We woke up at 8 am and went down to the New York Cafe to have breakfast. Then we got ready and left the hotel around 10:30 am. We bought tickets to the hop-on hop-off sightseeing tourist bus but after waiting for 15 minutes at the stop outside our hotel and seeing that all the buses were full and that some people had been waiting for over an hour, we returned our tickets and decided to walk. In retrospect, it turned out to be a good decision because we spent half the day in a museum and half the day walking in the hilly castle district of Buda, both of which required walking.
Budapest is actually two towns - Buda and Pest (pronounced Pesht) - separated by the mighty Danube river. Buda is hilly and historic with castles and royal buildings whereas Pest is flat and more modern and commercial. Our hotel, the main train station and the airport are all in Pest. The underground subway network, the first in Europe, is also in Pest. We walked from our hotel to the House of Terror, a museum that opened at the turn of this century as a memorial for the victims of Nazi German occupation and Communist Soviet occupation of Hungary and its capital, Budapest. We walked on the tree-lined Andrassi Boulevard which was built after seeking inspiration from the similar tree-lined avenue of Paris, the Champs Élysées (pronounced Shaun-za Leezay). The wide road is a few kilometers long and runs from Heroes Square to Chain Bridge in Pest, punctuated by two main plazas/squares, one square called Oktagon and a roundabout. The boulevard is lined with nice restaurants with patio seating and shopping stores. The House of Terror was a couple of blocks away from Oktagon.
The House of Terror is a building that was used by both the Nazi German regime and then Communist Soviet regime to illegally detain and torture people. The tour of this appropriately named building is a much more human take on the oppressive side of communism than what we saw in Prague at the Museum of Communism. It touches upon the Nazi German oppression as well but the extent of those atrocities can only be fully experienced by visiting a concentration camp or a Jewish ghetto. Both regimes had built an underground prison where they illegally detained, tortured and executed political prisoners and any dissenting civilians. There is a Soviet tank in the middle of the building. The exhibits were on two floors and featured hair raising actual video footage of Nazi and Soviet eras. The most moving are the interviews of real survivors of both regimes. We saw countless people describe what they went through, in thorough detail. From Soviet Gulag prisoners to abandoned housewives to political prisoners to ordinary civilians, the tales of horror are heart breaking. But the most excruciating video footage is that made by Nazis in which they had filmed piles upon piles of bodies of mostly Jewish victims in the Auschwitz concentration camp, skeletons being taken out of incinerators and the worst of all, bodies being thrown in mass graves using construction cranes! Having seen the actual camp at Auschwitz and the artifacts of victims there, this video footage gives the industrialized mass murdering a very vivid form, one that will be hard to forget. We also saw footage showing destruction of Budapest during the Second World War and the propagandist regime of Rakosi, the student of Stalin who headed the so-called sovereign government of Hungary but was a puppet whose strings were pulled by his Soviet masters. We also saw speeches and fake news tooting the prosperity of Hungary that were played inside voting booths in rigged elections. After exploring the main exhibition on the first two floors, we took the elevator down to the basement. The elevator is designed to go down at a very slow speed and during the ride down, a prison guard narrates a highly detailed scene of an execution in the basement - no special last requests were entertained and last letters to their loved ones were also torn apart. We then saw the cells of detainees and different types of inhumane punishment chambers where detainees were subjected to torture like standing all night with light in their eyes or crouching down all day with no room to stand up. The House of Terror portrays the cruelty of the two totalitarian regimes exceptionally well. We got so engrossed in learning about the experiences of victims that we didn't realize that we spent more than 4 hours there. The House of Terror's main audience is Hungarian people and for a change, we saw more locals than tourists at a museum. The last thing that we saw before leaving the building was pictures of victimizers or oppressors. The most chilling aspect of the whole experience is that most of them are still alive and living with the rest of the community at large and have never stood trial or been brought to justice. We left wondering how the Hungarian people handle that tricky situation - cannot be easy.
Then we walked on Andrassi Boulevard and a few blocks away saw the Opera building. It's an impressive building with Greco-Roman architecture on the outside. We continued walking and after checking the menus of a couple of restaurants, we decided to have lunch at a traditional Hungarian cuisine restaurant. It was a very hot day so the shade of the trees while sitting on the restaurant patio was a welcome respite. We wanted to have a refreshing light meal so ordered salads. The goat cheese salad and the salmon salad were both very good and surprisingly, the serving of cheese/salmon was quite gracious. We had homemade lemonades with the salads and then shared a slice of a traditional Hungarian cake which was somewhat of a cross between a three-milk Mexican cake and a baked cinnamon bread roll. We had coffee after dessert and then continued walking on the boulevard, towards the Danube river and the Chain Bridge. During our walk, we saw the Saint Stephan's church with its Baroque dome and passed by Elizabeth Square where people were dipping their feet in a public pool. We also shared a scoop of ice cream while walking on the boulevard. When the boulevard ended, we were on the riverside boundary of Pest. We then crossed the famous Chain Bridge which is a wrought iron and stone suspension bridge that has pedestrian sidewalks on both sides and car lanes in the middle. It was opened in 1849 as the first permanent bridge on the Danube in Hungary. The bridge incurred heavy damage in the Second World War where the middle half was destroyed by bombing. It was then reconstructed and reopened in 1949. There are statues of two lions on each side of the bridge.
After crossing the bridge, we were in Buda at the base of the hill that has the castle district. We took the one-car funicular train up the hill while admiring the bird's eye view of Pest. The main landmark in Pest's skyline is the Hungarian Parliament. After reaching the top of the hill next to the Buda Castle, we took postcard pictures showing the Chain Bridge, Danube river and the Parliament. Then we started exploring Buda Castle. When you see Buda's skyline from the Pest side, two main landmarks are prominent. One is the Buda Castle and the other is the Fisherman's Bastion which we saw a little later. We walked through Buda Castle's cobblestone external courtyard which has a giant statue in the middle. They've created a walkway that runs next to the boundary of the castle walls so we followed that and explored breathtaking views of the Danube on one side and the stone building of the Buda Castle on the other side. We stopped at a couple of towers to take pictures. There was a live orchestra playing at the base of the hill so walking along the wall with that background music and a pleasant breeze was a refreshing experience. The castle is not used anymore and houses an art gallery but we didn't go inside.
Then we started walking through the castle district towards the Fisherman's Bastion. It's a very peaceful and quiet area. The most remarkable thing about Budapest is that most buildings were damaged or destroyed in the Second World War so everything that we saw was repaired or reconstructed. But they've done an excellent job of recreating that old world feel and it's hard to tell that some of these buildings are only a few decades and not centuries old. We reached the Saint Matthias Church which looked very similar to Vienna's Saint Stephan's Cathedral with its colored roof and gothic facade. Then we were at Fisherman's Bastion which is a purely decorative structure comprising parapets and towers. It's seven towers represent the seven Magyar chiefs. The main highlight of these medieval looking white towers are the ornate white marble "windows" through which you can see Pest and the Parliament building. We sat there for a few minutes taking in the view and then walked a little farther to the old town/city hall which has been preserved in its damaged condition. Then we made our way back to a street a few blocks away where we had spotted some restaurants. We picked an Italian pizzeria and had a white sauce pizza and traditional chicken breast stuffed with cheese. By this time, the sun had gone down so we went back to the Fisherman's Bastion to take in the night view of Danube and the lit up Parliament building.
Then we walked back to the funicular station and rode it down the hill. Then we crossed Chain Bridge and explored the lively Danube Promenade street right next to the river. There were street performers and restaurants with live music. We saw many street performers in Prague, Vienna and Budapest but restaurants with live music seems to be a Budapest thing only and the music is quite good too. By this time, we had walked almost 20 kilometers and despite regular breaks throughout the day, our feet needed rest. We stopped at a Thai massage parlor and had a quick 30 minute massage which was very much needed to be able to walk back. After the massage, we walked back to our hotel and went to bed after a hot and tiring day. Till the next update, take care and goodbye!
Budapest is actually two towns - Buda and Pest (pronounced Pesht) - separated by the mighty Danube river. Buda is hilly and historic with castles and royal buildings whereas Pest is flat and more modern and commercial. Our hotel, the main train station and the airport are all in Pest. The underground subway network, the first in Europe, is also in Pest. We walked from our hotel to the House of Terror, a museum that opened at the turn of this century as a memorial for the victims of Nazi German occupation and Communist Soviet occupation of Hungary and its capital, Budapest. We walked on the tree-lined Andrassi Boulevard which was built after seeking inspiration from the similar tree-lined avenue of Paris, the Champs Élysées (pronounced Shaun-za Leezay). The wide road is a few kilometers long and runs from Heroes Square to Chain Bridge in Pest, punctuated by two main plazas/squares, one square called Oktagon and a roundabout. The boulevard is lined with nice restaurants with patio seating and shopping stores. The House of Terror was a couple of blocks away from Oktagon.
The House of Terror is a building that was used by both the Nazi German regime and then Communist Soviet regime to illegally detain and torture people. The tour of this appropriately named building is a much more human take on the oppressive side of communism than what we saw in Prague at the Museum of Communism. It touches upon the Nazi German oppression as well but the extent of those atrocities can only be fully experienced by visiting a concentration camp or a Jewish ghetto. Both regimes had built an underground prison where they illegally detained, tortured and executed political prisoners and any dissenting civilians. There is a Soviet tank in the middle of the building. The exhibits were on two floors and featured hair raising actual video footage of Nazi and Soviet eras. The most moving are the interviews of real survivors of both regimes. We saw countless people describe what they went through, in thorough detail. From Soviet Gulag prisoners to abandoned housewives to political prisoners to ordinary civilians, the tales of horror are heart breaking. But the most excruciating video footage is that made by Nazis in which they had filmed piles upon piles of bodies of mostly Jewish victims in the Auschwitz concentration camp, skeletons being taken out of incinerators and the worst of all, bodies being thrown in mass graves using construction cranes! Having seen the actual camp at Auschwitz and the artifacts of victims there, this video footage gives the industrialized mass murdering a very vivid form, one that will be hard to forget. We also saw footage showing destruction of Budapest during the Second World War and the propagandist regime of Rakosi, the student of Stalin who headed the so-called sovereign government of Hungary but was a puppet whose strings were pulled by his Soviet masters. We also saw speeches and fake news tooting the prosperity of Hungary that were played inside voting booths in rigged elections. After exploring the main exhibition on the first two floors, we took the elevator down to the basement. The elevator is designed to go down at a very slow speed and during the ride down, a prison guard narrates a highly detailed scene of an execution in the basement - no special last requests were entertained and last letters to their loved ones were also torn apart. We then saw the cells of detainees and different types of inhumane punishment chambers where detainees were subjected to torture like standing all night with light in their eyes or crouching down all day with no room to stand up. The House of Terror portrays the cruelty of the two totalitarian regimes exceptionally well. We got so engrossed in learning about the experiences of victims that we didn't realize that we spent more than 4 hours there. The House of Terror's main audience is Hungarian people and for a change, we saw more locals than tourists at a museum. The last thing that we saw before leaving the building was pictures of victimizers or oppressors. The most chilling aspect of the whole experience is that most of them are still alive and living with the rest of the community at large and have never stood trial or been brought to justice. We left wondering how the Hungarian people handle that tricky situation - cannot be easy.
Then we walked on Andrassi Boulevard and a few blocks away saw the Opera building. It's an impressive building with Greco-Roman architecture on the outside. We continued walking and after checking the menus of a couple of restaurants, we decided to have lunch at a traditional Hungarian cuisine restaurant. It was a very hot day so the shade of the trees while sitting on the restaurant patio was a welcome respite. We wanted to have a refreshing light meal so ordered salads. The goat cheese salad and the salmon salad were both very good and surprisingly, the serving of cheese/salmon was quite gracious. We had homemade lemonades with the salads and then shared a slice of a traditional Hungarian cake which was somewhat of a cross between a three-milk Mexican cake and a baked cinnamon bread roll. We had coffee after dessert and then continued walking on the boulevard, towards the Danube river and the Chain Bridge. During our walk, we saw the Saint Stephan's church with its Baroque dome and passed by Elizabeth Square where people were dipping their feet in a public pool. We also shared a scoop of ice cream while walking on the boulevard. When the boulevard ended, we were on the riverside boundary of Pest. We then crossed the famous Chain Bridge which is a wrought iron and stone suspension bridge that has pedestrian sidewalks on both sides and car lanes in the middle. It was opened in 1849 as the first permanent bridge on the Danube in Hungary. The bridge incurred heavy damage in the Second World War where the middle half was destroyed by bombing. It was then reconstructed and reopened in 1949. There are statues of two lions on each side of the bridge.
After crossing the bridge, we were in Buda at the base of the hill that has the castle district. We took the one-car funicular train up the hill while admiring the bird's eye view of Pest. The main landmark in Pest's skyline is the Hungarian Parliament. After reaching the top of the hill next to the Buda Castle, we took postcard pictures showing the Chain Bridge, Danube river and the Parliament. Then we started exploring Buda Castle. When you see Buda's skyline from the Pest side, two main landmarks are prominent. One is the Buda Castle and the other is the Fisherman's Bastion which we saw a little later. We walked through Buda Castle's cobblestone external courtyard which has a giant statue in the middle. They've created a walkway that runs next to the boundary of the castle walls so we followed that and explored breathtaking views of the Danube on one side and the stone building of the Buda Castle on the other side. We stopped at a couple of towers to take pictures. There was a live orchestra playing at the base of the hill so walking along the wall with that background music and a pleasant breeze was a refreshing experience. The castle is not used anymore and houses an art gallery but we didn't go inside.
Then we started walking through the castle district towards the Fisherman's Bastion. It's a very peaceful and quiet area. The most remarkable thing about Budapest is that most buildings were damaged or destroyed in the Second World War so everything that we saw was repaired or reconstructed. But they've done an excellent job of recreating that old world feel and it's hard to tell that some of these buildings are only a few decades and not centuries old. We reached the Saint Matthias Church which looked very similar to Vienna's Saint Stephan's Cathedral with its colored roof and gothic facade. Then we were at Fisherman's Bastion which is a purely decorative structure comprising parapets and towers. It's seven towers represent the seven Magyar chiefs. The main highlight of these medieval looking white towers are the ornate white marble "windows" through which you can see Pest and the Parliament building. We sat there for a few minutes taking in the view and then walked a little farther to the old town/city hall which has been preserved in its damaged condition. Then we made our way back to a street a few blocks away where we had spotted some restaurants. We picked an Italian pizzeria and had a white sauce pizza and traditional chicken breast stuffed with cheese. By this time, the sun had gone down so we went back to the Fisherman's Bastion to take in the night view of Danube and the lit up Parliament building.
Then we walked back to the funicular station and rode it down the hill. Then we crossed Chain Bridge and explored the lively Danube Promenade street right next to the river. There were street performers and restaurants with live music. We saw many street performers in Prague, Vienna and Budapest but restaurants with live music seems to be a Budapest thing only and the music is quite good too. By this time, we had walked almost 20 kilometers and despite regular breaks throughout the day, our feet needed rest. We stopped at a Thai massage parlor and had a quick 30 minute massage which was very much needed to be able to walk back. After the massage, we walked back to our hotel and went to bed after a hot and tiring day. Till the next update, take care and goodbye!
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