Leaving Budapest Oct 11-13

Sat. Oct 11.

       We take in the Parliament Building.   This is the Senate chamber.  

It all looks like this.

Bruce is sick (food poisoning?),  Short day.  He sleeps 4 hours +.

We happened on to a very controversial monument just recently erected over great protest. It is the WWII monument.  It shows the archangel Gabriel (a symbol of Hungary) attacked by a German eagle.  The criticism is that it glosses over Hungary's role in the war and in the holocaust by showing Hungary as a victim just like the Jews.  The monument is dedicated to the "victims of the German occupation".

We do not know whether the stuff in front represents participation in the 70 th year remembrance or part of the protest.  We deduce that it was placed by Jews because of the stones.

 Also, the many shoes may be a reference to the other holocaust monument that we did not see.

As the Russians approached Budapest, the fascist Arrow Cross marched the Jews to the Danube and shot them. Many of these Jews had been protected through the war by papers issued by Wallenberg.

We dined at Strudel.  Shared crispy piggy (sic) chops with potato strudels.  We took back apple and cherry + cottage cheese strudels.  All great.
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Sun. Oct 12   visit to Jewish quarter.   This is a hugely popular tourist destinatiom, with long ticket lines.

Hertzl was born in this neighborhood.

Judaism in Hungary

Before the war there were three types of Jewish worship in Budapest.  As soon as it was permissible, in the 1870s, each group built a synagogue.  First there is the orthodox.  About 20% of the Jews today worship there. The interior is distinguished by stained glass skylights:

Worshippers purchased their seats and looked their payer books when not in use.

Floor marble decoration:

Then there is the Neologue.  This started as part of the reform movement, ie, it used the "Hamburg rite".  The description off the rite is posted at the synagogue:

About 80% worship there.  They are much closer to orthodoxy now.

Unusual features include 2 pulpits.  The pulpits held translators, as there were  both Hungarian and German speaking congregants.

A third group was between these two.  Its synagogue is no longe active.  It went for an oriental style.  The “minarets” are indeed part of a puropose built synagogue.

Restoration of the interior is under way.  The interior of the dome is finished.

An engraved banner, now on a paper mockup, states:

      The Almighty said the ten commandments in one sentence in order to teach us that the ten commandments are one organic unit and cannot be separated into parts.  The first tablet contains the preaches of the faith; the second one the preaches of the ethics.  The ethics can (sic) exist without the faith, but in the same way,  no Jewry exists without morals.

     

    



Behind the neologue cemetery, there is a memorial to the 2200+ Jews that were murdered here by the Hungarian fascists (Arrow Cross) as the Russians were at the city's edge.

 There is a name of each leaf of this willow tree sculpture:

And a memorial to Raoul  Wallenburg:

There is a museum with Judaica, including a few elaborate bris knives.

Part of the neighborhood has become popular with the younger, hipper set.


We ate lunch at a "ruin pub."  Consumed the meat and vegetarian starters and 2 small glasses of wine -- Weniger kekfrankos 2011 and Heimann kadarka 2012.  The list was extensive and cost was less than $3 each glass.  The wines here are a surprise on the plus side.

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Monday, October 13.  Last day here.

We walked down a few blocks of Andressy Ut,, a UNESCO world heritage site.  There are now over 1000 of these designations.  The currency has become quite inflated.

Anyway, one is supposed to admire the Hungarian secession movement architecture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

These structures are often embellished (?) with statues like this one:

After coffee, we toured St. Stephan basilica.

After it went up around 1852, the interior dome fell.  Then it was severely damaged in WWII.   Today it is in pristine condition.

 Here's the interior dome:

Elevators allowed us to view the dome structure

and the city

Besides the basic Byzantine format, there are many hints of eastern influence.

This Saint Stephen is the canonized first king of Hungary, ruled 1000-1038.   His right hand is in this reliquary:

His statute is behind the main altar:

For lunch, Bruce had Hungarian fish soup, a "must" according to our Baedeker.  Too greasy with a lot of paprika.  Leslie had a chicken strudel.  

We snacked in the room in lieu of dinner and packed for tomorrow's early flight.

Tuesday, October 14

We fly to the states.  Our travel blog is ended.

Budapest Oct 9 -and 10

October 9, 2014.  Thursday.

    The Hungarian language is notoriously difficult.  Still, the taxi drivers understand...

     Instead of starting at the Nation Museum, we begin with the National War Museum.

     Hungary sided with Germany in both world wars.  After losing in WWI, Hungary adopted a Red regime, was invaded, and lost Transylvania to Romania.  The Nazis got it back for them.  When Germany began to lose WWII, Hungary tried to make a deal with the allies.  Hitler got wind of this, deposed the Hungarian Government, and put the local fascists in charge.  When the Russians invaded, 70% of Budapest was destroyed.  Familiar history to our generation:  The Russians stayed and Hungary came under Communist Rule.  After unsuccessful revolutions in 1956 and 1968, the communist regimes all collapsed in the period following 1989.

    We proceeded past this tower, all that remains of the Lutheran Church.

     This is the roof of the National Archives.

Jews were relatively well-tolerated during the Ottoman occupation of Hungary, 1541-1682.  A very small synagogue on Castle Hill was exposed by archaeologists during the 1990s.  One of two pictographs were fond on the ceiling.  The text is from Numbers 6:24-26.
       

   

  We spent some time at The Koller Art Gallery and, on impulse, purchased three prints of Istvan Osros:  Library I, Library II, and Durer im Wald.  The artist's works, inclding these, can be viewed at www.kollergalia.hu

    We had pastries and coffee at the famous Russwurm cafe.  Thence to St. Matthias Cathedral.  This is a Hungarian national chirch, quite new (circa 1904), and hard to describe or photograph.  It is painted everywhere, with a lot of gold.  Most of the painting was simply decorative and not programmatic.

The stained glass is in new condition and uniform thickness.

The carving outside is very elaborate.

   
We skipped dinner.

Friday, Oct. 10

Our hotel is new, built into an old building in 2006.   The breakfast is far above par.

We spent the day at the National Art Gallery.

Hungary converted to Christianity around 950.  The medieval items have a certain, distinguishing Hungarian cast.

Plump dragon:

Happy lion-fish:

Madonna and Child:

Ferencz Karoly dominates the Hungarian impressionist collection.  Bruce liked thus double portrait of his sisters.

Most interesting were the communist era paintings, especially those after the 1956 revolution but before the 1989 liberation.  

Csernas Tibor led the surnaturalist school.  This one is Angyalfold (1958-59):

The artitists' responses to the demands of Social Realism were, initially, timid.  Here's Boilmakers (1951) by Milhaltz Pals.

Stalin would not have allowed these:

 Bartha Laslo, Calcination Plant (1959):

Kubikos, Pick and Shovel Man (1965).

These artists and their works are unknown to us, but should provide much enjoyment in the future, There were few private patrons and artists relied on state sponsorship.  The products were often not displayed.   The Museum has thousands in storage.   (Cf. our WPA art program and the Dutch post-war accumulations).

We had lunch (foie gras and a meat pancake) and late drinks on a terrace cafe with this view of Parliament.

Junk food dinner in the hotel room.

Leaving Romania Oct 7-8

Tuesday, October 7.

We began the day with a 2-hour lecture on current conditions and politics in Romania.  It was held at the Unitarian University.  Our tour leader is active in the Unitarian Church and perhaps he is steering some revenues in its direction.

Continued with a walk around downtown Cluj.  We liked the Catholic Church.  Parts of it are said to date back to 1340, consistent with simplified structure of late renaissance.
The austerity of the interior probably also reflects the counter-reformation.

The pulpit is extreme baroque.

The Romanian  Orthodox church dominates a different square.  It was built in the 1930s.

The telephone wires and power lines are not buried here.

Th cafe culture is strong here, but the weather is a bit too cool.

A "renaissance" (16th Century) doorway.

The Holocaust memorial was designed by a survivor decades ago, but installed only this year.

  The synagogue is in very good condition and still used on holidays.  But there are only 400 Jews still in Cluj -- no children.

We had lunch back at the Unitarian University.  It was very good.  A strange sour cherry soup, followed by wonderful stuffed cabbage, finished with a floating island dessert we found too sweet.

We had our final group dinner at a village about 30-minutes out of town.  They saved the best meal for last: salad, goulash, apples cake, cabernet from SW Romania.

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Wed. Oct. 8.

 9 hours on the train to Budapest.  We started with maybe twenty people on two cars.  Along the way, the engines were switched and a lot of cars added. 

Our hotel, Parlament, does not have the lively location we had expected.  Ate late at Da Maro, a popular place.  Compared to Romania and Bulgaria, the patrons were middle age, carefully groomed.  Bruscette, lasagna, chianti,  tiramisu, pannecotta.

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