What makes Hungary special for me – different and weird things.
Ters (Squares), Parks, Statues, the Duna.
Ethnography Museum Heros Park
Squares, statues, & plaques that you can’t translate pop-up everywhere and sometimes in unexpected places.
Nagy Imre moved but obviously is not forgottenWalking a different street we found Franz Liszt with hair flying
In a country known for its very good sausages
They choose to advertise an American hotdog 🌭
Budapest park playgrounds make the most of very little space. We saw a small soccer practice area built up stairs above the playground. Another park combined a soccer area with basketball ball hoops. Kids were doing both but they wouldn’t stay still for a picture.
Soccer Upstairs
I love any route going uphill, across a bridge or even stuck in traffic if it allows me a view across the Duna (Danube).
Chain BridgePest
I find a lot of quirky things in endearing.
Decorating a restaurant in old phones & radiosTrimming dogs with a window Sometimes it just a change from home. ☺️
Downtown Vienna is not all palaces, museums, monumental building, and high end shopping, there are quite a lot of those though.
We enjoyed having coffee and people watching in the park, the rose gardens in Volkspark, and a couple of amazing churches.
We people watched over coffee in the parkRose Trees VolksparkDennis resting Instagram ReadyGreat Door
Odd things too like the small dog parks, Austrian students lounging in their Palestinian protest encampment.
One fun things we did was go to the Albertina Museum to see the Gothic Modern exhibit explaining how modern painting was influenced by studies of Gothic art. The colorful paintings cheered me up after a day of wandering among So many large gray buildings.
Edvard Munch something about cabbages
We found our way to Freud’s house. We thought we should visit since we were in the neighborhood.
Freud’s Waiting RoomExtra Glasses??
Our last morning we stayed in our Vienna neighborhood taking some photos of the Nachtmarket and visiting the Succession exhibits.
Naschmarket like 2 or 3 Seattle Markets flattenedNaschmarketGustav Klimt Man’s search for happiness New art @ the Secession Our Hotel Drei Kronner
As we left on the train we saw that there are some very modern buildings in Vienna.
A couple of days in Vienna and we see reasons beyond arbitrary royal commands that we want NO Kings.
How does the King afford the building & maintenance of the summer palace?Did this statue erected by the King prevent future plagues?
Schonbunn above was the last residence of Franz Joseph I in 1916. On our tour it seemed that most of the family occupied only one floor. I imagine the cost of the palace and its maintenance must have been (and is now) quite a few $$. I’m sure some of the tab was billed to the Austrian people.
There are additional buildings & grounds.
There is a lot to maintain.Trimming the trees Gloriette Huge fountainCarriage rides around the palace groundsImmaculately trimmed pathsPainting the gloriette (summer dining room)
The palace woods, park and fountains are impressive.
Luckily Vienna now has tourists to support palace upkeep. We paid $92 for two tickets.
Four hours visiting the summer palace and grounds wasn’t enough. We took the Metro downtown and did a walking tour that included Franz Joseph’s winter home. We spent a morning in this palace 18 years ago. We decided we didn’t need to do it again.
It appears that the Austrian Army camps here for free 😆
In addition to selling carriage rides Vienna seems to employ a number of friendly Courtiers selling concert tickets to tourists.
They seemed to be having fun while peddling tickets.
Here are some interesting things we saw in Vienna the King had built.
Crypt for the family
Driving the plague out of Vienna
Here is a building Franz Joseph wanted torn down but he didn’t get his way.
In 1910 the controversial Looshaus apartments were in and the Hapsburg emperor was soon out. No happy ending. Near the Opera is a memorial to remind us of the horrors of Fascism and War.
Orpheus entering Hades. The Memorial against War and Fascism
The memorial features the horror of Orpheus entering Hades and a starving Jew forced to clean graffiti.
The moral of the story No Kings, No Fascism, and No War. That sounds easy.
We tried to avoid going down Vaci Utica the busy pedestrian shopping street
We planned that we would avoid going down the busiest shopping street in Budapest on a Saturday afternoon. Yet somehow there we were wondering where we could get Dennis a hot dog. He was feeling peckish. It turned out to be pretty interesting. You never know what you might see on the crowded street. For instance this giant floating ball. We’ll never know what it means. We did find a small place on a side street that had a hot dog with mustard for Dennis and a cappuccino and croissant for me. Best of all huge clean windows where we could relax and observe the tourists and shoppers.
Fortified we wandered off the crowded streets and found this pocket park. I love stumbling into small quiet places in the city.
Just a couple of blocks from the crowded Street.
We rejoined the crowd to see St Stephen’s Basilica but only from the outside.
On our way to the Parliament we saw 2 tour groups paused in front of this memorial monument in Szabadsag Ter (square). This is an official WWII memorial created by the Orban government. People have assembled a protesting memorial of pictures and stories of Hungarians who were brutalized by fellow Hungarians during the Nazi era.
3rd Reich eagle attacks St. Gabriel who represents the innocent Hungarian people.Countering the official line that Hungarians were innocent victims of German aggression.
Tours of parliament must be booked ahead of time but we enjoyed walking around the building.
On the grounds we found an underground museum on the 1956 revolution. Films documenting the repression of the 1956 revolt against the Soviet Union. Some were narrated by survivors. I found it very moving.
Lots of construction in the Parliament area and many statues are being restored
By 5:00 pm we had walked over 7 miles. It was time to find dinner but we discovered that on Saturday night many restaurants outside of the tourist area close early. The carry out pizza place down the street from us had an hour wait. We we’re relieved to find a kabob take-out next to our closest grocery store. With the help of pictures, just enough English, and a positive attitude on the part of the woman taking our order we got dinner.
Woke up on our very modern Airbnb flat. That is I woke-up when Dennis said “It’s after 10 O’Clock do you want to get up?
Dennis had Google mapped the fastest route to walk to a transit center to buy a 15 day bus/tram pass. We got lost among the “Housing Estates”. The name for socialist era high rises. Not a bad walk because they have trees and the occasional park between building.
After a struggle to find the right tram to take back to our flat we recharged with granola bars and boarded a tram to see the still being built, rebuilt or perhaps even re-imagined, Castle District. Rebuilding the Castle District controversy
As I understand it, all the buildings are a recreation of the originals or better. The rebuilding started with Hauszmann in the 1900’s. The Castle District got shot up again in WWII when the Soviets took Budapest from the Germans.
Some dilapidated structures were razed in the early 70s and are now being rebuilt again looking very grand and new.
SLIDESHOW–>Fenced out by construction
Building new structures
View from the fortress wall
Budapest bridges view
Looking down the Danube (Duna)
DAY 2
Still jet-lagged we didn’t get an early start. Sometime after 10:00am Dennis helped me map out a route to walk to the house where I had a small flat for five months, in 2008. I was teaching English at the Budapest Technical University, BME.
As we stared at the house, which looked a little more run-down than I remembered it, a woman opened a window and asked me something in Hungarian. I assumed she was asking why we were staring at her house. I replied with one of the few phrases I’ve mastered “Nem erte Maygar” I don’t understand Hungarian. I pointed to myself and the upstairs apartment I lived in and informed her in English that I had lived there. She shrugged and I’m sure told me she didn’t get it. She looked relieved as we left. We even exchanged happy good-byes.
27 Bikszadi Utica
In the afternoon we met my friend, teacher and mentor Zsuzsanna. We walked through the BME campus and toured building we taught in as well as the ancient original campus building.
Zsuzsa helped us find the bus up Gellert Hill. We all expected to see the beautiful view from Citadella a former military outlook. However access to the site was completely restricted by a remodeling project. It hasn’t taken us long to understand how much Victor Orban loves remodeling and rebuilding projects. This one is controversial because they have added a new religious element, a cross,to the former military site.
We were all disappointed because the viewpoint was blocked but Zsuzsa guided us downhill to the Garden of Philosophers which had a nice view of autumn color and less people.
Saints names in Hungarian – a bit of a challengeDennis and the saintsDennis and Zsuzsa consult
We found a very good Hungarian restaurant in our neighborhood. It was almost 9pm by the time we got back to our flat and collapsed. Quite a full day.
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