What a difference a day makes. Yesterday we were in short sleeves walking along the Danube, today we awoke to cold spitting rain and temperatures suddenly in the 50’s. All those outfits we had brought for cold weather suddenly appeared, and those who had been happily wearing shorts yesterday, appeared with the ‘layered look' which included sweaters and wind-breakers today.
Our morning lecture in one of the conference rooms of the hotel was given by a very amusing, cynical, informative speaker named Zoltan Pogatsa (I won’t try and put all the Hungarian accents on all the words, nor will I reverse his name which is how it is done in Hungary: last name first, first name last). Zoltan took us through 1100 years of Hungarian history from the tribes arriving in the Carpathian basin to the current time. So far he has been the one speaker since we arrived in this part of central Europe whose English has almost no accent. While he was a bit self-centered, and very bombastic , his flawless English allowed us to understand his every word and concept, and he was able to keep our attention for three hours, which in itself was a miracle. There was something in the’ lilt’ of the previous Czech and Slovak speakers which could lull one to sleep after breakfast, but not this man.
[While I have known only one Zoltan until this week, I now learn that it’s quite a common name in Hungary and it derives from the word ‘Sultan’. But I still think it belongs to only one truly important person – from Peacham Vermont.]
Some of the Highlights which I learned (and remembered) were:
· The Hungarian language is closer to Korean than it is to the Germanic or Slavic languages.
· The word ‘Hun’ does NOT come from Hungarian.
· Young people still have bumper stickers that show the border of Hungary which existed until 1918, when it was a good deal larger country. And they think of that as the REAL Hungary.
· The key historical person is St. Stephen to whom a huge cathedral is built. He founded the kingdom which survived for 1000 years and brought Christianity to a nomadic country.
· The pinnacle of Hungarian History (according to our speaker) was the Arpad Dynasty in the Middle Ages (1000 – 1301). Everything has been downhill since then with one defeat, mistake, and conquest after another:
o Ottoman Empire – Turkish Occupation 1526-1699: What is amazing is that while the Ottoman Empire and Islam were here for over 150 years, the only remnants are the baths, and there were almost no converts to the religion. And even today Hungary does not despise Turkey, in fact they are one of the few modern countries to support the acceptance of Turkey into the EU.
o Hapsburg Empire – German Occupation 1700-1914: From about 1867 to the end of WW I was the golden age of Hungary. Jews were accepted, art, poetry and science thrived, and there was relative peace.
o Post WW I: Horthy’s Hungary 1918 – 1941: With the Treaty of Trianon (1918) Hungary shrunk with Transylvania going to Roumania; some parts to Czecheslovakia, and Germany/Austria getting other parts. And the leader, Milos Horthy (an admiral in a non-naval country) aligned himself with Germany resulting in the death of 200,000 Hungarian soldiers fighting for the Nazis and 500,000 Jews killed in camps or by starvation and disease.
o Post WW II - Communist Occupation 1946 – 1989: During this time there was the well-known bloody revolution in 1956 which was crushed by the Russians, and after that the country was run first by Janos Kadar(a traitor) and then by Cardinal Mincenti (chosen by the USA and the CIA).
· Obviously Zoltan had quite a cynical attitude about his country’s ability to manage itself and I will have to do a wee bit of history reading to see how many of his attitudes are corroborated, but he concluded his talk by saying that since all ‘unions’ which Hungary joins tend to collapse, he assumes the next to collapse will be the EU.
The benefit of someone like he, is that we get a different ‘outlook’ on history. But the risk is that since we hear from so few Hungarians, some of my fellow Road Scholars might take his word as the gospel and believe all he says.[ Hertha will have to give me her own ‘take’ on what I’ve learned.]
After lunch at the hotel, we hopped into our bus for a quick tour of both Buda and Pest with a wonderful guide who gave her Americanized named to be “Julie”. Unfortunately, we were seeing everything through the rain which never is the best. The city has a very Parisian/Viennese atmosphere (no high rises are allowed when erecting modern buildings) with lots of small green parks and open squares with monuments. During WW II the city was severely bombed, and all its bridges were destroyed by the retreating Germans, so much of what we were seeing were restored or re-constructed buildings.
Along the rainy Danube (which isn't blue) we saw the memorial of bronze shoes which commemorates the many people who were shot by the river and simply allowed to float away. We drove across the Chain Bridge (which looks very much like the Brooklyn Bridge) to what is called the Castle quarter on the Buda side of the river. We climbed to the top where we got out of the bus to visit the Matthias Church which has been built and rebuilt, but retains its Gothic feel. After an hour of walking and touring, we were thoroughly cold and soaked to the skin, so we stopped at the Fishermen’s Bastion (an actually quite new building) to get a superb view over to the Pest side of the river and to have a cup of thick, rich, hot cocoa. (Love that Chocolate).
Under our umbrellas we walked back to the bus and drove back across the Liberty Bridge along with all the locals who were trying to get out of town for the week-end. Julie was great, here we were stuck in one traffic jam after another as she regaled us with stories about the city while our poor bus driver inched along. One of the interesting things going on in Budapest right now, is that the current mayor (who is not well loved) is re-naming streets and squares with mad abandon. At many corners there are two street signs: one with the new named and the other with a big red slash through it. Julie felt that in these times when the economy of Hungary is in such dire straits that there was a better way to spend money. While it may be fun to name streets, it means that a million businesses, tour companies, map makers and hotel owners must create brand new logo material, stationary and guides. [Maybe this is another way to stimulate the paper industry.]
With the traffic getting thicker, and we having a very specific time that we had to be at our restaurant for dinner, our local Road Scholar guide, Katalin, suggested we get out of the bus at Heroes Square and use the underground which was built 125 years ago. The only word for it was ‘cute’. The three-car trains were old fashioned, the station stops were beautiful and it is actually quite short (2.5 kilometers) running under Andrassy Avenue a lovely boulevard on which many important buildings are situated. The many New Yorkers in our group were amused by the underground in Budapest – from its tickets to its architecture it was like riding in a toy subway. But it proved its worth since we whisked back to the end of the line within five minutes while above us the snarled traffic would have made us late for our dinner reservation at the lovely Dunacorso Restaurant located along the river. The restaurant had a wonderful outdoor dining space, but it was still spitting rain, so we happily sat indoors with starched tablecloths, crystal wine glasses and a trio playing hammer dulcimer, violin and base. The dinner was fabulous with the main course being catfish wrapped in bacon preceded by a starter of a light salad and ending with a multi-layer chocolate desert. YUM! We almost forgot that we were soggy and tired. Fully stuffed, we walked back to our hotel and I fell into bed with data overload.
The problem with these trips is that each lecturer and each local guide wants to fill our heads with all the knowledge of the area, but there is only so much that a brain can absorb. For Hungarians all the history, the buildings, the monuments, the jokes are a natural part of them and they talk about it as we would discuss American history. But for us first-time visitors with little knowledge of Hungarian history, it is all new and while I want to remember it all, it’s impossible. These Road Scholar adventures really are ‘survey’ trips which give us a taste of everything, and leave us to decide whether we need to come back again to deepen our knowledge and see all the things which are simply pointed out to us on a bus. Like Prague, Budapest is definitely worth a return visit.
There is a real difference between the two cities – Prague was not bombed (except for two stray bombs when the Americans were heading for Dresden), while Budapest was seriously bombed; the population of Prague is half that of Budapest; Prague has spent a good deal of money re-gilding itself, Budapest hasn’t had a chance to re-gild, they have had to rebuild. In Prague I think most residents live in the ‘suburbs’ or outskirts, but here in Budapest one senses that the city is filled with locals, and is not just there for the tourists.
October 8 - Saturday
What a difference a day makes. We awoke to blue skies and crisp fall air, and it put us all into a good mood as we headed to our bus for an excursion that would take us out of Budapest for the day. Our local guide today was ‘Susie’ and she added to our data base of knowledge as we drove out of the city on empty roads. As we passed many communist-era gray apartment buildings and drab gray plants, she remarked that the style is known disparagingly as “Stalinist Baroque”.
Our first stop was the town of Kecskemet, a small town of 10,000. (I love it when a 'small town' is almost 15 times larger than Peacham). It is a thriving town which makes goose pate (in the old fashioned way of cramming grain down the throat of the goose); apricots and apricot liquor; electronics; and soon an automobile manufacturing plant.
This is also the home to the Kodaly Pedagogical Institute of Music located within an old monastery. This was our first stop. Kodaly is a revered composer who took a strong interest in training music teachers and ensuring that music was taught in elementary and high school. Here we learned about his approach, his life and a bit about the town.
From here we went to the main town square, where each side held a major church: on two sides were catholic churches (Hungary is about 65% Catholic), on one side was a Calvinist church, and on the fourth side was a Jewish synagogue. There are no Jews left in this town so the synagogue, which was huge is now used as a conference center. We were given time to wander through town and do some shopping before re-gathering in the square at the stroke of noon when the church bells of the three churches peeled away. One of them even played a ‘tune’ of Kodaly.
We ate lunch in Kecskemet at the Hotel Gunar (starting, of course, with pate and then moving on to potatoes and stuffed peppers with fresh fruit for dessert).
Next we were off to the town of Ocsa. Katalin felt we should see a bit of rural Hungary so we drove not on highways, but on the two-lane back roads to our destination. Here’s what I’ll say: it’s flat! It is called the Great Plain of which Hungarian poets have waxed eloquent. I couldn’t quite see it. We saw fields of corn, small villages of fairly modern homes, but overall it was boring.
Ocsa has a few claims to fame: it is a protective area for some of the native flora and fauna of the country; it has a wonderful old church with perfect acoustics which dates back to the 10th century; and it has taken its wonderful thatch-roofed homes and made a group of them into an outdoor museum. The only difference between the homes currently in use, and those which were part of the museum was the thatch roofs. The homes we were now able to poke around in were occupied until the 1920’s and it gave us a chance to see what rural life would have been like: the traditional clothing for daily life and weddings; the cooking utensils and furniture within the small two-room homes; small yards with their chopping blocks, herbal beds and the root cellar/‘wine cellar’ (a dug out hole in the ground) and other objects of country life.
It was interesting to think that until recently these very simple structures were people’s homes when it seemed that they should have existed more like 200 years ago. We would go to Sturbridge Village to see such structures, but here it isn’t such old history at all.
As the sun began to set, we headed back to Budapest where after a quick dinner; a few of us went to a concert at Olasz Kulturintezet. We heard the Erno Dohnanyi Symphony Orchestra of Budafok and the music was absolutely ‘spot on’. We heard Dvorak (Czech), Kodaly (Hungarian), Beethoven (German) and a brand new premiere of a trombone Concerto by a woman named Zsofia Taller. The music was grand, the location was lovely and it was all for the mere price of $12.00. Our only problem was, they don’t give out ‘programs’ as we think of them, instead some gentleman got up at the beginning and after intermission and in perfect Hungarian explained each piece. NOT very useful to us Americans but luckily Katelin had typed us the program in English before we went into the concert hall, so we knew what was coming when.
We walked back to our hotel, exhausted (again), and fell into bed. Another full day of good food, interesting sights AND music.
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