“Dangerous Avoider Of Work”
On my second attempt to catch a train out of Sarajevo, I had success. The 11.5 hour journey northward took me out of Bosnia and Hercegovina, through the little bit of Croatia that juts to the east just above B-H and on into Budapest, Hungary, arriving after dark on November 1. While on the train, I received a call from my brother notifying me that my grandmother had passed away early in the morning that same day. (See the preceding entry.) After several discussions with various family members over the next couple of days, I decided not to fly home for the funeral. I’ve been told that the service went very well and served as a fitting memorial for Grandma Lily.
After I stepped off the train in Budapest and began walking down the platform, I was surprised to hear someone calling my name. Lo and behold, there was Sarah, my “stalker.” She told me she had been waiting for me. (I vaguely recall her showing her vampiress fangs in a diabolical hiss-squint, but that might have just been my imagination.) Although surprised, I did not apply for a restraining order. Sarah had previously indicated (warned) she might be heading eastward into Hungary from Austria. And so we reunited again, predator and prey.
I stayed in a floating boat-hotel on the Danube River. Budapest, Hungary’s capitol, is made up of two adjacent towns–Buda and Pest–and the Danube divides one from the other. Buda is hilly and residential, the proud site of the Royal Palace (Kiralyi Palota), Castle Hill (Var hegy) and the Independence Monument (Szabadsag szobor), among others. Residents of Buda say the only good thing about Pest is it provides a good view of Buda from across the river. But I preferred Pest. Pest is flat and commercial and bustling–it’s where the action is–but it’s also got its share of major attractions: the grand riverside Parliament building; Heroes’ Square (Hosok tere), with its array of ominous statues of the Magyar heroes who conquered the land in 896 and other prominent Hungarian leaders; the Hungarian State Opera House (Magyar Allami Operahaz); continental Europe’s oldest underground metro line; the Great Synagogue (Nagy Zsinagoga), continental Europe’s largest Jewish synagogue; and a memorial to the Nazi murder of Jews at the banks of the Danube comprised of a row of iron-cast life-size shoes.
The word “Hungary,” by the way, derives from the Hun tribespeople. Attila the Hun conquered the Romans who controlled the land in the 5th century. When Attila died, a number of other groups moved in, then in 896 the Magyar (Hungarian) tribes took over. In the year 1000, Hungary’s first king, Stephen, was crowned and the Hungarian state was born. In the 16th century, the Austrian House of Habsburg ruled parts of Hungary and quashed a Hungarian uprising in 1848. But when Austria lost the war to Prussia in 1866, Austria and Hungary reached a compromise and became a dual nation, the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. That monarchy collapsed after WWI and Hungary was divvied up. It sided with Nazi Germany in WWII and its Nazi-controlled government deported hundreds of thousands of Jews to Auschwitz. A Jewish population of about 700,000 in Budapest before the war today numbers about 80,000.
In 1945, the Soviet army liberated Hungary from the Nazis and took complete control of the government. Over the years, the people began to demand that their Soviet oppressors withdraw. In 1956 Soviet troops killed 25,000 rebels, arrested another 20,000 and executed 2,000 of them, and caused 250,000 to flee to Austria. But the Soviet stranglehold had eventually weakened by the 1970s and the present Republic of Hungary was proclaimed in 1989. By 1991, the Soviet troops had finally left.
The most fascinating part of my stay in Budapest had to be a visit to Memento Park (Szoborpark) just outside of the city. On the park grounds is a collection of gigantic Soviet statues that had once stood in prominent places within the city proper. The stern-faced, clenched-fisted monuments now seem ridiculous in their proportions and hyperbolic symbolism. But they graphically represent a communist dictatorship where critics were arrested and interrogated; where dissidents were banished or murdered; where censors categorized written and artistic materials as “supported,” “tolerated” or “prohibited”; and where anyone not compliantly performing a government-assigned job would be permanently labeled a “dangerous avoider of work.”
Sarah and I had the great fortune of joining a tour (the “Hammer & Sickle tour”) led by a terrifically knowledgable (and witty) guide named Adam, who grew up in Soviet-controlled Hungary and demonstrated against the communist regime as a young adult. He explained the symbolism of the park’s lay-out. For example, the main entrance seems like a monumental classicist building, but upon examination it is just a facade, just as communism promised much but failed to deliver. The entrance always remains closed and requires visitors to enter by a side door, just as people under communism had to resort to secondary (underground) means to get by. The park lacks eye-catching landscaping just as life under the Soviet regime was bland at best. Among the monuments in the park are a statue of Lenin, a statue of Marx and Engels together, and Stalin’s boots (the only remnant of a giant statue of Stalin). During one of his discourses, Adam asked us if we knew the definition of Soviet porn. We didn’t, so he told us: Lenin not wearing his cap.
My stay in Budapest was woefully short for such an extensive, vibrant city, a city whose architecture and numerous statutes and squares were built in a deliberate attempt to rival Vienna’s. We stayed three nights and then on November 4 Sarah and I took an overnight train into Romania. More about Romania next time.
Tags: Budapest, Hungary, Travel
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