weird streets I don't think he would have normally driven).  After getting off the bus, I found my way to my home for the next few days.  Then I headed to the Tesco down the street to get some food to cook up.  Food first, sleep second.  11 hours of sleep and I felt nicely rested.

I woke up on the 16th (which I guess is technically the 3rd day, but in my head is the 2nd day), showered, and then headed out for the day.  I had a rough agenda for the day that had 3 things on it, but I ended up only making it to one thing on that list.  And that's okay because the philosophy behind this trip was to visit Budapest, Vienna, and Prague, and if I have time, to make a few other stops along the way, but if I don't because I want to stay in another city longer, that is okay too.  

I set off from my hostel to head to Buda Hill where Buda Castle is, along with a number of other sights.  But as I was crossing the Danube, I found this huge hill with a path going up it and a tall statue partway up, and what looked like would have been a fountain/waterfall in warmer weather.  I spent probably an hour exploring that park area, and don't regret it.

St. Gellert up on the side of the hill named after him.

I then made my way over to Buda Castle.  The castle is unique because part of it dates back centuries, while other parts date back to the late 1800s, and some of it is even newer than that because they have rebuilt sections that were devastated during World War II.  Part of the castle now is the National Art Gallery, while another section is about the history of the castle.  There's a whole other section that is used for other things as well.  

The Castle History Museum portion was very interesting.  On the bottom floors you can actually go into areas of the original castle, some of which were only recently discovered when renovating and rebuilding the WWII damage.  The castle doesn't seem very castle-y inside, as in opulent or majestic.  We have the communists to than for that.  After WWII, when they were fixing damage to the outside of the building from the war, they cleared out the interior, leaving it stark and utilitarian.  It is really only in the past 15 years or so that they've started slowly working to bring it back into its more historical grandness.  They've replicated one room top-to-bottom so far.  St. Stephen's Hall, named for the first king of Hungary.  He ruled over 1000 years ago.  They hope to bring other rooms along in the next few years.

St. Stephen's Hall

On the grounds there are also some buildings that are brand new, that are essentially replicas of what was on the grounds pre-WWII bombardment.  That's what all the cranes are in my pictures.  They're rebuilding things there.

This lion is full of patches to cover up bullet holes and shrapnel damage from WWII.

The Riding Hall was rebuilt just recently on the same grounds and to the same specs as the original.

I spent probably about 4 hours in the castle museum and on the actual castle grounds before heading to see the Fisherman's Bastion and Matyas Church still up on Buda Hill, but further along the hill.  The Fisherman's Bastion is a sort of castle-like structure up on the side of the hill, overlooking the Danube and Pest.  It is an amazing view from up there.  You can see the Hungarian Parliament Building really well as it is just right across the river.

Fisherman's Bastion

Matyas Church is right there as well.  The church has a grand roof made of colored ceramic tiles and is so neat.  It is a very fitting roof that matches in the interior of the church as well.  I feel like when I stepped into the church, if you had been looking, you could probably see my jaw drop a bit.  The inside is completely painted up in random patterns.  Every pillar in there had a different design.  The walls were different too.  It was so unique.  Even a back stairwell was painted up.

After leaving the church my plan was to cross the well know Szechenyi Bridge, which meant walking partly back the direction I had come from.  After hiking down from Buda Hill, I found that the bridge was closed to pedestrians while they fix it.  So that meant walking a lot further than I had planned.  Instead I ended up crossing the bridge up near Margaret Island.  My plan was to walk past the Parliament Building, though I wouldn't be able to go inside.  That building is stunning.  It is almost church-like on the outside, but not quite. 

Further down the Danube is the Shoes on the Danube memorial, which was placed there in 2005 to memorialize the Jews that were gunned down at the river's edge in December 1944 and January 1945, after the Hungarian fascists took over, with the help of Hitler.  The soldiers had the Jews take off their shoes before shooting at them, causing them to fall backwards into the river.  If the bullets didn't kill them, the cold water did.  There was what appeared to be either an Israeli tourist group or a Jewish tourist group there as I arrived.  They were places mementos, Israeli flags, and candles there.  It is amazing how powerful dozens of empty shoes can be.  Their significance being that before they were gunned down, the militia told them to take off their shoes, because those were worth something to them.  Something they could sell or use.

I finished the evening by watch the sunset over the Danube.