Behind the Iron Curtain 2006 – June 18th
Ah yes – been a while since my last installment of the Eastern Europe saga. I got distracted by some lost travel notes and a little thing called RAGBRAI.
As we left things – we had just completed a fifteen mile death march of Budapest. Today was intended to be a little slower – mainly because we still had sore feet from the night before. We got up pretty early so that we could check out the Great Market Hall and hopefully get some breakfast there. This would have been a great plan – if it wasn’t for the fact that it was Sunday and the market is closed on Sunday.
Since we were near the National Museum, we walked over there and had a quick pastry while we waited for it to open. The museum had a very good and compelling history of Budapest from the Hapsburgs all the way through Nazism and the rise and fall of Communism.
After leaving the museum, we headed for Castle Hill. Since there is no good direct route due to underground construction, we popped out near the house of Parliament and made our way over to it by way of the US embassy. Side note to Tamara – not a good idea to take pictures of an embassy. The guards really don’t like that.
Heather in front of the Hungarian Parliament
We caught a bus at the really oversized Parliament building to take us up Castle Hill. This bus brought us across the Chain bridge and up to the top where it dropped us off. As a general rule, you never eat in the touristy areas. We were hungry, so we thought we’d throw caution to the wind. The first place that we stopped had $25 pizzas – and the second place (a little pub) clearly told us to NOT eat on the hill. Our good friend Rick came to the rescue and recommended that we go back down the hill to the Víziváros (Water Town) neighborhood. We ended up at the Horgásztanya (Fisherman’s Pub) – which served up a dynamite mix of fish and Hungarian specialties – and was dirt cheap. My lunch was a deep fried pork cutlet, stuffed with cheese and spicy sausage (yeah, very healthy) washed down with a good local beer.
Freshly fed, we took the bus back up to the castle and proceeded to start touring. The castle itself was a bit of a disappointment – it was nearly destroyed in WWII and was rebuilt in a non-historically accurate fashion and was strictly 1970′s inside. The rest of the hill was great – and we enjoyed our stroll through St. Mathias and along Fisherman’s Bastion.
Fisherman’s Bastion with the Statue of St. Istvan
A couple of funny side tales – both involving Beth – happened up here as well. Beth was stopped at the entrance to St. Mathias’ and told to cover up – while they let Heather and Tamara by. There was apparently some confusion (as they were pointing and chuckling) as to whether it was her shoulders or chest they wanted to cover up. Beth blushed a little and donned the shawl. The second comic moment happened near the modern Hilton on Castle hill. After jokingly throwing a huff about the fact that my three ladies weren’t paying attention to the tour, I demanded an apology by asking for “A five letter word starting with S ending with Y”. Beth pondered it for a second, then innocently exclaimed:
“SHITY?”
This was enough to make Heather convulse in laughter and brought what was left of the tour to a screeching halt.
After finishing the tour of Castle Hill, we decided to divide and conquer our touring. Beth and Tamara were going to the Széchenyi baths, Heather and I were going to Szoborpark – the statue park containing all of the old communist monuments. In every other former communist country, they destroyed all statues when the regimes fell. In Hungary, they were saved and put into one park southwest of town. Quite far southwest of town, as it turned out.
The journey to Szoborpark was the one and only time Rick Steves failed us on the trip. He indicated that the easy way to get there was the 11 AM bus – but it was doable by buses and trams. We tried the bus/tram route, and found ourselves stranded in suburban Budapest where the trail went cold. After almost an hour of waiting for buses and wandering to find the right bus lines, we finally found our way to Szoborpark where we had exactly one hour to look around before heading back to town.
V.I. Lenin hailing a taxi in Szoborpark
When we finally arrived, we were virtually alone except for a TV crew waiting for the “sweet light” at dusk. We were able to wander around and visit all of the communist-era statues of the “All-Stars” (Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc.) as well as the “Heroic Mother”, the “Valiant Revolutionary”, and so forth. It was pretty crazy seeing them all up close after seeing them used as scary pictures throughout my youth. They somehow don’t look so powerful in a deserted park on the outskirts of Budapest at dusk.
After the long return journey to the center of Budapest, we met up with Beth and Tamara. They had a pretty wild story of saving a Cuban dancer and his boyfriend (a Hungarian TV news reporter) from physical harm about to be delivered by mafia-looking types at the baths.
As we were approaching our hotel, we noticed an extremely large crowd of people in front of our hotel jamming the street for blocks in either direction. Unbeknownst to us, the artist Pink was playing a free concert directly in front of our hotel. We could hear it quite clearly inside of our hotel as we dressed for dinner. We basically only heard her encore.. a caterwauling rendition of a song that sucked the first time around – “What’s Going On?” by 4 Non Blondes. Blech. I guess Pink sang it as well as a terrible song could be sung.
Tamara and Beth were meeting their new friends from the baths for dinner, but Heather and I were just too tired by this point. We had a quick and quiet dinner in the Oktagon area (more Goulash!) before turning in for the evening. We were entertained during dinner by a conversation with a Dutch woman at the next table who was fascinated by Heather’s obvious pregnancy. She told us all about her “natural childbirth” classes that she had taken in Wisconsin – and about why she was in Budapest. It turned out that she was at a seminar for “Orgasmic Birth”. I can’t make stuff like that up, I swear.
Next episode – our journey to Austria!
Check out the rest of the pictures at:
Behind the Iron Curtain 2006
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