Eastern Europe - Budapest. Hungary

The Parliament Building

Memorial to Jews shot and thrown in the Danube


Email no 35 – Budapest. Hungary
If the last impression is the one you remember then my trip was impeccably planned. I do not think I could have found a better place than Budapest as the last city to visit.
However this wonderful visit was almost marred by a potentially very unpleasant incident.
First of all, I have to explain that in some of my travels I was very aware of the possibility of being approached by con men. I my travel in Eastern Europe I never had such experience, so my con men radar was completely turned off.
I am staying in a reasonably priced, very well located B&B run by a very nice couple of people that are genuinely concerned with their guests comfort and
Yesterday I was walking in a side street close to the Basilic. This is a quiet street with few pedestrian. I was approached by a man with a map in his hands. He told me, in broken English, that he was from Italy and that he was lost. The map he showed me was not very good. So he asked me to show him my map (a rather unusual request). For some reason I did not want to do that. Then he asked me if I was from Budapest. Then another man showed pull-out some ID card and stated that he was checking passport and bad money. I was startled and I showed him only my senior EC card. Then he wanted to check my money. I was becoming more an more convinced that I was dealing with some con men. I pulled out a 1000 florins (about $3.5) he checked it told it was good and then asked to see the rest of the money. I told him that I was not going to do that, and I just stood there waiting to see what he would do next. So, he turned to the other man, asked him a few questions and then left. I called him back and told him that the other man , who hadn’t moved, needed help. They left together.
Back at the B&B I told them what happened, and they told me that this was a very popular con game several years ago. What they do they take your bundle of money on the pretext of checking it and then in some way they hand you back another bundle of much lesser value.
This was sometimes conducted by people dressed as policeman!
Situations like these can be handled by refusing to comply but offering to go with them to a local bank to have the money checked, or offer to go with them to the nearest police station.

Budapest is a city of about two million people and seemingly no end to the many interesting sights it has to offer. I stayed here three nites which wasn’t long enough to cover my relatively short list of “things to see”. I’ll cover the most interesting ones.
The outstanding “House of Terrors” covers the Nazis and Soviets occupations periods.
Briefly , the Hungarians, being in the unenviable position to provide a buffer between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union did just enough to stay in the German’s good graces, until Hitler got fed up with Hungary lukewarm support and took control by making the Nazi-affiliated Arrow Cross Party Hungary’s new government by March 1944. The Arrow Cross Party immediately set out to eliminated the Jews.
The Red Army entered Hungary by late August of 1944.and eventually forced the last of the Nazi’s out of Hungary by April 4th. The “liberators” soon imposed another regime of terror by terrorizing, deporting, or executing anyone suspected of being an enemy of the state. During this “double occupation” the Hungarians caught in the middle went from the frying pan to the fire.
One room of the “House of Terror” features videos of surviving people describing the loss of friends and families under both regimes.
On a much lighter tone, many buildings in Budapest are worth visiting. The most outstanding are the Opera House and the enormous Parliament Buildings. The Opera House was built at the time that Budapest became the co-capital of the Habsburg Empire in the 1890s. The Emperor Franz Joseph provide half of the funding with the condition that the Opera House would be smaller than the one in Franz’s own town Vienna. Budapest complied but they made the interior much more beautiful than the one in Vienna. The Emperor was not pleased!
At the end of our guided visit we were also treated by one of the tenors signing two short arias. One of them the famous one from Carmen.
Budapest is basically divided in two parts. Buda is on a hill West of the Danube and includes the Castel (uninteresting) the Fisherman’s Bastion (A very nice reconstruction), the Matthias Church (outstanding) and some other sites. There is a complete 25,000 square ft..functional
WW II hospital completely enclosed under Castel Hill. It is brought alive by many realistic wax figures. The hospital is now a nuclear-bomb shelter ready with the last equipment.
I went to a genuine, and outstanding Hungarian Folk Concert featuring three different groups.
I also joined a guided tour of the three nearby cities located on or near what is known as the Danube Bend.
I could go on and on, but unfortunately I have to get ready for my tomorrow’s return to Seattle.
I am first taking an early flight to London.
I have been in Seattle for a couple days and I will have to finish this email with one more problem that I encounter. (nothing finishing on a strong note, right!)
I had two British Airway flights to take. One from Budapest to London and then the London to Seattle flight. I asked the attendant in Budapest if she could have my luggage automatically transferred from one flight to the other without me having to do all the work.
After looking at my schedule, she said it could not be done because my first flight arrived early in the morning and my Seattle flight was in the afternoon. So in London I waited, with another three people, for my luggage that never showed up! To make a long story short, my luggage was delivered to my home at 11.30 pm the next day. (it could have been worst, like totally lost!)
The man that delivered my luggage with a van had another dozen pieces of luggage to still be delivered that night!
Ok. I will send one more blog with my overall comments on my Eastern Europe trip.

Eastern Europe - Pecs. Hungary

The Gypsies

National Theater

Email No. 34 Pecs. Hungary

This was well worth the effort as Pecs is simply a delightful city. After moving from my first night’s awful accommodation to a decent hotel located near the central square I was able to fully enjoyed all the city has to offer.

The “Old-Town” Pecs (roughly .5 mi. by 1 mi.) is a very neatly laid-out center. It has not one, but several squares connected by pedestrian-only streets.

There was something going on every single day. One of the smaller square has a little pool fed by channeled water, and on Saturday they had several activities set up for children. Later that day, two groups of dancers and musicians performed in different areas of the Old Town. One of the two groups was made out of gypsies. It is ironic that I had been looking for gypsy performers and I found them in Pecs after I had given all hopes of ever finding them. Not only that but I was able to attend one of their performances at a local theater. I have to say that the music I heard was very different from the one I remember listening to from the street’s performers in Brussels. I remember beautiful violin performances. The gypsies in Pecs use mostly guitars and a metal container that looks like something the milkman use to deliver milk door-to-door. (Yes, when I was young they used to do that!). The music they play is rather simple and always very fast and often accompanied by singing and by one or more dancers.

Sunday, a large brass band was performing in the square in front of the National Theater. Many of Glenn Miller pieces, of course.

The most popular street, one of the pedestrian street starting at the main square, is lined up with shops and restaurants with outdoor terraces. And, of course, the corner restaurant, right by the main square at the very beginning of the street, is a McDonald!

They often end up in a prime location. Not only that but, even in spite of the stiff competition, they are always full of customers.

I went to a gallery that had a temporary exhibition of reproductions of Alfonse Mucha’s paintings, one of my favorite artist. Also very interesting was the Zsolnay Museum of Architectural Ceramics, were I found out that those pretty colorful tiles on some of the roofs are really made out of ceramics.

Pecs has the expected assortment of churches. The most interesting, located at the top of the main square, was originally designed as a mosque and ended up as a catholic church?

There are also several other very architecturally beautiful buildings; the National Theater, the Post Office Palace, the four-towered St. Peter and Paul Basilica, The Bishop’s Castle, the County Hall, the 1869 Zsinagoga synagogue, to mention a few.

Next (and last) is Budapest which is a straight 2.30 hours away by IC train.

Eastern Europe - Novi Sad. Serbia

The Main Square and the Cathedral

Email No 33. Novi Sad. Serbia

Novi Sad should be renamed Very Sad. I was there, in this “not so interesting town” for three long rainy days. It is in a way a good thing that I had to spent some of my time to find out how to get from here to Pecs in Hungary. I had to go from Belgrade to Subotica by train, then another train was supposed to take me across the border with Hungary to Szeged were I had to get a bus to get to Pecs. First of all, we waited for the train in Subotica for over an hour. When they finally decided the train was not coming they brought a funny looking one diesel-powered car (it looked like a bus on rail ).We started and after a while we slowed down to a crawling speed due to rails being in a very bad shape. When we finally arrived at the border we got off and get to a parallel rail in another similar contraption. The Hungarian border control made me open my backpack (a first on this trip) apparently to check for cigarettes and alcohol.

We finally arrived in Szeged and I looked for an ATM to get some Hungarian money. The only one at the station at a red cross drawn across it !? I had to find another one away from the station. Now I had to go to the Szeged Bus Station. I entered the first shop I found and somehow asked the attending woman if she could call a taxi. Which she did. I got to the bus station just in time for the 2:00 pm bus to Pecs. Nothing short of a miracle as this is the bus I had intended to take. This was a long 12 hours trip!

Back to Novi Sad. The main reason I went to Novi Sad is to see the Petrovaradin Citadel and the museums it contains. The rain stopped for a while on my last day and I bravely walked over the Danube to visit it. There I met a couple of nice people from France and after our visit we walk back together and had a good meal in a very nice restaurant. Definitely my most pleasant day in Novi Sad.

Next Pecs in Hungary

Eastern Europe - Belgrade. Serbia

The Danube and the observation Tower in Zemun

Email No 32. Belgrade. Serbia

Belgrade unwelcomed claim is to have been the most often destroyed and reconstructed city in Europe (over 40 times). Some 115 battles have been conducted here over the last 2300 years.

This is in part due to Belgrade’s prime location on top of a hill where the Danube and the Sava rivers meet. Capturing that hill meant gaining control of the land to the south.

The main sight is the 18th century remains, and the reconstructed part, of the Upper Citadel.

The Citadel is also the host of a Military Museum and a very large collection of war weapons representing a complete history of former Yugoslavia. Outside the museum is a large collection of guns, tanks, bombs, missiles (contributed from the air by NATO). The even have the remains of an American stealth fighter that was shot down in 1999.

But the most lively and interesting part of Belgrade is Skadarska, the bohemian hang-out of artists in the early 1900’s. Today cobbled-stoned Skadarska is lined up with restaurants, many with side-walk terraces decorated with lots of flowering plants.

An interesting museum is the Nikola Tesla Museum, a man very far ahead of his time.

He ‘invented’ alternated current and was already involved in the challenge of distributing electricity over long distances. I somehow have the feeling that we need him today to solve our energy crises.

From Belgrade I visited the nearby town of Zemun. Located some 8 km away from Belgrade, Zemun used to be the most southerly point of the Austro-Hungarian empire. They built a fortress and the Tower of Sibinjamin Janko for which they could observe the Turks who were in control of Belgrade on the other side of the Sava river.

In Zemun and had a pleasant meal in a restaurant overlooking the Danube.

Next Novi Sad.