Well, I am back to trying to finish up the log of my last European trip. I left Ukraine, crossed back into Romania, and then jumped on a train back to Cluj in Transylvania. I slept overnight at a hostel I have used before. The workers there got me a ticket on a Maxi-Taxi to Budapest on an overnight route leaving from Cluj around 10 and getting into Budapest about 4 in the morning. I had to wait around the bus station/subway station until I could exchange some money and buy a ticket, but by 6am I came up from the subway for my first good look at Budapest. It was amazing.
I checked into the hostel in downtown Pest (Budapest was actually two cities: Buda on the west bank of the Danube and Pest on the east bank) and then the hostel check in guy helped to guide me to the right subway and route to get to the nearest LDS building. I quickly showered and got to church in time to enjoy sacrament meeting...in Hungarian. I wondered if I would be able to understand any of the meeting like I did in Ukraine, but I didn't understand a single word.
After going to Church I began to explore the city. This building was an awesome example of art neuveux architecture. Budapest had a number of great examples of this beautiful style.
This was one of the old squares of the city right near my hostel. The new modern roads have bypassed it, but you can still image what it would look like if it was dirt and carriages instead of modern asphalt and concrete.
I crossed from the Pest to the Buda side of the city on the Elisabeth Bridge. The old fortress of Buda dominates the bank of the Danube. The fortress has withstood sieges from multiple enemies. At one point the Ottoman Turks defeated the Hungarians after the Battle of Mohacs and seized all of Hungary up to the Danube. This point once marked the boundary between East and West. Ottoman occupied Hungary was ruled from Pest for over a hundred years. In 1848 it was one of last bastions of Hungarian revolutionary resistance against the Hapsburgs.
Crossing the bridge you see this magnificent waterfall. The hills on the Buda side of the river are unusual for most of modern Hungary, which is a wide plain. Their obvious defensive value explains why it is so fortified.
As I began climbing up the Buda Fortress hill I encountered many different layers of fortifications, modern and ancient. This wall is a later fortification designed for defending against early modern gunpowder weaponry.
The view from the castle towards the Pest side of the river is amazing. The famous 'Chain Bridge' spans the river, the incredible Hungarian Parliament building dominates the bend in the river, and a massive Catholic Cathedral, similar to that of St. Paul's in London, towers over the city on the right.
I visited the Museum of Budapest History up on the fortress. This statue at the entrance is a great romantic, nationalistic portrayal of the victory of the ancient Avars and Huns, the progenitors of the modern Hungarian nation.
This is a thousand year old representation of Christ from shortly after the Christianization of the Hungarians. This Christ is a young and dynamic man. He doesn't sport a beard as he does in later Christian representations. The newly Christianized barbarians found a dynamic Christ for their growing power.
This is a Hungarian Hebrew headstone from the Middle Ages. Hungary was a homeland for Jews for hundreds of years before the Second World War ended that legacy when in 1944 over 400,000 Jews were deported to death camps in Poland under the radical, fascist Arrow Cross government that seized power after the German occupation of the country.
There was an art gallery in the museum with some really cool paintings of Budapest through the ages. This shows the hazards of crossing the river in the 1700s before the construction of the multiple bridges which now criss-cross the Danube.
This shows a view from the Pest side with the Buda fortress in the background. It is a powerful scene that evokes the sense of trade and development from the industrial revolution taking place. Steamboats bringing goods up and down the Danube from the headwaters in Germany to the ports on the Black Sea in Romania. The Danube was the lifeblood and heart of the city and its economy.
This is the center of a now collapsed arch, the keystone. I thought it was special because it shows that these were not just carved, but often painted. The ancient stone cathedrals and churches of the Middle Ages would have been painted and much more colorful than we see them them today oftentimes. Just hundreds of years of wear have worn off the bright colors. This may be a depiction of Elijah being feed by the ravens...or some more recent saint who had a similar experience.
A very interesting depiction of the crucifixion.
I took a picture from the castle looking out over the vantage point of the city. Several of the other bridges, including the Elisabeth bridge are visible behind me. It was a HOT day and I had just climbed up to the fortress, had been wearing a backpack....so I was DRENCHED in sweat!
Here is the presidential palace that has been built on top of the hill near the old fortress. It was nice to see it in the daytime this time, unlike last summer when we where there at 3 in the morning, and I didn't anger any guards this time either! ;)
A remarkable Medieval cathedral. Again, nice to see it during the day time this time. This is near the famous 'Fisherman's Bastion' of the Buda fortress. Nearby is the Hungarian Military History Museum which was incredible.
This is the equipment of a Hungarian Cavalryman of the First World War.
Here is a Hungarian Cavalryman of the Middle Ages. There horsemen were skilled and feared warriors who fought countless battles with Turks, Wallachians, Moldovans, Poles and Germans.
Here is a 1800s uniform of a Hungarian Hussar. Complete with sabre. By this time the military value of these troops were becoming out of date and had been taken over by the elite, who still wielded great power, even if modern warfare was making them obsolete.
The First World War finally displayed the weakness of the old Hungarian military and forced a revolution in military affairs. This post card shows the members of the 'Alliance': the Aged Franz Joseph of Austro-Hungary, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, Sultan Mehmed V of the Ottoman Empire, and Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria. This powerful 'Alliance' almost was able to defeat the 'Entente' powers during the war, but failed in the end.
Examples of early hand grenades. As hard as it is to conceive, hand grenades barely existed at the start of the First World War. Most infantry were unfamiliar with such weapons early on in the war. Soon, all armies understood the need for specialized weapons and training for infantry to allow them to clear and carry trenches to defeat the enemy. Italian soldiers, entering the war late in 1915, and Romanian soldiers, entering the war in late 1916, were decimated by these weapons that they were unfamiliar with and caused great panic.
These are the Austro-Hungarian version of 'dogtags' from the First World War.
The amount of death and carnage on the front meant that bones were readily available. This horse bone has been carved and used to create a memento to the beloved Emperor Franz Joseph.
This Hungarian painted wooden carving shows King Ferdinand I of Romania packing up his crown. German-Austrian-Bulgarian troops dealt several severe defeats on the Romanian Army in 1916, forcing the collapse the army and the Romanians had to abandon Bucuresti and retreat to Iasi for the remaining years of the war. The Hungarians could only be full of glee concerning the position of their Romanian enemies.
This represents the King of Montenegro, holding a bag full of Entente bribes.
Tsar Nicholas is show here holding the symbols of peace in the motion of swearing he only desired peace, but the maker shows the 'true' warmongering nature of the Tsar. Look closely at his feet, they are made up of canon!
This wooden staff shows the Entente members, Italian, British, and French, unable to reach and help Serbia. The Austro-Hungarian Army was able to defeat the Serbian Army in 1915 and occupy Serbia as the Serbian Army and many civilians retreated across Albania in a horrendous march to be evacuated by British ships, rather than surrender to the Hapsburgs.
A field kitchen. It is forgotten that food has to be cooked for the soldiers. This wheeled cart was pulled by horses behind the front lines and served up the hot food Hungarian soldiers loved...or maybe tolerated. ;)
These are special unit pins for units of 'Stormtroopers'. Given more training, light machine guns, and loaded down with grenades, these troops were meant to infiltrate and destroy key enemy positions so that following infantry could punch through. The morbid feelings of the last years of the war and of even these elite troops are very evident from the death imagery used for these badges.
This unique map shows the route of one of the Hungarians from 1914-1922, from soldier to Prisoner of War and back to civilian.
A Hungarian drawing of some of the hardships of a Romanian POW camp.
With the surrender of Germany in 1918 the Austro-Hungarian Empire began to collapse. In 1918 a Bolshevik movement grew in power and eventually seized control of Hungary under the leadership of Bela Kun. This propaganda shows the strong and Bolshevik ridding the country of the Hapsburg monarchy.
This I found very interesting. Traditional Hungarian faith mixed with Bolshevik ideology. Christ holds the Workers' Red Star saying 'In this sign conquer!', the same words supposedly given to Constantine the Great before his final victory.
In 1919 the rebuilt Romanian Army occupied Budapest and helped end the Bolshevik government. This is an example of occupation currency printed by the Romanians while they occupied Hungarian territory.
With the fall of the Bolsheviks a nationalist right wing government took power under Admiral Horthy. The Romanian occupation was represented as 'typical' Romanian theft. Here the threat of 'White' nationalist power is causing the Romanians to run back home, laden down with booty from Hungary. The Romanians did requisition a significant amount of material that was sent back to Romania, but it was seen as reparations for the massive amount of material taken by Germany and Austro-Hungary from Romania while most of it was occupied from 1916-1918.
Here is an example of the nationalist propaganda in support of Admiral Horthy the 'Regent' of Hungary. Technically Horthy was only the 'Regent', in charge until a King could be appointed. Two attempts to place a king on the Hungarian throne were thwarted in the 1920s and eventually Horthy made the 'Regency' hereditary and his son would have succeeded him as the head of state, but his death in a plane crash during operations on the Eastern Front during the Second World War ended that.
A great example of Hungarian irredentism. The lost territories of Upper Hungary, Transylvania, the Banat, and Croatia, the borders of the Old Kingdom of Hungary are shown on this flag commiserating the 'Mutilated Defeat' of the First World War when Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and Romania gobbled up Hungarian territory.
They had some dummy weapons to play with in the museum, which was awesome! This was a Mannlicher rifle that was standard issue to Hungarian soldiers.
Here is a representation of Hungarian soldiers as they would have looked in 1940 when Romania was forced to retro-cede part of Transylvania back to Hungary. The Hungarians profited from German actions and help and regained parts of Upper Hungary, Transylvania, and Croatia during the Second World War. The Hungarian had high hopes that alliance with Germany would lead to full restoration of the borders of the Kingdom of Hungary and provided material support and troops for the Eastern Front.
After leaving the museum I saw this Hungarian pointer which reminded me of my sister and brother in law, Janette and John, and their dogs and puddle pointer extraordinaire, Gus.
The Hungarian Parliament is one of the most impressive buildings I have ever seen.
I climbed down from the Fisherman's bastion to head back to my hostel. I was dead tired after a fitful night's sleep on a maxi taxi, church, and exploring. Plus, my feet were killing me, I was wearing some shoes that, while I like how they look, are HORRIBLE to walk long distances in. So, I went back to the hostel, took a nap, and changed.
I went back out to explore at dusk. I found this old Jewish Synagogue, a relic of the Hungarian Jews that used to live in the city.
I then went to Saint Stephan's Basilica. Its neo-Classical style and design bares a striking resemblance to Saint Paul's Cathedral in London. 96 meters tall, it is almost as tall as Saint Paul's, 111 meters. A beautiful Christian monument.
I walked down to the Parliament and got a picture of the Danube at night.
The Chain Bridge and the Buda fortress are amazingly beautiful at night.
A cool old hotel on the Pest side.
A monument to the Soviet intervention which crushed the Hungarian Revolution in Budapest in 1956. Here the spirit of the revolution following behind the Russian tank treads.
An awesome church downtown from the 1700s that wouldn't be out of place in many cities in Romania.
A monument to the fallen Hungarian soldier of the First World War.
Art Neuveux building on one of the main boulevards in Budapest.
A narrow street of old Pest.
The old main train station of Budapest from the 1800s. A beautiful example of art from the industrial revolution.
I am not really sure what this sign restricts, but evidently, Old men shouldn't be walking with their kids in this area...
An awesome iron bridge, another example of industrial revolution architecture. Far from just being a bridge, it symbolized imperial might and was painted this cool green color.
A classic Hungarian Catholic Church, with Saint George once again slaying the dragon.
So, after another day of wondering the streets of Budapest I grabbed the same Maxi-Taxi back to Romania, but I got off in Arad instead of going all the way back to Cluj. I wanted to try to do some interviews with veterans the next day. I wasn't successful unfortunately and so I jumped on an overnight train to Bucuresti with a few days before flying home.
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