Budapest

August 6, 2015

35C today, Anton was dripping sweat.

Today was a free day to explore Budapest on our own.  The area was so quiet and peaceful in the early morning without the throngs of tourists. This is all part of the castle complex. We walked along the cobbled streets and admired the architecture. We saw a group of Viking tourists advancing on us, so we scooted down a side alley, and there was Leonard, the cruise director from our ship.  We found a peaceful walkway, the Toth Arpad Promenade.  

Then quite by accident we happened upon the Magdalen Tower. This tower is the only part remaining of what used to be a 13th century Franciscan church.  It is also the only church where Christian services were allowed during the Ottoman rule.  All the other churches were converted to mosques.  Unfortunately, the church was bombed during WWII, along with this whole castle area which took a huge hit because the allied troops knew that this is where the Nazis were holed up.

In the shell of the remains, there was an excellent exhibition of before and after shots of Budapest during the war.  The pictures showed what the damage was, and what it looks like now in 2015 after reconstruction.

After a few hours of exploring Castle Hill, we went back to the hotel for a rest.  A rest for Anton means he lays on the bed and immediately starts snoring.  A rest for Frankie means she lays on the bed and makes detailed plans of what they will do next.

We caught the bus down across the Chain Bridge and over to the Pest side. For some reason the bus driver didn't want Anton's money.  Even though no one on the bus spoke English and could help us (including the bus driver), we got off the bus at the right spot and found the Basilica of St Stephen. This cathedral took over 50 years to build, being finished in 1905. It took that long to build because when they were half way done construction, the dome collapsed during a storm and they had to start over.

The cathedral is named after King Stephen I, who was the first king of Hungary. He died in 1038, and incredibly, one of the chapels inside contains his mummified right hand. The Europeans are big on these “holy relics”. Somehow the hand made its way to half a dozen countries, including a monastery in Bosnia, but was returned to the Hungarians in 1771 by Hapsburg empress Maria Theresa. It was carried off again during WWII, but once again returned. Every year on the anniversary of his death, his hand is paraded through the streets of Budapest. It is kept in an ornate glass case, and for a few coins the case will light up so you can get a better look. We didn't have the exact amount of change, so we waited 5 minutes and eventually another tourist put the coins in.  Even when it was lit up, we STILL couldn't tell what it was in that case.  This is what we saw:

This is what it's supposed to be:

Nearby was the Sziget Eye (Budapest Eye), a temporary ferris wheel that runs from April until the end of September. It is actually the largest mobile ferris wheel in Europe, standing at 213 feet tall. It has 42 cars and can hold 332 people. At night, the ferris wheel is lit with over 10,000 lights.  Sadly, our ride was only 10 minutes long, for $10 each. 

Next we walked to the Great Synagogue, also known as Dohány Street Synagogue. It is the 2nd largest synagogue in the world, only slightly smaller than the one in NYC. It was built in 1859 and the organ is from 1902. The synagogue was bombed in 1939 and was not fully restored until 1998, after the fall of communism. 

Anton had to wear a yarmulke, which they handed out at the front door.  It kept falling off, so Frankie clipped it on with her hair clip which helped a lot.  We kept watching all the other guys walking around with one hand on their head to keep it from falling off.

We took the "tour" (we sat in one spot and listened) and learned some fascinating things. First of all, a synagogue shouldn't even have an organ!  Tuning the instrument would be considered "work" on the Sabbath, so they get a "gentile" to "volunteer" to play, since paying someone on the Sabbath is a no-no.  Then there is the issue of allowing a gentile inside a synagogue during a service, so they solved this problem by saying that technically the organ and the player are outside the sacred part, since they are behind the cabinet that holds the Torahs.  As for the Torahs (their written Bible), a kosher one has to be hand-written and ordered from Israel, and costs $30,000 US.

We went through the Hungarian Jewish Museum which tells the history of Judaism in Hungary. The saddest part was the room that showed pictures of the Jews during the Holocaust.  We find it unbelievable that people were treated that way.

In 1945, 70,000 Jews were relocated to the Jewish Ghetto of Pest. That winter, 10,000 of them perished from hunger and cold. Two thousand of them were buried here in 24 mass graves, despite Jewish laws forbidding burial close to a synagogue.  Many of them were not identified, and it was thought best to keep them together.

The Holocaust memorial is called the Emanuel Tree, in the shape of a weeping willow, and the leaves are inscribed with the names of the victims.

We took a crowded bus back up to our hotel because it was too hot to walk up this hill we are on.  We found a souvenir shop and spent the very last of our Hungarian forints so we wouldn't have to exchange them back.  Then up to our hotel room for showers, blog, and packing.

For dinner we went out to the Pierrot restaurant for one last meal with our friends: Larry and Ginger from Texas, Libby and Jim from Australia, and Eva and Bill from Seattle.  It was a very nice dinner in a pretty outdoor courtyard.

We need to wake up at 3 am (9 pm Ontario time) to be shuttled off to the airport.  Our first flight is at 6:35 am, arriving at 9 am in Paris.  Then we have a yucky 5 hour layover, and our flight home leaves Paris at 2 pm, arriving at 4 pm (time change of 6 hours).  We are looking forward to this flight because we paid extra for the upper deck, we've never flown on an upper deck before. So this will be our last blog.

The final graffiti shot of the day: