Europe 24 - Budapest, Day 3

Saturday was hotter than it had been in Budapest since we got there but not as hot is it was going to get after we left so we didn’t let that get in our way. We are adventurers! We are limited in time! Forward we go!

It helped that we didn’t have that many fixed points on our agenda for the day, only one of which required any advance planning at all and even that didn’t have a set time, so we figured we’d move our way through the day at our own pace, seeing what we wanted to see and making sure that we were seeing indoor things when it got too hot. This is a fine strategy for traveling in the summer, I think.

Another strategy for traveling in the summer is to drink plenty of water. In some places this is easier than others – pretty much every Italian town of more than a hundred people has public fountains where you can get clean drinking water, for example, some of which never actually shut off – but the strategy is the same no matter where you go. I have learned that the first thing to do in a new place is buy a bottle of something (lemon iced tea is my go-to, but whatever) and then constantly refill that with water as I go through the days. This way I don’t have to worry about bringing my own water bottle on a plane, losing it in an unfamiliar city, or carrying it with me when I leave. When it’s time to move on I just recycle my iced tea bottle and get another one in the next place.

European bottle caps don’t detach fully, though, and this is kind of a learning curve. You twist them off and they hang there by one side and there’s a trick to getting them out of the way so you don’t end up accidentally shoving them up your nose and this is a trick well worth learning, in my experience. Also, it does take a while to adjust back to American bottle caps once I get home and I have spent much of the last two weeks opening bottles and watching as the caps sail brightly to the floor rather than staying anchored to the bottle and that’s just one of the prices one pays for travel I guess.

So we packed up our water bottles and headed out into the bright sunshine of Budapest.

Our morning goal was to find a particular statue that Oliver wanted to see, mostly to tell a friend that he’d seen it, but the route took us past the Parliament building again so we stopped by to see it in the morning light. It’s a lovely building right there on the river, and there’s always a crowd milling around.

It’s also surrounded by art, the most basic of which is just a long, shallow pool that runs across the front of the building though maybe a hundred meters away. There’s a walkway alongside of it that makes it look like people are disappearing into the water as they walk along except the pool itself is only a couple of hands deep. It’s a relaxing thing to look at.

There are also a couple of big statues, one dedicated to a man named Kossuth and the other to Istvàn Tisza though that’s not what it says on the statue. One of the things that surprised me in Budapest is that Hungarians seem to identify people in Last Name, First Name order. I know many Asian cultures do that, but it was a surprise to see it in Europe. This probably says more about my learning curve than it does about the Hungarians, but it was interesting to me.

I had no idea who Tisza Istvàn (in the Hungarian style) was, though he seemed rather dour. A quick internet search just now reveals he was the Hungarian prime minister before and during WWI, a proponent of the Dual Monarchy with Austria even as that was collapsing in the war, and a conservative who opposed anti-Semitism on economic grounds. He was assassinated in 1918, so perhaps he had cause to look so grim.

Kossuth, a similar search reveals, was the Governor-President of Hungary during the Revolution of 1848, and a man who managed to impress both Daniel Webster and Friedrich Engels. It has to be said that the sculptor had more fun with the figures on either side of him, each of which seems to be thinking about something else entirely.

It was a pleasant day for a walk along one of the more tree-lined streets and we found ourselves wandering into some of the shops along the way, most of which sold antiques at the sorts of prices you’d expect to see in antique stores on tree-lined streets but at least they were interesting to look at.

But after a while we found our statue.

I have no idea why there is a statue dedicated to the 1970s American television detective Columbo in the middle of Budapest, but there he is. I have even less of an idea why they included his dog (“Dog”). It is a rather nice statue, all things considered, and as someone who spent a decent chunk of his childhood watching old episodes of that show (a favorite of my grandmother’s), I have to say I enjoyed seeing it there.

There’s also a tiny little statue of a murdered squirrel, outlined in chalk and still holding its tiny little gun, just a few steps behind Columbo. You can see it in under Columbo’s arm in the photo with Oliver, above, and you have to wonder if this is the crime that brought Columbo to the scene, thoughtfully scratching his head and muttering, “Just one more thing…” the way he did. Might be. You never know.

Columbo having been located and enjoyed, Kim decided she needed to go to the store across the street to search for something so Oliver and I just kind of hung out by the statue for a bit, watching the world parade on by. It is always interesting to see a city go about its daily life, I think.

We ended up taking the tram back to our neighborhood, passing a couple more fascinating statues that were just kind of there by the side of the road. Oliver headed back home for a siesta but Kim wanted to stop at the Four Seasons Hotel, which at one point was a much older building decorated in a lovely Art Nouveau style and since it was pretty much right there on our path we went to see it. It’s strange being let into a building by an entire squad of concierges who know very well that you’re just an interloper, but they were very polite and let us gawk for a while and that’s how you know they were professionals.

On the way back Kim and I decided to get gelato from the coffeeshop by our apartment and we made a good faith effort to eat it there in one of the outdoor tables but eventually got chased by the yellowjacks and went to our apartment for our own siesta.

Our big expedition this day was to go to Budapest Castle. The Castle is a collection of buildings on the Buda side of the river – Budapest started out as three separate cities facing each other across the Danube (Buda, Pest, and Òbuda) which merged in the late 1800s – and unlike most attractions in Budapest it is actually free to go there and walk around the grounds. You have to pay admission to get into the various museums that are on the site, but the Castle itself is just a quick ride on the 216 bus from our neighborhood and you are welcome to wander around the place, listen to the thumping music blaring from any number of DJ setups which probably would have surprised the Hungarian nobility who built the place though you never know really, and enjoy the spectacular views back across the river at the city as a whole.

Keep that 216 bus in mind. That comes back into the story later.

The bus wound its way up the hill to the Castle and dropped us off about a kilometer from where all the action was. It was a nice walk from there and we just followed the crowd along the cobbled walkway toward the main compound of the castle.

One of the first things you come across is the Turul statue. You can see it from most places in the city, and it depicts the very large falcon that is central to the origin myth of the Hungarians. According to the folklore the Turul led the early Hungarian migrations west in the 800s CE and dropped a sword when it got to modern Hungary to let them know that this was going to be their new home because real estate worked differently then. There’s no real way to see it at anything approaching eye level so it always has that heroic towering presence over Budapest that the artist no doubt intended.

The focal point for our visit, however was this statue, which is not only centrally located along the main path in and out of the grounds and thus makes a convenient meeting point for people who disperse to see their own sights but also happens to be right next to the visitor center (maps!), a nice café, and a misting station that attracted large number of happy people on that hot sunny day. There’s nothing quite like seeing the smiles of people of all ages ducking in and out of a nice cooling mist.

We wanted to go to the aptly-named Budapest History Museum and eventually someone told us that we had to backtrack a bit, go through a long arched walkway, turn left past the big statue, go through another archway, then a courtyard with a few more statues, and – BOOM! – there it would be in front of us. And by Jove there it was!

The Budapest History Museum is a great place if you enjoy medieval history. It’s a bit of a rabbit warren with hallways branching off here and there and artifacts stuffed into every conceivable space – at one point I was convinced that a particular hallway was a dead end with a few paintings but upon further exploration it turned out there was another room off to one side that expanded out into a whole other collection of things – and you could happily spend a day there if you were so inclined. We did our best.

It also has some fascinating spaces just as spaces. There was a royal chapel, for example.

And some more utilitarian spaces as well.

It also had what they called the Gothic Hall, which was a medieval-looking room with stained glass windows that you could sit by and just enjoy the view outside.

 

 

One of the things they are most proud of is the 14th-century tapestry of the Hungarian coat of arms that has the fleur-de-lis of the House of Anjou, which they unearthed out of the mud a few years back and painstakingly restored. They also found a pile of artifacts in that same patch of ground, including leather shoes from the period which are not commonly preserved. You have to go into a special room to see these things – there’s a sliding glass door and the room has positive air pressure – but it was fascinating from a historical perspective.

After this Oliver decided he wanted to explore the third floor of the museum – which I didn’t realize existed until that point – but Kim and I went out to see what else there was to see. We found an overlook where we could see another building and ended up talking to some Americans who had just arrived in Budapest that day before heading back out to the meeting point statue to get something from the café. After that I wandered about on my own exploring the outside of the Castle while Kim tried to go to the Gallery, which unfortunately was closed.

Eventually we all found our way back to the meeting point and after filling our water bottles we decided to walk over to the Matthias Church which is not all that far away. As always, you pass by some lovely public art on the way.

Matthias Church is a really beautiful building, and while the inside was closed when we got there we could still walk around the grounds and marvel at it.

If you go around to the right there’s a plaza, the center of which is the statue of St. Stephen looking considerably less musical than he does in the one in the Cathedral.

As you keep going counterclockwise you end up in what’s called the Fisherman’s Bastion, a picturesque collection of turrets and walls built in 1902 to celebrate a millennium of the Hungarian state. It’s genuinely lovely and worth fighting through the hordes of Instagrammers to see, and there was a guy busking with an accordion while we were there that lent an interesting texture to the experience.

It also has its odd moments.

For one thing, there was what we can only assume was a monument to the “Measure twice, cut once” maxim that should govern construction projects more than it does. It was very hard not to look at it and say “Doooooooooo!” in the same tone of voice that people in Wisconsin use to say “Cow!” whenever they pass a field full of them while driving.

Also, if you’ve ever seen the meme that talks about how Budapest was saved from the Ottoman siege by Sam Elliot and Woody Harrelson back in the 16th century, those statues are there at the Fisherman’s Bastion. Not sure who the guy on the right is, though (Michael Sheen?). It’s a very strange thing to see your memes right there in front of you in meatspace.

It was at this point that we entered the Eternal 16 Bus Loop.

We’d decided that we’d seen enough and it was getting on dinner time, but none of the restaurants within walking distance were nut-safe. But since our apartment is in a restaurant-rich neighborhood we figured this would be an easy problem to solve – take the bus back to where we started, walk a couple of blocks, and pick a place at random that didn’t serve burgers. Easy!

But we had to get the bus. There are a lot of 16 buses up there, though no 216s that we saw. And it turns out that the 16 does this little two-kilometer loop, and they throw you off at each end and you have to take a different 16 bus back to where you started. After the first go-round we asked one of the bus drivers what we should do differently and were told, essentially, to bugger off and stop bothering him, and after another go-round we realized that we were only a hundred meters or so from a Metro station and since every Metro line in Budapest stops at the park where we first had lunch we figured we’d just do that. And it worked, oddly enough.

This still left the task of finding dinner, and we ended up at a place called Ramen that served – wait for it – ramen. It took a while to make sure that it was nut-safe, since the counter people spoke neither English nor Hungarian as first languages so our cards took a while to explain, but eventually everything worked out and we found a table on the sidewalk and had a very tasty dinner.

At one point a group of French women ended up drifting near us and debating whether they should stop for some ramen and I told them that it was very good and they should, and they did. I hope they enjoyed it as much as we did!

Our final stop of the day was the only one we had planned in advance. The Ferris Wheel of Budapest is one of those white elephant attractions that you have to do just because it’s there and it’s funky and it really is fun. The standard ticket is 4300 Hungarian forints – roughly $13 when we were there – and it’s quite a thing. The tickets are good whenever you use them, so you just show up at a convenient time. We wanted to do this after dark to see the city at night, and by this point in the day we’d hit that mark.

We walked back to the park and got in line.

The line moves quickly and we climbed aboard, and it was a really nice ride. It’s a ferris wheel so it just goes around and around, but you do get a lovely view of the city and they let you ride for a generous amount of time.

The park is surrounded by apartment buildings, though, and as you go up you can see folks just living their lives, watching television or whatever. On the ground the park swirls out below you – it was full of people even at that hour, and there was some kind of dance class going on that we stopped by to watch for a bit afterward. It was nice.

Eventually we walked back to the apartment and packed up for the next day, as that would be a travel day.