Budapest - Neither Buddha, nor a pest… Discuss.

It's actually both Buda (in the West) and Pest (in the East), but CoffeeTalk is more fun and less confusing.
Budapest is a gorgeous city – some of the most unique architecture that we’ve seen yet. Hungary also has a long history of being conquered and occupied (the Romans, the Mongolians, the Turks, the Hapsburgs, the Nazis, the Soviets). It also has the most depressed economy that we have experienced – 85% of Hungary lives below the poverty line. While the other cities that we have seen have mostly been reconstructed since WWII, Budapest still has many buildings with bullet holes and a century’s worth of dirt/soot on the facades. The effects of Communism are still very apparent in many ways.

On a brighter note, let’s start with the central Market, which was built in the 1890's – it's a bustling place for locals and tourists - business and capitalism are alive & well here.

Exterior of Market

Interior of Market

Hungary’s biggest church is St Stephan’s Basilica, named after the first king of Hungary (around 1000 A.D.), but built much later in the late 1800's. He converted the country to Christrianity. It is one of the most opulent churches we have seen - red marble, gold, and priceless art.

Exterior of the Church
- Note the people (for scale of how huge it is), and the Communist building on the left - they made their point. (Their point apparently being that they can make really big buildings too - but big ugly buildings - and put them wherever they pleased, even in the historic square).


Interior

Communism:
First we saw the Terror House, regarded by locals as one of the country’s most important museums.

It shows the very dark side of communism – the communist rule was most brutal during the first 10 years or so (until the late 50’s), and the museum highlights this period - the torture, the mistreatment & persecution of peasants and farmers, suppression of all religion and jail/torture of priests, etc. The numbers are staggering – 1 in 3 adults during this period was interrogated, jailed or put to trial. Trials were “show trials” since the verdicts were usually prepared before the trial, and there was a presumption of guilt, not innocence. 700,000 Hungarians were sent to work/concentration camps, and 300,000 of these died in the camps.
Then there was the Revolution of 1956, when students (and later many others) demonstrated against the communist occupation. At first the demonstration was non-violent, but when the Soviets responded with heavy fire (tanks rolled in), the demonstrators armed themselves – the conflict lasted for several weeks. It was unsuccessful for the demonstrators, because they did not have artillery or anti-tank weapons. 20,000 civilians were killed or jailed during the uprising, and 200,000 Hungarians fled the country.
This is a memorial to Imre Nagy, the prime minister during the uprising, who was later executed. He is looking toward the parliament building – he hoped for democracy in Hungary.


After this uprising, the Soviets loosened up on the oppressive rule quite a bit to avoid the instability of more uprisings – the 70’s and 80’s were a time of “Communism Light.” We took a walking tour of communism and learned all about this period – both of our guides were in their 40’s and shared their personal experiences with us. During the “Communism Light” period, the government made everything cheap to bribe/placate people – they subsidized food, housing, and completely covered medical care. There was an underground system of bribery to get better medical care, etc. It was interesting to learn that the government did not want anyone to over-achieve, and didn’t want anyone doing more than “just the plan.” There was a lot of drinking before/during work, on all levels. Since wages were set, and low, everyone did the bare minimum – some of these characteristics are still alive and well today.
This is the last communist memorial in the city – the rest have been moved outside of the city to Memento Park.

These are views of Pest taken from the opposite side of the river:
Parliament Building

View of Pest

The Castle Complex
The rest of this blog is about Buda, the west side of the river – it’s the older part of the city, lots of green hills – and the castle.
This might have been our best day yet – a Wine festival in the castle complex. There was wine, a palace, medieval castle walls, amazing food, live folk music, and sunshine – and wine. Great day.

This is the Fisherman’s Bastion, built in the last century - the 7 towers represent the 7 Magyer tribes that settled here in 896 A.D.– it’s beautiful.



In the foreground is the Statue of St. Stephan (first king), and on the right is St. Matthias church.
Close-up of roof tiles –


We explored the Labyrinth that runs beneath the city – it was originally formed by the hot springs that still run under Budapest, and there is some evidence that pre-historic people inhabited the caves. The labyrinth has been built up and utilized by many regimes – as torture chambers, jails, secret passage-ways. It even has a secret hospital that was used for soldiers during WWII – the hospital room can house 10,000 patients, and was kept secret until 1990.


The food… ah, the food. Lots of stew – beef stew, lamb stew, catfish goulash, goulash soup, sausage & kale stew. Eastern Europeans make great soups and stews… This is us at our nicest dinner out, with our new friends Elya & Ryan (remember them from Krakow)? They are tandem biking through Europe. (you read that right). We hope to cross paths with them again before our travels are over.

Last, but not least – thermal spas! There are Turkish and Roman baths around the city – very relaxing. We went three times, couldn’t help ourselves – good for a traveler’s sore body. This one had a swimming-pool size hot tub outdoors, and lots of pools indoors with different temperatures/minerals.

One night at the baths, we randomly ran into a friend named Pasha from Vince’s MBA program – he just happened to be in Budapest the same time as us, and just happened to be at the same bath house at the same time as us. Love running into a familiar face!

Pack It Out, Pack It In, We Came To Wien (Vienna)

We took an overnight train to Vienna, sharing a cabin with a nice Indian couple. Vienna is a pretty sharp contrast to Krakow in several ways: it is more modern, it is larger, more efficient and nicer public transportation, they speak German (which we are better at than Polish), and much more expensive. It is an extremely beautiful city, if you’re trying to get somewhere to see something it takes you twice as long because you are always stopped by something else amazing to see. There are parks everywhere in the city, including an enormous one along the Danube River. We stayed in a room that had a kitchen, so we actually made some home cooked meals, which was a nice change of pace from the heavy meals in the Czech Republic and Poland.

About a 15 minute walk from our hotel is the Rathaus, which in German means Town Hall. The building is huge and you can see if from many parts of the city. There are several well-kept parks in front of the Rathaus that seemingly connect to other parks next to other government buildings and museums.

This beast of a building is actually just a part of a complex of buildings that include several museums, government buildings, and the national library. The first day we stumbled upon it there was a vintage car show that included Porches, Alfa Romeos, Ferrarri’s, Opels, MGs, Mustangs, a host of other mostly European cars, and this Lamborghini Countach (something we’ve never seen in person):

Vienna loves their classical composers. This is Strauss’s statue and there others we saw in the city including, Beethoven, Schubert, and Mozart. We watched a performance of an eight piece orchestra with opera singers and dancers that featured music by Mozart and Strauss - it was really good.

We visited the Globe Museum, which had hundreds of globes that date as far back as the 14^th century. There was info about the history, techniques in production, different styles, and evolution of globes. Globes used to be made in pairs, one terrestrial and one celestial, because it was thought that there was a second sphere that made up the sky.

This is an apartment building complex called the Hundertwasserhaus, built by an architect known for these colorful, oddly shaped designed buildings. There are a lot of colored tiles as well as uneven floors and surfaces.

This is St. Stephen's Cathedral (Stephensdom), the main church in the city. We climbed the roughly 350 steps to the top of the main tower and got a panoramic view of the city. The tiled roof was very colorful and intricate.

This is Schloss Schonbrunn, the main residence of Maria Theresa, and then Franz Joseph, of the Hapsburg dynasty. It has over 1,400 rooms (we saw 40 of them) which included some ridiculously ornamented rooms with gold gilding, inlaid art, hand painted walls, tapestry, and Chinese porcelain vases hung from the walls.

We caught a morning practice of the Spanish Riding school. The horses are trained to do some goofy but amazing things like intricate footwork, walking diagonally, and even standing on their hind legs. The reward for doing these things: sugar cubes.

We toured the Vienna State Opera house. Much of it was destroyed during WWII, but it is renovated nicely and the surviving original rooms are incredible. They perform a different Opera each night of the week and at most repeat an Opera only 4 or 5 times in the entire 10 month season. There are over 2,000 people involved in putting on an Opera, with 500 backstage crew alone that work in shifts.

Krakow, The City of (Prince) Krak

Krakow is the old capital of Poland, a country that has seen highs and lows and has been abused throughout much of history. At one time the largest country in Europe, they weren’t even a country for a while before WWI. Krakow is very walkable and we stayed right off the old town square. Food is delicious and the beer is good too (Czech beer is still cheaper and better).

Krakow’s Old Town Square is the largest square in Europe. This tower is the what remains of the old town hall and behind that is the Cloth Hall, which served as a trading hall in the past as Krakow sat on an important trade route, today it is filled with stalls selling souvenirs. We took a walking tour around the old city and our guide explained to us that the city was named after King Krak who famously defeated a dragon, and hence Krakow means the City of Krak.

Krakow is surrounded by medieval city walls and an old moat was filled in to create a park around the city. It is flanked at the southern end of the city with Wawel Castle, that sits on a hill overlooking the Vistula River. The first picture is a open space within the castle, with Wawel Cathedral to the right. The second is a spectacular square within the main portion of the castle.

We did a walking tour of the Jewish quarter that included this memorial built in the old square of the Jewish Ghetto. We visited many sites that included many sites in Schindler's list and the site of the Schindler Factory. We learned about the horrible conditions that Jews lived in during WWII and even leading up to it. Polish Jews were subject to some of the worst conditions during the Nazi reign and helping a Jew in Poland was punishable by death. There were over 70,000 Jews in Krakow prior to WWII, today there are only a few hundred.

We took a day trip to visit Auschwitz. It was eerie to be in a death camp where over 1.3 million people were murdered. The museum is in the actual buildings of the camp and they paint the gruesome picture of happened there. Birkenau, the second of three camps that make up Auschwitz, is unbelievable in size and it took us 15-20 minutes to walk across it.

We visited the Wieliczka Salt Mine, that has been in operation since the 1300’s. We toured about 2.5 km and saw about 1% of the total mine. There are massive tunnels that connect chamber after chamber within the mine, many which are filled with statues made of salt. There is a restaurant and even conference center in the mine, all at 3oo feet below ground. The picture above is the Chapel of the Blessed Kinga, where 20,000 tons of salt was removed. There are intricate carvings, including the Last Supper, and everything you see is salt, including the chandeliers.

We met several travelers including Jason from Australia by way of London, Chris from Frankfurt, and Elya and Ryan from the US who were living in Australia for the past 3 years and are tandem cycling through Europe for 7 months. Below is a really cool/random Godfather (my favorite movie) themed bar with over 100 Polish beers available.

Prague, Czech Republic It Out

After a 4 hour train ride from Berlin through fields, forests, and scenic river valleys, we arrived in Prague. The train station itself was a mix of modern and historic, just like the rest of the city. We made our way to our hotel, Residence Bene, located about 10 minutes walking from the Old Town Square (Stare Mesto). Each morning we were awoken by construction workers with jackhammers and trowels working and climbing outside our window on scaffolding. Then we proceeded downstairs to eat breakfast consisting of tea, meats, cheeses, yogurt, cereal, and occasional screaming child.

Some general thoughts about Prague:

- The streets, squares, and buildings are beautiful and well preserved because much of it was left alone by the Nazis.

- Central Prague is very walk-able and easy to get around. There is so much to see in a small area.

- Beer is cheap ($1 for 0.5L in a bar/restaurant) and delicious. We tried about 6 or 7 different kinds and everyone of them was really good, our favorite being Kusovice (B- rating is bogus, but pretty high for the snobs on that site). It might be hard to drink Bud Light again.

- Czech people are nice if you try to speak their language, but they curse you under their breath if you act too much like a tourist.

On to the sites…

The view East towards the Old Town Square. To the left is the Town Hall tower and in the distance is the Tyn Church. On the Town Hall tower is the Astronomical Clock that provides the time, zodiac, and position of the sun and moon. Each hour there is a little performance by the mechanical figurines on the outside and inside of the clock tower, but it’s not so impressive.

This is the Powder Tower, that gets its name from gun powder that was once stored in it. This is last remaining gateway to the old town, there used to be several . In official coronations and parades the king would pass through this entrance.

Prague Castle sits on a hill over the Vltava River and can be seen anywhere. It is the largest castle complex in Europe (it spans across all the buildings you see at the top of the hill) and is the currently where the Czech President works and resides. The complex is surrounded by walls, towers, and Castle Guards. There are several squares and lanes that are surrounded by palaces and royal buildings. The main feature of the complex is the massive gothic church, St. Vitus Cathedral. The interior is impressive with 100 ft. vaulted ceilings.

This is the view from the Prague Castle. To the right you can see Charles Bridge and one of its towers.

This is the view from Charles Bridge back towards Prague Castle. The bridge was built by Charles IV in 1357. One fun fact is that he instructed hundreds of thousands of eggs to be mixed into the mortar to strengthen it.

This is the Old New Synagogue the oldest surviving synagogue in Europe built in 1250 and is part of the Jewish district of Prague.

We took a day trip to town about an hour away from Prague called Kutna Hora. One of the sites there is the Bone Church, named for the decorations of bones from over 40,000 people buried there. It includes a chandelier that contains at least one of each bone in the human body. We also took a tour of a medieval silver mine and crawled through narrow, cold, and wet passages.