hungary 4

This was my final day in Budapest, I wish I could have made it to eastern Hungary, Slovakia, and the Ukraine border. Budapest is in Hungary, and is where most of my ancestors last lived in Europe before coming to the United States, but they were from a different part of Hungary, and to think that 4 generations ago they spoke Magyar and now, still 100 years later, I can only manage ‘igen,’ ‘nem,’ ‘beszelsz angolul?,’ ‘en nem beszelek magyarul.’ They should really consider trimming the trees along these train lines, then the views would be much nicer and more scenic. Just as I see something I’d like to snap a photo of, I get my camera out, and look back out the window, and whaddya know, a line of trees obstructing the view. Anyway, out in those areas its probably poor as hell and there certainly would not any Jews now, unfortunately Everything Is Illuminated does not happen every day. So this was thed ay that I had the Jewish quarter tour at 3:30. Originally I was going to take the 10am Pest tour and explore then from 1230-330, but from things I didn’t get to do on Monday, I decided to ditch the pest tour because the Jewish quarter tour was in Pest, and many of the buildings only date like 100-150 years ago. One interesting thing to note in Budapest is the lack of skyscrapers, no tall buildings, certainly nothing more then 15-20 stories it seems. Just many ornate things, it is quite an architectural city. So my original plan was Terror House Museum à Communist Railway through the hills à Matyus church on the way back to Pest à Jewish quarter tour. Something about it didn’t sit right with me so I altered it to Communist Railway à Church à Terror House à jewish quarter tour and if time remained maybe go to Szechenyi baths. After breakfast and getting everything ready for the day, I got on the bus around 9am, I had to take the 7 to Rudas, walk over to the Dobrentei stop on the 18 tram, take that 2 stops to Moszkva Square, switch to the 61 for 2 stops to Varosmajor and then hop on the Cogswheel railway fogaskerku to the end. Wasn’t sure how long it would take, by the time I got to Moszkva it was about 9:40, and then the cogshweel railway didn’t leave til 9:59,a dd 20 minutes to that, and it was about 10:15 when I finally got up the hill, it was dreary and raining, yet I walked over the desolate street to the Buda hill rail station and went inside, there was no one around, and just 1 family in the station waiting room looking at a schedule board, they asked the girl behind the window if she spoke English but she said only a bit. As I really wanted to make it to the Terror House museum nad I had to be at the tour at 330 and it was already close to 10:30, I looked at the schedule board, couldn’t make immediate sense of it, and decided for the better to abandon the idea, although I had spent over an hour coming up to it, once I got there it just didn’t seem worth it to take a 40 minute train ride for views, it seemed like a good post-lunch relaxation activity on Monday, but other than that, it probably is not too worth it. So I got back on the fogaskereku at around 10:40, switched to the 61 at Varosmajor, 2 stops to Moszkva, and then for the church, I caught the 16 busback up to the Castle District hills. I got off, and bought a ticket, and pretended I was from the Netherlands to get a really good discount.I think it was 1400 HUF full price and 10 or 20% off wit Budapest card but only 500 HUF for students, so I said Diak, student in Hungarian, and he asked what country I was from and I said Netherlands because I kinda am, I am studying there and it was where I came from on this trip. Went inside the church and utterly was not very impressed, it’s not that large, and honestly once you’ve seen a big old church you’ve seen many big old churches, whether St Pats in NYC, St Nicks in Amsterdam, sure people might go on and on talking about the intricate differences in design, but of course they are going to alter a bit from place to place. I snapped a bunch of pictures, and then called it a trip after 15 minutes, totally culd have gone in the day before at 4:45. Now my next adventure would be terror house museum and with the new schedule of the day modification, I would be able to fit in with plenty of time. Took the 16 from the top of the hill back to Pest to its terminus,a nd from there took the underground to Oktogon. Got outside and the 8 angles confused me as I could not initially find the museum marked off on my map so I walked down a side street and some guy was unloading his car so I asked him beszelsz angolul, he replied a bit so I asked which way to the Terror museum he replied left and then 50 meters down, I followed his directions and was embarrassed at how conspicuous the building is, a huge black roof with the backwards letters saying TERROR. So I went inside  and at first I thought it was free because I showed my Budapest card and some security guard opened the door and I went in and saw a sign for the exhibition. But then there was a lobby and a coat room so no escape. I stood on line for a ticket and said I am a student, bu then she asked for my passport and ID (Darn!) so I gave her my Erasmmus student ID thinking that was proof of my being a student but she said we do not accept student IDs and you had to be a citizen of EU not just student, oh well! SO the museum was excellently designed, it lead you in a sequence from the top floor down 3 floors through room and hallways and exhibits of wars, communism, and the horros that Hungarians have had to face in recent history, very informative, much worth the 1400 HUF which my Budapest card gave me discount of. All in all, took about 2+ hours to complete, highlights included rebuilt jail cells in the cellar from the days of communism, Peter Gabor’s office, and the religion room. One thing was that you couldn’t take pictures inside so I stealthily did it when I could, when no one was in the room and I made sure there were no cameras around. It was a true testament to the terrors of Communismm and how ruthless it was, the leaders replaced God with themselves and subjected everyone to their rule. I will never understand how they could call it Communism when it was actually fascism, they didn’t do good for the people they terrorized them and destroyed shit and killed anyone who didn’t agree with them, they fucking hung 15 and 16 year old kids. And then they imposed their own Communism to break free of the Russian influence, yea right. Anyway that was well worth the tour, then around 2:30 I decided to walk the length of Andrassy Avenue, which turned out to be the fancy stretch of Budapest, tree-lined streets, nice facades, and fancy stores. The Jewish tour would be meeting at Vorosmarty (Lion) square at 3:30, I got there around 3:10, walked around a few times, and rememebered I had to be on the lookout for signs and leaflets of the free tour. Chilling out on the fountain for a while until I found the tour at the lion fountain. It was a smaller group than the Buda tour, we wound our way through the streets in Pest which once composed the Jewish district, originally it was located where it was because Jews were not allowed to live within city walls so they lived right outside. The central synagogue is the 2^nd largest in the world, seating 3000 in the sanctuary, it survived because the Nazis liked the appearance of the building and Eichmann even had an office in it. We then went on to see some more synagogues, only the outsides, and there are actually still a small Jewish community, one of the shuls we went to has a yeshiva and there were a few kosher restaurants and a market too. I briefly considered joining for Shacharit at one but remembered I did not have tefillin with me and did not want to get involved using others. Part of the tour was  a pub tour too. The connection is that they are ruin pubs, after the Jews left, all the buildings remained, and the state owned them and people rented them and made pubs in the 1^st floors because otherwise the buildings would be empty and expensive to renovate otherwise. By the time the tour was over it was close to 7, so I stayed and talked with some people and the tour guides Ester and Emma, Emma knew a lot about Judaism like kashrut and bima but I could not tell if she was Jewish. One guy, a 30 year old from Seattle, asked me if I go to Brandeis because I was wearing my jacket and he said a friend of his did a anthropology PhD there and another girl asked  me about it too because someone she knows interned in the Study abroad office. Then I walked a while and talked with the guy from Seattle until we reached Oktogon, I wanted to eat at this cheaper Hungarian place and he had dinner at his hostel and someone she was abroad with in Italy goes there too, didn’t know the names though Jewish tour, dinner at Frici Papa, home.