Impressions of Budapest

Dear reader,I am in Budapest.

Why Budapest? Simply because I never been here before. For many years I thought this must have been some boring & grey communist metropolis until friends hinted that maybe I might be wrong and the city actually existed centuries before Stalin took over. I checked the pictures on the Internet and it looked fine to me, I like history and architecture of it. So instead of dreaming about it and leaving it for "another time" I simply decided the right time is now and since I might as well drop dead from heart attack any moment (very possible, considering my cruise ships job) off I went, with a train.

I had to take a train because Croatia Airlines was in a strike and there are NO BUSES between Zagreb and Budapest, like we are on another continent. Unfortunately the train journey turned out to be a complete nightmare for everybody involved - there was something wrong with the railways so bus was supposed to drive us halfway, but our train broke even before we reached the bus, than later we had to wait 1 hour on the border and so on... instead of 6 hours trip we suffered 5 hour delay so I arrived in Budapest seriously exhausted, sweaty and out of breath. Strangely, this affected me much more than I expected because I developed seriously heavy cough that hurt me and wouldn't let me sleep for many days. Medicine does not help much, it must be some lung infection and it completely spoils my visit to Budapest.

The impressions: very interesting historically an surely architecture is fascinating BUT most of these old buildings are not originals: whatever you see on Buda Castle Hill has been rebuild after WW2, so don't expect you walk on the same stairs as King Matthias Corvinus. There is a far amount of commercial tourist feeling everywhere in the centre, with expected Hungarian flavor - at least, what middle-aged tourists expect Hungary must be - so lots of cheap little souvenirs, ornaments and trinkets with folk motives, paprika and spices in various packages, all sorts of food, table clothes and such. I have not seen many young visitors but middle aged and elderly are ubiquitous and they are probably customers for all these key chains, T- shirts and plastic dolls in folk dresses.

The plan was to visit a museum per day, which turned out nicely and not so difficult because Budapest has lots of historically interesting places and its easy to reach them. I used red tour bus ("Big bus") but they are many different companies and lines so no worries with that, with one ticket you can hop on and off anywhere you want for 48 hours.

The very first museum I had visited was the best one - "Museum of Fine Arts" has really nice collection of art and I loved ancient mosaics (Orpheus!), Greek and roman busts and basically everything but religious art - even though I sound like a Heathen, I must admit that this time I had no patience for all this and I just walked past every single Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus, it felt like there were millions of them. I prefer something symbolical like this painting called "The Last Effort Of The Day" - that one moved me and it probably shows my frame of mind right now.

Budapest History Museum is on a Buda Castle Hill towering above the town - magnificent location and ancient buildings & palaces spread around, as I already mentioned its all reconstructed because in every war, the royal palace gets hit first. History Museum is actually surprisingly boring - the building is awesome (they always find more and more layers from medieval and roman times underneath) but exhibition is basically dry, lifeless and too academic. Whoever the directors were, trough the decades they lost the touch with museum audiences and its clearly shown. There is no story, nothing gripping or fascinating, just a bunch of stones and armless sculptures of "big historical importance". Somebody should explain to them that history does not need to be boring.

Not far from it is Hungarian National Gallery - it is the very first museum in my life where I liked 20th century art more than anything else. Everything else that Hungarians collected and loved for a thousand years was either religious art (where I galloped trough, I cannot stand it anymore) or cutesy, bourgeois & decorative art that looks nice and sweet and completely boring. Tons of paintings of sweet little kids, lovers holding hands and horses running. Just when I started to think that Hungarian art is perhaps not for me, I stumbled upon 20th century and here i found far more interesting things, it seems like it took them a long time before they started showing some spark.

As for the city itself, I can't get over the fact how brutal the history is around here - everywhere you look there were people killed,hanged,tortured and buried faces down & tightened up with barbed wire. Starting from medieval Buda Castle down to Jewish quarter and elsewhere - even the magnificent Parliament building is blackened with history - right in front of it, on Danube promenade is a chilling sculpture "Shoes on Danube" where Jews were shot to death in 1944.I cannot just enjoy the sun and goulash and architecture, knowing all this. It really bothers me.

Along the famous Andrássy Avenue there is a recently open tourist attraction - The House of Terror. Very typical of "beautiful Budapest" where buildings hide terrible secrets, this is the place where hundreds of political prisoners were tortured and killed by Nazis, Soviet soldiers and later Hungarian policemen. There are some people who love to visit this place and look the basement cells but I have no desire to see it. I think the place should be burned down and demolished, not open like circus. The big photo on the wall usually points at some famous person who was tortured here and I was shocked to see beautiful 1940s actress/singer Karády Katalin displayed here. Poor girl survived 3 months in these basements. Once she managed to escape Hungary, she never came back.