Last days in Hungary

Since I didn't get a chance to write about our last days in Hungary, here is a a bit of a summary (which I'm writing while my friend, the cake maker/tango teacher, plays Mozart on the piano as we wait for the bride and groom to come pick up the cake):

On Monday and Tuesday, we went on our countryside trip. It almost didn't happen. We woke in the morning to news of a strike - of all public transport in Budapest and the rail lines. It was unbelievable, the Hungarians said, to have both systems go into strike at once, but after all the unfortunate travel mojo SP has experience, the three of us weren't surprised.

We ended up driving to Pesc. Andras, our awesome university travel guide, borrowed a car from his father, and we were off. During our three hour journey, we saw traveled more than halfway across the country, even stopping by Andras' family's cute lake house on the Balaton, so we could dip our fingers into the chilly waters and say we've been there.

Pesc is a charming old town that dates back to the 4th century. We stayed at a small boarding house tucked into the back courtyard of one of the squares in old town. It was a great location: we were seconds from the winding streets of Old Town, the beautiful old buildings, churches and mosques, teh pastry shops and ice cream stands, and the little bar twenty feet from our door, which had a pinball machine we had a hard time pulling SB away from. (I know that at least one of you who is reading this would be interested to know that it was a Star Trek the Next Generation pinball game.)

Our dinner in Pesc was at another hidden basement restaurant (I've come to believe that these are the best places to find food in Hungary). I had the local beer and deer with wild forest berries and potato croquettes, and I pretty much licked my plate clean. We had ice cream cones on the way to dinner and tort on our way back.

After a morning breakfast at the nearby pastry shop, we drove south from Pesc to the little town of Szigetvar, only miles away from the Croatian border. There, we visited the county hospital, which has a 50 bed inpatient alcohol rehab facility and also provides outpatient counseling services. All this is done by a staff of two psychiatrists and a couple of psychologists, as well as four rehabilitated former alcohol dependent patients who are training to be counselors. The staff all took time out of their busy day to talk with us and answer our questions, and we were all very impressed with the work they did.

After lunch at the hospital cafeteria, we headed to the castle of Szigetvar for a walk and some Hungarian history. We walked the pretty grounds of the old area (the castle is just ruins at this point) and toured the museum where we learned about the 6th century battle against the Turks, which the Hungarians lost. There were several forted areas in Szigetvar in the 5th and 6th century, all surrounded by a large moat (pretty much like islands in a dammed lake). The turks tried several times to invade, unsuccessfully, then, they drained the moat, stormed down the walls, killed pretty much everyone around and ruled the area for the next few centuries. The museum had weapons and drawings from the era, and you could almost feel the ghosts of the people who walked the ground below more than a thousand years ago.

We returned to Budapest in time for the opera. It was a beautiful classical production of La Boheme in the gorgeous Budapest Opera House, with a captivating set (quite scenes of Paris at night: dark homes with candle lite glowing out of windows, snow falling in the park). We had paid $7 for the nose bleed tickets, which required that we use the side door, not the main entrance, as we soon found out. But our view was amazing, the sound was beautiful, and the set seemed designed for our noseblled perspective. The three of us universally loved it.


SB, me, SP looking pretty at the opera.

Our last day in Budapest was quite full. After another long breakfast at the hotel, we walked downtown for email and (our now daily) two scoops of ice cream and then toured the "Terror Museum".

The Terror Museum is a fascinating place. It is located at 60 Andrassy St, in the exact same building that served as the secret police headquarters during the Communist era. It documents, quite powerfully, the oppressive acts of the secret police - under the arm of the Soviet Union - especially in the 50s and 60s. One moves from room to room, learning about the history of the Soviet presence in Hungary, about the oppression of the Stalin era, of the indoctrination of children (to, for instance, turn their parents in for 'acts against the state'), of the restriction of free speech and the attempt to even restrict free thought with widespread and blatant use of arrests and torture. The last part of the museum is the basement, which can only be accessed through a slow, dark, elevator ride down from the second floor (while watching a movie of a man describing the methodical torture and executions he witnessed while working as a janitor in the building.) In the basement, which is deep in the ground and soundproof, are the reconstructed cells that used to house political prisoners: one filled with six inches of dirty cold water, in which the prisoner was forced to sit, sometimes for days; another only 4 feet tall, so that the prisoner could never straighten out his body; a few holding cells, now dry and clean, that in photos from the past was were filled with grime, water, blood stains; a gallows where the prisoners were hung; and throughout it all, photos of the people who were tortured there.

We emerged from the museum a bit overwhelmed an exhausted, but managed to recover over tea, coffee and luscious dessert (I had crepes with ricotta and fresh apricot, floating in vanilla custard) at a cafe bar not further than a block away. It was a bit of a surreal contrast, though maybe not as much as it would have been to have been in the same location some 40 years ago, walking home from work, while someone's tortured agony was being lost into the cement below your feet.

I took a walk after our dessert, a 2 hour hike up to the Citadel on a tall hill in the middle of the city, with amazing 360 degree views of Budapest and the surrounding lands. On top is a 14 meter Liberation Monument of a woman, her dress flowing in the wind, holding a palm leaf in victory. I took some photos I might post later, but here's a great link to someone else's nice shoots (he had smartly bothered to bring his wide angle lens with him).

Our night ended with a farewell dinner at another great Budapest restaurant, with Andras and Gyula, our wonderful Semmelweis University hosts. Of course, we had dessert, again, this time crepes filled with chocolate ricotta and doused in chocolate sauce.