Budapest

Our first stop was Budapest, Hungary, and I'll start by saying I think this was my favorite city that I have ever visited. I LOVED it. It was just endlessly beautiful; those Hapsburgs had a lot of money to lavish on their eastern capital, and it mercifully didn't get too smashed up in WWII. The people were friendly and helpful, the history was fascinating and harrowing, the food was delicious and inexpensive, the public transportation was amazing, and our apartment was on a gorgeous tree lined boulevard. It was tops.

After arriving the first night about 9 pm, I anxiously hoped that the shuttle service I had arranged to meet us at the airport would actually be there, and lo there was a man holding a sign with my name on it! And our luggage arrived as well, and someone was at our apartment to check us in, and the apartment was nice and in a great location! All a big relief, and we went to sleep. (Although sleep, the entire eight days we were in Budapest, was a bit of a problem. Jet lag really wiped us out, and throwing a four year old in the mix didn't help when we were all lying in bed wide awake at 3 am.) Here are some photos of our apartment building, which was very cool in and of itself.

The first morning Nephi and Caleb wandered out into the city and bought us some breakfast food, after which we bought metro passes for us all and the headed up to Castle Hill to explore.  There were lovely views across the Danube and imposing old buildings to wander around. We walked around until we were all hot and tired, then ate a big dinner at a crepe restaurant (we actually ordered too much food for our family to consume, which had been hitherto unheard of), then went home and mostly didn't sleep.

The next day was a Saturday, and we went to Hero's Square and City Park. Hero's Square has a lot of statues of old Magyar rulers and warriors, and I subjected my family to me reading out of the guidebook about every one. Then we went to City Park which has a faux castle, a playground, and a hopping street fair scene. This was where Joseph got the first of his pastries on this trip that turned out to be filled with poppy seeds, to his dismay. Somehow our family is just not constitutionally able to really enjoy street fairs like everyone else seems to, whether at home or in an exotic country. So we hung out for awhile and then headed home.

Our apartment was half a block from the amazing, beautiful, extravagant Opera House, and when I discovered that I got us tickets to shows there, which were very reasonably priced.

I went by myself one night to see the opera Mefistofele by Boito, based on the Faust story. It was very strange and kind of amazing. It is an odd opera anyhow, and of course this was an edgy, modern sort of adaptation so at one point there were people floating around in the air above the stage in bubbles in ancient Greece and there was some sort of cryogenics going on. At another point the devil is in the midst of a raucous worldly party and bemoans that the master of hedonism doesn't even have a scepter and robe, and so they brought out an EU flag for his robe, and the audience thought that was pretty funny. The singing was unbelievable and I just went along for the ride. And kept looking around at the amazing building.

Another night I got tickets for Nephi and the three older boys to go to a concert there.

The next day was Sunday, and we went to a church at a ward in Buda. I wish I had something interesting to say about it, but they were out of translation earpieces so we weren't really sure what was going on and we were so jet lagged that we were just fighting to stay awake. So after Sacrament Meeting we went home and went to sleep. In the afternoon we rallied and headed out to explore. A few months ago in preparation for visiting Budapest I read the book The Paul Street Boys out loud to the boys, which was a great and moving read and is about a group of kids in the early 1900s in Budapest. It is a classic in Hungary and there is a monument to it in Budapest depicting one of the scenes from the book. It was fun to see it.

After communism fell in Hungary in 1989, the people weren't really excited about the statues around the city commemorating a fairly awful time of their history. So they were collected in an open air museum a ways outside of town called Memento Park. Just getting there was interesting, because we rode a bus quite a ways outside the city center into communist-era housing projects. It was good to see another side of the city. And as far as communist housing projects go, they really didn't seem too bad. Not the gorgeous Viennese boulevards of the inner city, but not slums by any means. Anyway, the park was fascinating and lots of fun. There is not a lot of commentary, but having so many imposing, heavy handed statues celebrating so many lies gathered all in one area has a powerful effect. There was hardly anyone else there and we had a good time.

Hungarian and Soviet women (and me) releasing doves of peace. Too bad that didn't really work out.

Monday we took the train a bit up the Danube to a lovely little town called Szentendre. It was beautiful and quaint and we loved walking around and then enjoyed a really good lunch.

Tuesday we walked around the neighborhood around the amazing, massive Parliament building. Here's one tip for travelling with kids, or any travelling, really: if something costs a lot of money and you think it might be kind of boring, you don't have to do it. It was going to cost us like $60 to go inside and we just didn't do it and didn't feel bad about it.

One of the most moving things we saw in Budapest was this memorial to the many Jews who were shot during WWII at this spot along the Danube.

Also, there is a statue of Ronald Regan. Really.

This is the American Embassy where Cardinal Mindszenty lived for fifteen years. I hadn't known anything about his life, although my parents went to Cardinal Mindszenty High School in New York. He was a brave man.

We went inside St. Stephen's Basilica which was large and beautiful, and also contains the shriveled fist of St. Stephen himself. It's not a trip to Europe without one moderately gruesome relic, right?

There were statues all over the city. That is Castle Hill in the background across the river.

Parliament at night is amazing.

This is a coffee house that was two doors down from our apartment, and up an escalator in a nondescript book store. It was amazing!! And we got super delicious desserts!!

Wednesday we walked around the Jewish Quarter. Before WWII Budapest was about 25% Jewish. It didn't go well for them. It was a sobering morning. This is the Dohany Street Great Synagogue.

This is inside a smaller synagogue nearby. The entire synagogue is operated and used by a handful of families now; there aren't many Jews in Budapest anymore.

We then went to the Holocaust Memorial Center, which was heavy and very well done. It is powerful to be at the place where these things actually happened. There was a picture thee of four young Nazi soldiers cutting the hair of an older Jewish man, and the soldiers had the most revolting, horrible look of mocking glee and crazed power on their faces, and the older man looked so terrified and sad. And I just thought God, save me from ever being in any of their places, because apparently it really can happen that fairly normal people can turn in to the horrible monsters in that photo, and normal people can find themselves stripped of all dignity and at the mercy of horrible monsters. It is hard to believe but it happened right in the very lovely city where we were standing that day. It is hard to believe and that is why we have to keep remembering.

That afternoon we spent at Margarite Island, sort of a Central Park area in the city. We rented a little peddle cart and tootled around for a bit, watched a fountain that did a Bellagio sort of thing to Hungarian folk tunes, and then played at this playground. Like most playgrounds around Europe, it was more fun and more dangerous than anything you could find here.

That evening we ventured out into the city. Look how lovely St. Stephen's Basilica (home of the incorruptible fist) is at sunset.

We attended a super fun folkdance show that night. So much energy! It was a good time.

And St. Stephen's after the show, all lit up and looking beautiful still.

Thursday morning Joseph, Caleb, and I went to this remarkable museum, the House of Terror. This was just a few blocks from our apartment, on the same beautiful boulevard Andrassy Ut, and it was the place political prisoners for both the Nazi puppet regime the Arrow Cross and the Soviet regime were questioned and held. It is right in the beautiful middle of the city. It is crazy and powerful to have the museum in the actual building. This is probably the best museum I've ever been to for telling a story of a time in history; we were there for over three hours and easily could have spent hours more. Every room was full of interesting written details and videos of people telling their stories. The basic story is: life was terrible under the Nazis, and just as terrible under the Soviets. The regimes just haphazardly sent people off to work camps and ruined lives and killed people and instilled terror and were generally crazy and evil. Protecting people against authoritarian, powerful, unchecked government power is no joke; really, really horrible things happen when powerful people get to do whatever they want. It also told the story of the 1956 uprising that happened in Budapest, when the people rose up against Soviet power emboldened by Stalin's death in 1953. People were brave and fought the good fight and many died, and for awhile it looked like they were winning. Then the Soviets cracked down and people and their families paid dearly for their involvement. But it did make a difference; after the uprising things did get a little more relaxed in Hungary until the regime fell in 1989. There is a room at the end of the museum of pictures of the men and women who worked at the building who were never brought to justice, and many still live in Budapest. How does a society recover from a place like this existing in its midst?

For a change of pace, that afternoon we went swimming at one of the many thermal baths in the city. We chose not to go to the most famous and beautiful bath because it was going to cost a truckload of money and we had the feeling that everyone there would be annoyed by four loud splashing energetic boys. So we went to the one where locals go. It was actually an enormous pain to get there and then Nephi had to go all the way home and back again to get a credit card to use as a deposit for the wristbands we had to wear, and it really did have a local feel in that they didn't seem all that thrilled to have tourists there and was kind of just like a swimming pool that was a tiny bit dingy. But once we were inside there were several people who were really super friendly to us and shared their water toys with the kids. And it was interesting to see that it really did have a huge cross-section of people there; old people floating around in the thermal mineral baths, and twenty-somethings, and teenagers, and families with young kids. I don't really see that at swimming pools in the US.

It had a definite communist-era aesthetic.

We took a boat back down the river on the way home, and that was lovely. The next morning we checked out of our apartment and headed to the train station. There was a bit of drama since we had cleverly spent all of our Hungarian florints since we had planned to eat lunch at a place that accepted credit cards, but then changed our mind about where to eat lunch, and then couldn't find anywhere to eat that accepted credit cards, and then our ATM card mysteriously stopped working so we couldn't get any more florints and we were all a bit tired and hungry. BUT we did eventually find somewhere that we could exchange a few US Dollars and it all worked out. It's not travelling without a few moments like that, I suppose. And then we boarded a train and rode for eight hours to Slovenia for our next adventures!