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We woke up and had a look out the window and got a wonderful view of the Cable Bridge and the castle in the morning light. Just beautiful. I went up to the sun deck and took what I hope will be a set of photos I can make a panorama out of.
At breakfast we met Harv and his wife from Vancouver. We had not talked to them before (there are still people showing up for meals I don’t recognize). Along with the family from NY, they are probably closest to our age having been married 35 years (the least number of years we ever discovered besides ourselves at 30 and here I thought we’d been married a long time).
Budapest is big enough that our tour is by bus. Our guide is George. Well, actually whatever George is in Hungarian, but George. His English was how you say, um, not so goodly. But ok I guess for us touristicals. Budapest is divided by the river into Buda on the one side and Pest on the other. Buda is hilly and Pest is flat. We started by driving to the Pest side to see Hero’s Square. It’s Monday morning and traffic is heavy and the going is slow as is George’s spiel.
We took a drive around the square, which was built to commemorate the thousandth anniversary of the Magyar conquest of Hungary in 895 (thanks Google). And then a quick jaunt around the park it’s located in or next to. There’s a “circus” and a nice looking zoo that had an ‘old school’ look to it. Would be worth a wander if we ever get back.
But then a stop at the square along with numerous other bus tours. We had been warned there would be people trying to sell us stuff, and there were, but when I hear that I think Puerto Vallarta and the relentless timeshare people and the kids selling chicklets. Nothing like that. A few women selling sweaters and a few others selling guide books. The sweaters actually looked very pretty but Gary had told us the quality was very poor and after one washing would shrink to doll size (if not fall apart). So no purchases.
In the square there are statues of the first 8 or 10 Hungarian rulers. The country is 1000 years old give or take. The first guy is St Stephen (the same guy as in Germany?, not sure). Then some other guys and some other guys, then the Hapsburgs. A much better understanding of 13th-17th century Europe would have come in handy for the trip. But I just couldn’t get into it. The difficult English didn’t help.
We left there, passing the square where a major component of the ’56 uprising took place. There’s a memorial there but mostly it’s a parking lot.
Then back through traffic to the Buda side and the Palace district. Traffic hasn’t let up and to top it off there’s an accident at the end of the tunnel that takes you there. But we finally arrive and step one is the bathroom break. Always tour death. I predicted the issue and got in line early. The public toilets typically have a charge in Europe (at least where we were). This one had an elderly gentlemen taking money, then dutifully tearing off a ticket for you to have (but don’t need for anything), then takes a swipe card and lets you through a turnstile. He was very robotic and didn’t say a word. He didn’t even really look up. Quite a production.
So I got out quickly, but now we’re standing around in very hot weather waiting for everyone else and thinking it’s time to maybe bail. Actually Marion was all for it. I, as usual, was reluctant, but she was right and we took our leave. My plan, not that I mentioned it to her, was to go up ahead, look around and be by the church when the group showed up, since clearly the church would be part of the tour.
We walked by some shops and headed for St Mathias. It’s a pretty church with colorful tiles on the roof. Something we hadn’t seen much of before. We were just going to go in and look around ourselves but there’s a fee, so we skipped it. I couldn’t see paying for it when we could have gone for free with the tour, which we had abandoned.
The church is up on a hill overlooking the Danube and there’s a stone area along the crest of the hill called the Fisherman’s Bastion. (I don’t know why since we skipped that part…oh, it takes its name from the guild of fishermen that was responsible for defending this stretch of the city walls in the Middle Ages – thanks again Google). We walked along there, enjoying the view and taking photos. There was also a sort of castle turret you could walk up and look out as well. It looked like a sand castle.
It’s seriously hot out (high 90’s) so we’re losing interest in doing much else. We start heading back towards the shops and buses and lo and behold, there’s our tour about to go into the church. So we latched back onto them and got to see it. I love it when a plan comes together. Although really, it was fine and all, but if we hadn’t seen it, it wouldn’t have mattered much to me. But still, victory was mine!
Headed back to the bus we’re looking for a bathroom for Marion. She found one in what looked like an old public building. There was a little store and a little bathroom with a few stalls. It’s being run by a mother and daughter or possibly grandmother and granddaughter. (Bathrooms are charged for as I mentioned). But these two were very cute and sweet. She said if felt like a lemonade stand. She liked them so much she took their picture.
In the meantime, I tried my hand at getting some ice cream which didn’t go as well. I didn’t see the sign with the prices and just asked for a scoop. A ‘scoop’ in the US is a reasonable quantity. In Hungary, it’s a spoonful. But no matter. She tells me a price. 2-something. I said is that Euros? Because it didn’t sound like enough (the Hungarian Florint is something like 300 to the dollar). Which was a dumb question since I didn’t have any euros anyway. All I had was a 2000 forint. And the ice cream was 250 (i.e. cheap because it was so small). So I hand this to her, and she throws me a “stupid tourist” look, sighs and heads to the back to get enough change. Really it was like paying 80 cents with a 10 dollar bill. Not something to get so excited about. But anyway, it was peach sorbet and really good and if I’d figured out the pricing, I would have gotten a lot more. But I wasn’t about to go back in.
Hungarian is one of those languages where you can sit and stare at the words and really nothing of any consequence comes from it. With German there are a lot of words that are similar to English and we both knew a smattering of German words (e.g. schwein is pig, strasse is street, etc.). But Hungarian? Nothin’. Except zsinagoga, which wasn’t too hard to figure out.
On the way back to the buses we passed a shop Marion wanted to go into and a sign for the “Labyrinth”. I had seen a bus poster for this and it looked like a tourist trap but figured I’d go check it out while Marion was in the store.
There’s a little doorway and a stairway down. The sign has no indication of a fee so I figured I’ll go see if it’s maybe an historic site of some kind that’s free. Three flights of stairs down and now I’m starting to think I’ve seen this trick before. Get you so far into the experience before they hit you up for money that you figure, well, I’ve gotten this far, I might as well pay. The good news was it got cooler and cooler the farther down you got.
At the bottom of the stairs was a long hallway and still no signs of an entrance or indication of a charge. But they blew it. There was a sign at the bottom of the stairs saying tour guides weren’t allowed past the cashier. Aha! I knew it. So I spent a moment enjoying the cool air and headed back up without finding out how far you had to go before you actually got there. (It was a Labyrinth after all.) Later I saw another poster for it where it said something about a ‘dracula experience’. Tourist trap successfully dodged.
Back to the boat, and thankfully this time the tunnel is not blocked so the drive wasn’t too bad. We had lunch then headed out for the tour of the Jewish quarter, our last event of the trip.
There are two guides for the trip. A woman whose name escapes me, and Joseph, who will lead our group when we split up. The woman sounds just like the Arianna Huffington character on Saturday Night Live (Seth, my little dumpling…. )
I hadn’t really thought about it but of course the tour of the Jewish Quarter is pretty much going to be the story of the Hungarian Jews in World War II. — i.e. it’s not going to end well. Not completely of course, there was history before and there is still a small but thriving community in town (in fact there are 18 functioning synagogues). But certainly it was the main theme. Not necessarily the best note to end the trip on. But it was the one optional tour that had really gotten my attention in the brochure.
The biggest synagogue in Europe (2nd largest in the world after New York) is in Budapest. Although it is not all that big. Mid level cathedral sized at best. But as was pointed out in a PBS series on the history of the Jews we watched recently, if you’re fairly confident that at some point you’re going to be run out of town, there’s not much reason to get overly ambitious with your building projects.
It’s not elaborately decorated either. Very plain. But pretty. It’s is very ‘cathedral’ looking though. On purpose, to better integrate with the local population (i.e. a nod towards getting along). In fact it was built by a non-Jewish architect. The congregation that built the church was interesting. They were a combination of orthodox and reform. It’s unique to Budapest (I forget the name). For example, they still separated the sexes, but not as severely as full orthodox (no curtain). They did the service in Hebrew, but there’s a pipe organ, which is extremely unusual for a synagogue. (And note to Texas guy, also bigger than the one in Miltenberg. Although I’m starting to think maybe I somehow missed the rest of the one in Miltenberg. He couldn’t possibly have thought what I saw was big. He’s from Texas after all.).
The organ presents a bit of a problem actually, and is why they aren’t typically found. Why do you have the organ? To attract people to services. When are the services? On the Sabbath. What is the Sabbath? A day of rest. What is playing the organ? Work. So… how do you play the organ during Sabbath services? Automation? No, pushing the button to start it is still ‘work’ (the orthodox are sticklers for this sort of thing). Well, if you’re these guys, you solve the problem by getting a non-Jew to be your organist. The Orthodox called it a cop-out and don’t accept it, but this congregation found it workable.
While we were having our tour (seated in the pews and listening on our ear pieces), there was another group behind us talking loudly and being quite rude. Our guide went over and asked them to be quiet and courteous. But they didn’t stop. Then at one point, they all stood and sang some kind of hymnal sounding piece with lots of Hallelujah’s in it. We never did find out who they were or what they were doing. But it definitely caused a lot of tension not to mention being very rude and it was surprising they didn’t muscle them out. Try that in the Cologne cathedral and you would have been swarmed. But maybe in Budapest, it’s best if Jews are more tolerant of such things. After their little display, they left and the tension eased.
We left the synagogue and walked past a cemetery. I didn’t know this but it’s apparently Jewish tradition to keep cemeteries away from synagogues, unlike churches. But this was a special case. In the courtyard where the cemetery was, a couple of hundred Jews had been shot there and/or piled there after dying in the ghetto. The congregation decided it was an appropriate memorial to them, and I agree.
There were roughly 700,000 Jews in Hungary before the war and 600,000 give or take were killed. It started in the country and got to Budapest last. They rounded up everyone into the ghetto in late ’44 and 6 weeks later, deported them. So the ghetto wasn’t there long. But they still managed to kill a large number through disease and starvation even in that short period of time.
This was fairly late in the war (it ended in mid ’45). And I was struck by the fact that the basic issue of deciding to kill the Jews aside, why at this point in the war are you wasting resources (people, fuel, etc.) on this? Was it so critical that it be done that it was more important than shoring up a sagging war effort? That’s scary. Or almost worse, that the bureaucracy was such that no one told them to stop so they just kept at it.
It wasn’t all bad news. Raoul Wallenberg and another Swedish diplomat saved 10’s of thousands of Jews by creating fake passports and allowing them to stay in safe houses (essentially parts of the embassy and therefore outside of Hungarian control). It amounted to most of those who were saved. There were a number of memorials to them.
There’s a small Jewish museum attached to the synagogue. It’s nicely done, but we were rushed because we were late. The woman ended up talking very fast. I was able to follow since I knew what she was talking about but not so sure non-Jews would. It was four rooms. Room one, old torahs and such, including a 300+ year old one. Room two, artifacts associated with holidays (menorahs, Seder plates and the like). Room three covered daily life. Where I found out that it was customary to have something on the wall that indicated the direction to Jerusalem so you’d know which way to face to pray. Who knew? Room four was the holocaust memorial. It included pictures of the courtyard we had just passed through with the dead bodies still in it. That was impactful. Also some of the propaganda posters which were really nasty (e.g. “for shame, you just supported a Jewish business” and the like).
One of the more interesting pieces was a document from the “Final Solution” memos that included a list of the number of Jews in each country in Europe so they’d know when they got them all. Including down to the detail of the 280 in Albania. The total was 11 million of which close to 5 million were in Russia, which Germany invaded by didn’t defeat. So at 6 million killed, they did a pretty good job of getting everyone they had access to.
Out in the garden there is a metal sculpture of a willow tree. The leaves of the branches contain names of victims. Another simple but very moving tribute. It caused both of us to tear up. It helps both personalize it and give you a sense of the magnitude.
On the way into the synagogue we had passed a small souvenir stand run by an older woman. We found out on the tour that she was an Auschwitz survivor and everything was handmade. We went back and had a look around and found a nice little tchotchke to bring home. She was a very sweet lady and I asked to take her picture.
At this point the tour split into two groups so we could wander the neighborhood a bit. Joseph, who would be our guide, took off down the hallway without most of us. But we managed to catch up. I’m not sure everyone did.
I liked him. Marion not as much. He was quite animated. I asked him if there was still much anti-Semitism in Hungary. And he said, sadly, there is. Especially in the countryside. Their parliament is in fact 17% “Nazi” party (they’re not called Nazis but their doctrine is the same). It’s the highest in Europe.
He related that while Germany accepted blame for the holocaust and tried to educate the next generation, Hungary has not worked through that process. They blamed Germany and not themselves. So they still have not really dealt with it emotionally. As Joseph pointed out, there were only 50 or 60 Nazis in Hungary doing the deportation. They deported 400,000 people in a few months. It’s safe to say they had some local help. He said that German children come to the synagogue for the tour a lot but you rarely see Hungarian children.
And on that cheery note, let’s go have some cake. There’s a traditional Jewish cake made only in Budapest called the flodni. It’s a “calorie bomb” as Joseph said. It’s multi-layered with plum jam on the top of a layer of walnut on a layer of apple on a layer of poppy seed with dough in between the layers. There are a couple of places that make it. We skipped “Rachel’s”, run by the daughter of the Rabbi (but paused at her door for a picture of the confection) because the bathroom wasn’t up to tour standards. Instead we went to Spinoza’s (where I can attest to the fact that the bathroom was fine). I liked it. Marion didn’t like the poppy seed layer (flashbacks to the evil poppy filled bun). We sat at a table with 3 more people from the boat we hadn’t met yet.
We continued our walk around the area. There were some obviously Jewish establishments but not much to see. We walked by 2 other synagogues in the area. There are 25 in town, 18 still in use, so there’s a fairly big population (~80,000).
The area is still largely recovering from the war and Communist rule (i.e. it has not had much in the way of urban renewal). It’s become a popular area for the early 20’s backpack set because there are a lot of cheap places to stay and ‘ruin-bars’ that are built in shabby rundown buildings and have a ‘vibe’. We walked by a couple and I can see the appeal. Or I can see how a young person would find it appealing.
It’s a very hot day (high 90’s) and we are dripping sweat at this point. Luckily, time to head back to the boat. Just down the quayside from us is yet another simple but poignant holocaust reminder. It’s the shoe sculpture. It’s a series of bronze shoes along the sidewalk above the river and it’s a tribute to Jews who were brought there and shot. They were made to remove their shoes (because the leather was valuable), shot and dumped into the river. As the guide said, the shoes were more valuable than the people. It seemed to attract a lot of people and hopefully memorials like this and the willow tree and all the others we saw will help keep something like this from happening again. At least on this scale. There’s still plenty of ‘ethnic cleansing’ going on.
Back to the boat for a last dinner and a last walk around the sun deck to get a view of Budapest at night. It still looks amazing. And a few more pictures of the buildings lit up at night for good measure.
7/7/14
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