Pearl of the Danube (Budapest)

Member Name: collingwood21

Product:	Budapest
Date:	13/06/05 (881 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Reasonable Prices, Great Cultural City, Excellent Public Transport

Disadvantages: Umm...the obsession with Paprika?

A late 19th century traveller to Budapest neatly summed up the enigmatic quality of the city thus: “if one is travelling from the east in the direction of Western Europe, it is in Budapest that one experiences the breath of Western civilisation. However, if one is travelling in the opposite direction, it is here that one first gets a taste of the East…”.

Situated in a beautiful natural setting on the banks of the Danube (which, incidentally, isn’t blue), the city grew out of two towns on opposite banks of the river; Buda on the hilly western bank and Pest on the eastern plain. They have been united as one city since 1873. Budapest should rightly be thought of as one of the great cultural cities of Europe, but it is only relatively recently (with entrance into the EU and the growth of budget airlines such as Easyjet flying into the city) that it is widely being recognised and visited as such. It has promenades along the river banks that I personally think are the equal of anything in Paris (and less crowded too); a café culture selling coffee and pastries with a decidedly Viennese style; over 90 different museums; an opera house, and a growing wine producing reputation. In short, Budapest has a lot to offer the “culture vulture” visitor, and at prices that are reasonable by UK standards (for example, a good “all you can eat” buffet dinner with drinks cost me around £10). The currency, incidentally, is the Hungarian Forint; although the exchange rate does fluctuate, for the purposes of this review it is a good guideline that there were around 350HUF to the pound (roughly 250HUF to the Euro) when I travelled in May of this year.

My first glimpse of Budapest was not, I admit, an encouraging one. Arriving late at night in the middle of a rain storm I could see nothing of the city from the air, so this left my first taste of Hungary to the taxi ride that our travel agent had booked to ferry us to our hotel. And what was the first thing I saw upon leaving the airport? A vast billboard emblazoned with the words “Tesco welcomes you to Hungary”, LOL! Ferihegy airport is around 16km east of the city centre, so this meant a drive of around 20 minutes (the speedway is wonderfully empty!) through the outskirts of the city, which still has a decidedly Eastern Bloc air about it: stark high rise buildings, panel housing and decaying factories…and quite a few Trabants parked along the way. I did start to wonder if I had made a good choice for my holiday destination at this point, but reminded myself that no city is beautiful everywhere – and when you reach the city centre, all the shabby suburbs are soon forgotten.


**BUDA**
By the next morning the heavy rain had stopped and so it was over to Buda to begin my exploration. The Buda side of the city is dominated by Várhegy (Castle Hill), a mile-long plateau encrusted with bastions, mansions, museums and the Royal Palace. This is a must-see for visitors, the historic centre of Budapest.

The easiest way to get to the top is by using the Siklo, a 19th century funicular that runs from Clark Ádám Tér, but unfortunately some rather intimidating Hungarian police had shut off the area on the hill around the funicular station, effectively closing the service down (apparently because there was some VIP visiting what we took to be a government building). This of course meant I had to walk up the hill…but at least there was a view worthy of all that strenuous exercise at the end of it all. The hill’s height and striking location (which made it a strategic utility for the Hungarian Kings and was later appreciated by the occupying Ottomans and Hapsburgs) now leave it with grand views down over the Buda waterfront and the plain of Pest. The buildings on Várhegy appear to be stunning masterpieces of architecture ranging in date from medieval fortifications through to the elegance of the 18th century, although you should take this with a large dose of salt: they are mostly reconstructions of the original buildings which were turned to rubble during the siege of 1945. While the palace is a very good and faithful reconstruction, the Mátyás Church and Fisherman’s Bastion are romanticised 19th century buildings, reflecting the obsession with nationalism that Hungary had at this time after centuries of defeat and occupation (Várhegy has actually been damaged by war some 86 times over the course of it’s history). The streets of the surrounding Castle District do however still follow their medieval courses, and if you can look beyond the Tourist Information, souvenir shops and boutiques you can still see some rather lovely Gothic and Baroque architecture. There is also a folk market here selling local crafts to tourists, although be aware that prices are inflated due to the location (Castle Hill is a hotspot for foreign tourists).

Although Várhegy offers several museums to the tourists who throng here, I restricted myself to the Budapest Történeti Múzeum (Budapest Historical Museum), which provides a decent introduction to the city for 500HUF. Set across three floors, it starts with Prehistory at the top, and then takes you through Medieval Budapest and Modern Times on the ground floor, with the basement containing the remains of the medieval royal palace, one of the few pieces of genuine historical architecture on the hill. While the older parts have patchy English translations, the newer galleries have clear text in both English and occasionally German. For the price, it is certainly a worthwhile way to spend an hour or so (although the presentation is quite conservative by modern Western standards – no flashy computers and interactives here!) and helps to give you an understanding of the historical background to the city.


**PEST**
For the second day of my visit, it was time to explore Pest. A short walk from my hotel was one of the landmark buildings in the city, the Great Synagogue, which is the second largest synagogue in the World (the only one bigger being the Temple Emmanuel in New York). It was built in the Byzantine-Moorish style in the 1850s and certainly presents a dramatic front to the visitor – 19th century Hungarian nationalism can once again be seen in the subtle use of red, yellow and blue brickwork, these being the colours of the Hungarian flag. Entrance to the Synagogue is 2000HUF, which allows you to marvel at a quite stunning interior and visit the memorial garden to the rear of the building (there is also a Jewish Museum, but I didn’t visit it). Visitors to the garden pass through a courtyard containing simple headstones that mark the mass grave of over 2000 Hungarian Jews who died in 1944; there is also a small section of brick wall mounted by barbed wire, part of the original wall of the Ghetto, with a plaque commemorating the liberation in 1945 by Russian soldiers. The garden itself is dominated by a metal sculpture of a weeping willow tree – each leaf on the tree in engraved with the name of a family who died during the Holocaust.

A short walk away is Saint Stephen’s Basilica. It took so long to build, that a local saying amongst debtors is “I’ll pay you back when the basilica is finished”. An impressive job was done in the end though, with a 96m dome (which alludes to the year AD 896 when the Magyars – the tribal group considered to be the ethnic roots of modern Hungarians – arrived in Budapest) and an interior stuffed with frescoes, carvings, variegated marbles and some distinctly Eastern gilded artwork. The basilica is also home to Hungary’s holiest relic, the Szent Jobb (claimed to be the mummified hand of Saint Stephen), which is on show in a small chapel to the rear of the building (as long as you pay the custodian 100HUF to turn the lights on, that is). If mummified hands don’t do it for you, however, you can always go up the Panorama Tower instead. For the price of 500HUF you can climb the 400+ steps (or if you are like me, take the lift) to the walkway around the outside of the dome that offers you a commanding view over Pest and the river bank of Buda. It being a clear, sunny day I could see much further than from Várhegy (I can see my house from here!), although I wouldn’t recommend this if you suffer from vertigo.

Having spent a very serious half-day with God, it was time for something a little more light hearted – a trip to the zoo! Budapest zoo is located outside of the city centre in the Városliget, one of the city’s many parks. This particular park starts just behind another of Budapest’s great landmarks, Hosök Tere (Heroes Square – basically the Hungarian equivalent to Trafalgar Square), which can be easily accessed by the Metro at the stop of the same name. Heroes Square is one of the points like Castle Hill where coach loads of tourists are disgorged; as a result the square itself is usually very busy, and crowded with stalls selling over-priced ice cream and soft drinks. The park, just a couple of minutes walk away, is almost utterly devoid of tourists and I heard no other English voices during my visit to the zoo. Budapest, even more so than other cities I have visited, is very much the province of the coach tour and as a result of this, things even a little way from the major sites are almost completely unexplored by foreigners. I think this is a great pity…but it kept the park and zoo quieter for me. ;-) At 800HUF, the zoo was very reasonably priced and excellent value for money. Huge improvements have taken place over recent years to give the animals good living conditions (much better than some of those I saw in the famous London Zoo I might add) and improved visitor facilities, and visiting was a real pleasure – although the lack of foreign visitors does mean that the only English translations you get are the names of the animals. Oh well…but that’s all you really need, isn’t it?

And so to my final day – time for some souvenir hunting. As it is only just opening up to Western visitors, there is not the huge range of touristy mementoes that you might come to expect from European cities. But that is actually a good thing: you can buy some excellent local crafts rather than the usual tacky trinkets! The main tourist shopping area in Budapest is around the Váci Utca, where you will find some “folk shops” that sell crafts to visitors (a lot of wood carvings, but also folk embroidery and Hungarian pottery) and “souvenir delicatessens” (which have Hungarian Tokaji wines, paprika and Palinka, the fiery local spirit). This is a very attractive area to stroll along, although I wouldn’t recommend buying from here as the prices are high; the same is true of the cafes and bars along here, which are notorious for not displaying their prices on the menus so they can over-charge tourists. However, at the far end of the street is the Great Market Hall, which not only has a better ambience but also sells the exact same items for around a third to a half less that the traders on Váci Utca, so buy your souvenirs here. My best buy was a wonderful sketch of the city by a local artist (now hanging in pride of place in my living room) for just 2000HUF.

Of course, I couldn’t leave the city without visiting the Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum (Hungarian National Museum). The origin of the collection dates back to 1802, when the founding assortment of documents, prints, engravings and coins was valued as being the third most valuable national museum in Europe (after the British Museum and the Louvre). The building itself was finished in 1832 and claims to be the oldest purpose built museum in the World (although my Rough Guide has it down as the fourth such building…either way it is old and impressive, with a dominating Grecian style edifice as all good national museums should have). The National Museum is also an important historical landmark, being the stage for the 1848 Revolution (“some noisy mob had their hurly-burly outside so I left for home” complained the director). I was hoping to see the Hungarian coronation regalia on display here, but unfortunately my guide book was a little out of date and I found out once I arrived that it had recently been moved to the Parliament building as part of an extensive re-fit of the museum. This was a little disappointing, but once again I found the newer galleries (covering archaeology, basically prehistory up to the 9th century AD on the ground floor) to be very well done, and offering clear English translations. The older galleries upstairs (covering medieval Hungary up to the end of Communism) had less good translations, but I had no problem following what was going on (but I would have liked to see more labels in English; some were translated, but it was quite patchy and could get frustrating in places). The displays obviously had more money lavished on them than the Historical Museum, and I comfortably spent 3 hours browsing the galleries, so in the end it was certainly not a wasted visit.


**CONCLUSION**
So what were my overall thoughts on Budapest? I found it to be a satisfying visit; Hungary feels more like being in a foreign country than a lot of Europe does these days and a lot of local culture was thriving. I would have liked to spend more time in the city and there were still things to see that I didn't get around to (Budapest has many hot spring spas and I would have loved to have given one a try), but alas, time and money would not permit a longer visit.

The two things that really stood out for me were the language and the food. The language, as you may have noticed from a lot of the words in this review, is very different to other European languages – that is because it is not related to them, Hungarian is actually Asian in origin and is closely related to Turkish. This makes pronunciations difficult for most European visitors, but fortunately the locals are very generous in this respect and are terribly pleased if you just learn the word for “thank you” (köszönöm – pronounced “ker-sur-nurm”). English is widely spoken, especially in anywhere where tourists go, and quite a few Hungarians also speak German. As for the food…well, lets just say that there is a reason why it is not one of the top cuisines in Europe, shall we? The local food is usually contains either goose liver or paprika, neither of which I like, making eating out about as easy as trying to find garlic-free food in Italy, LOL! In the end I did visit a buffet-style restaurant which allowed me to sample some Hungarian food, as I think it is a great pity to travel abroad and not try local foods, but I wasn’t that keen on the savoury dishes. The pastries, on the other hand, were divine!

On a better note, I can only praise the city’s excellent public transport system, being clean, regular and cheap (a Budapest Card costs just 5900HUF for 3 days, gets you unlimited use of the Metro, buses and trams and also free or discounted entries into many attractions). A must buy for any visitor, I think.

I will happily recommend Budapest to you. The best time to visit is spring (March to May) and autumn (September October), when the weather is mild and there are fewer tourists. :-)



Useful Websites:
Tourism Office of Budapest: www.budapestinfo.hu/en/
Visitor Guide: www.sztaki.hu/sztaki/maps/guide.jhtml
Travel and Accommodation: www.budapesthotels.com/systempages/info.asp

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