26Sep / 2014

No Pithy Title; I am Fresh Out of Pith

 

No pith so I’ll lead with the good stuff. How beautiful is that?
And yes, I actually took that picture, thanks. No postcard this time.

 

Those of you who know me well will find the following utterly unsurprising:

I got sick.

For someone as generally healthy as I am, I have the most porous immune system ever, and it bit me in the ass again. I got yet another traveling cold, and am sucking down hot tea at an astonishing rate.

So last night, Jim goes on an adventure to find me cold medicine after hours. A nice taxi driver takes him to an all night apoteke (drugstore) which, like a Las Vegas pawn shop operates out of a window at night. After some show and tell and some pointing, he comes back with a box, which I gladly take. Four hours of pacing later we realize the stuff had Sudafed in it. Full strength Sudafed. Up all night with the pacing around the room jitters. But no cold symptoms.

No sleep either.

But I am no wimp, Gang. There were tours to take and carbohydrates to eat, and so I bundled up in my heavy jacket, shoved tissues in every available pocket, and headed off with guide Aniko and our driver Zoltan to see the suburban town of Szentendre, which had been billed as an artist colony and cute little town with galleries and small shops and museums.

I’m sure by now you all know me and my blog well enough to know where this is headed. What was billed and what was observed were not exactly the same thing. Szentendre, while still a very pretty town with a substantive artist colony, was less a charming little village and more a tourist trap. Shlock souvenir stands filled the storefronts, most of them filled with the same kind of “paprika/tea towel/embroidered items/magnets and coffee mug” those stuff that we’ve seen all over. There was a Herren (high end Hungarian porcelain) store but even better, we found some quirky little museums that made the whole thing worthwhile.

In the Micro Museum you could see micro miniature art. This is a grain of rice on its side with a viewing microscope.

This is the view through the scope. A solid serving set of goblets and pitcher in solid gold, all invisible to the naked eye. The artist is Ukranian and has had a couple of exhibitions in the US. I don’t know why he has a permanent display in Szentendre, but it was cool to look at.

We also went to the permanent exhibition on Margit Kovacs, a Hungarian ceramic artist who really pushed the bounds of what can be done with ceramics. Many of her pieces look like they were made of wood or cast metal, they were beautifully created but you couldn’t take pictures and although I bought some postcards, I am sick and so no pictures for you today.

Instead, to honor the fact that we start heading home Sunday, you can have a picture of some cactuses made entirely out of marzipan, which is almond paste (like the stuff inside bear claw and almond croissants) that is colored, shaped and molded and left to harden. We went to an entire gallery of things made from marzipan (the marzipan museum) which was full of fun and playful displays made of the stuff. It mostly resembled very good polymer clay work, and so it was hard to remember that all of the items were (at one point anyway) entirely edible.

Marzipan Princess Diana
 

After the tour (which was filled with lots of good information from our guide on the area’s history, and the life of Kovacs and the founding of Herren) we came back to the hotel for me to try and nap, which didn’t work, and then we went for a very nice dinner and our evening jaunt up the river. But not before sharing one of these for dessert:

Those are hollow funnel shaped dough logs baked over a fire and then rolled in a topping of your choice, like vanilla sugar, cinnamon (what we had) nuts or coca. It’s a local “street food” and was really tasty.

Then Jim and I bypassed the crowded tour boats packed stem to stern with tourists and got on our tiny little boat for the trip up river. The guys who ran the boat were great, we got one trip up and back slowly so we could stand on the stern and take pictures, and then they sped up and did the whole thing again at speed, racing around the bridge abutments and whipping us around parliament. Despite how low we were to the water and how relatively choppy it was, we got some great pictures and had a blast.

Budapest is beautiful at night. (Budapest is beautiful any time of day but especially so at night.) And I’m so glad we took the private boat. We had so much fun and it was the exact right way to see the amazing place all lit up.

I don’t know what tomorrow holds, so I don’t know what to tease. I am pretty damn sick, and all the activity today didn’t help but it is our last day on our trip so I don’t know what we are going to do about me and the head cold of inevitability I finally came down with.

I have a couple of wrap up posts I wanted to write (one about the Hungarian people) and Jim and I were thinking about the Pflegenbaum Travel Awards for the best (and most Swarovski-like) parts of the trip so if we stick close to home and the lovely spa here at the Kempinski Hotel Corvinus, maybe I’ll work on those.

Either way I bid you a fond (and stuffy adieu), Home soon!

 

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25Sep / 2014

Dead Monks, Goulash Communism, and Meat on a Stick

Today we continued the theme of “Visiting Awesome Places Tour Busses Don’t Go, Thank God” and took the very inconveniently timed once a day bus (what the hell is with the best places having the worst timing — I’m looking at you Hohenschonhausen) out to Memento Park in northern Budapest.

Which was awesome. (I realize I use that word a lot – this trip is just awesome all around so deal, peeps.)

When the communists were ousted from Hungary in 1989, there were dozens if not hundreds of statues throughout the country celebrating communist achievement and idealizing (and idolizing) communist heroes like Lenin and Stalin. Rather than melting them all down, the Hungarian government decided to hold on to them and create Memento Park, placing them all in one area so they can be used as reflection and education (and be poked fun of). We took an excellent guided tour (which I highly recommend or else you are just really looking at statues with no context) which was both informative and appropriately cheeky.

In addition to the typical Stalin and Lenin statues, there were statues like this, dedicated to the “friendship” between the Hungarian and Soviet peoples. It’s not hard to tell which one is the Soviet, and despite the “friendship” message the body language in the two men makes it clear who is in charge and who is the supplicant. A lot of the statues are like this, idealizing the glory of the Red Army and the oppression of the Hungarian people.

 

That’s me, practicing for the day I become a dictator. (I need to be taller though, I could barely see over that wall.)

This is a recreation of a spot not far from heroes plaza where a giant statue of Stalin once stood called Stalin’s Grandstand. Communist dignitaries and party leaders would stand about where I am and wave down at the marching people/soldiers/etc. When the Hungarian people rebelled against communism in a bloody 1956 revolution (which was put down two weeks later) the crowd cut the statue at the knees and pulled it down, then basically ripped it apart. Nothing of the original statue remains, but the grandstand and the “boots” were recreated for the park.

After the rebellion was quashed, there was a change in the level of oppression in Hungary, a transition to something they call Goulash Communism; “communism light”. Having proven they could be irascible, the Soviets instead chose to loosen up the reins and things improved greatly in Hungary. By the time the borders were opened (peacefully and by a vote) in 89, Hungary had a fairly high standard of living for the Eastern Block.

After the bus took us back to downtown, Jim and I walked the length of the Danube between the Erzebet and Margaret bridges (about six miles in all) and took pictures and just did the walk and hold hands thing. You know, like people do. We took some great pictures of the river and all the buildings we saw on our tour.

At the far end of the walk I finally got a chance to take a picture of the monument to Saint Gerard (Szent Gellért in Hungarian) a Benedictine monk and evangelist in Hungary in 1046. The story we were told was that Gellért was martyred for his proselytizing by being put in a barrel pierced by nails and pushed down the hill (from the point on which his monument stands) until he landed in the Danube.

Wikipedia says he was pushed down the hill in his carriage, after which his head was beaten in with rocks and his body pierced with a lance. Either way, an ugly death.

After our walk we went for dinner at Váci Utca, a pedestrian mall not far from our hotel. Once again I had the far less photogenic dinner, but Jim’s was cool. (That’s my dinky salad in the back).

Tomorrow we are off to the Hungarian countryside, just us and our guide. After that we have a waterside dinner and a private water limo ride up and down the Danube to see the city illuminated at night. Why private? Because while we like people individually, we are very done with people in groups.

Home stretch now.

Until tomorrow, Gang!

 

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