Tour of Budapest

We boarded the train to Budapest on a cold, almost wintry morning in Vienna. The weather didn’t improve during our trip, and the train we took was decidedly older than that which we had been transported in from Salzburg to Vienna. The first car we boarded looked as though it had been built in the 1960s. About five minutes before the train left we were informed that we had to move up from our car (which was at the end of the train) to another car (which was at the front of the train). We were told that the car we had boarded was in fact going to be left in Vienna. The new car looked and felt as though it had been build perhaps two decades after the other one, but it was still nothing like the Austrian train from Salzburg to Vienna.

When we arrived in Budapest, we took a bus tour of the city. I didn’t really enjoy it, especially having come so recently from Vienna. If I were to compare the cities (and I will), I would say that Budapest is at least fifty years behind Vienna in terms of development. A lot of the buildings had a look of fading grandeur about them, accentuated by ever-present graffiti, peeling paint, and occasional bullet holes left over from the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. This, coupled with the less-than pleasant weather of overcast skies and biting wind meant that I was less than pleased with Budapest.

Anyway, our tour took us up to an old Hapsburg fortress on the top of a hill overlooking the Buda part of the city. It was constructed by the Hapsburgs after the Hungarians attempted another revolution. In World War Two it was used by the German Wehrmacht as an anti-aircraft battery against the advancing Red Army. The Russians erected a monument to their success there after the German surrender. The monument is today known as the “Liberty Statue” and now officially commemorates Hungary’s independence from the Soviet Union.

From the hill we traveled down into the Pest part of Budapest. There we went through some of the major historic areas before ending up at the Cathedral of Saint Steven, named after the first king of Hungary. We toured through the church and were able to see the supposed Holy Right Hand of Saint Steven in the cathedral’s reliquary.

From the Cathedral we went up to the Palace Hill, which contains the fortress built after the Mongol invasions and then the Renaissance palace which was built over that fortress in the 15th century. I had coffee at a café in the lee of another church, and then set off with the rest of the group out of Budapest and toward the village of Piliscscaba, which was adjacent to our accommodations at the Pázmány Péter Catholic University.

The University was founded in the 19th century, but was taken over by the Russians after World War Two and used as a military college. Some of the buildings from that period are still there, from the gymnasium (which is still in used), to the tank garage covered in Russian graffiti and vines. The University was refounded in the 1990s and many of the buildings were replaced. I stayed in the Catherineum, a dormitory which I actually quite like.

After arriving tired, hungry, and rather out-of-sorts, we had dinner in the basement of the Stephaneum, one of the University’s main buildings. The food was cooked by a local family from the village of Piliscsaba, and like all Slavic dinners it began with shots of the local liquor. In this case it was a kind of whisky distilled from who-knows-what that packed quite a kick. The food for the evening was a pork goulash, meatballs wrapped in cabbage, and a cabbage and sour cream salad.

The high point of Sunday (for our first day in Hungary was a Sunday) was the dancing and music after dinner. Four of the university students formed a quartet of violin, viola, double bass, and hurdy-gurdy, and they were joined by a pair of Hungarians who proceeded to teach us various kinds of Hungarian folk dancing. We all enjoyed this immensely, although one dance was more than enough to tucker me out for the evening. We went to bed exhausted but pleased, looking forward to the next day.

The next day, however, was not out to fulfill an iota of our expectations. As I write this in my room in the Catherineum, I can still hear the rain that has not let up since I arose this morning. Breakfast we had in a cafeteria in the Stephaneum, and here I must diverge to make a note upon the Hungarian economy.

Can you name the Hungarian currency?

Without using Wikipedia?

Just off the top of your head?

A clue: it is not the Euro.

No?

Well, if you could name the currency off the top of your head then you are a far cleverer person than I and I respect you for it. I certainly couldn’t name the currency when I arrived in Budapest. Like the blinkered, prejudiced American that I am, I thought that since Hungary was in the EU, it used the Euro. Right?

Wrong.

Although Hungary is in the EU, it does not meet the EU’s economic standards for the use of the Euro. Known as the Maasricht Criteria, these state that:
A country’s currency must have a currency to euro rate of plus or minus 15% for 2 years
The country’s budget deficit must be no more than 3% and its state debt no more than 60% for two years
Now, Hungary’s currency (which is incidentally called the forint) is wildly inflated, with the current exchange rate being one Euro to about 240 forints. Thus, it isn’t until at least 2013 that Hungary can have a hope of adopting the Euro.

So I withdrew from an ATM this morning (Monday morning, that is) 5000 forints, which is equivalent to about 20 Euros. Now I still have about 2000 forints, and I’ve no idea what to do with them. Maybe I’ll tape them to my laptop as a decoration or something. I’m open to suggestions.

So I trudged through the rain to breakfast, through the rain to the ATM and back, and through the rain for my tour of the campus (which was cut short due to the rain). After the truncated tour we attended a lecture (in English) about the Hungarian economy where I learned the information I’ve written above. After the lecture it was on to the University’s train station for our trip to Esztergom, a small city on the border of Hungary and Slovakia.

Esztergom was small, crowded, and somewhat poor. We went by bus to the Basilica, which was built in the 19th century in the same general style as St. Stephan’s Cathedral in Budapest. We toured the cathedral, glad to be out of the rain which had pursued us from the university and had by now reached the “pouring” stage.

Part of our tour included a visit to the catheral’s treasury, which contained a slew of relics, ecclesiastical garb, and various liturgical implements fashioned from large quantities of gold and gems. Unfortunately, photography was forbidden except for the relic chamber, so I haven’t any pictures of the treasury proper for you.

Afterwards it was a group photo in front of the cathedral, and then a walk over the Danube and into Slovakia for lunch. This was perhaps the most miserable part, as the rain and wind intensified and my coat, which had by now proved its worth ten times over, began to reach the saturation point.

After a very cheap lunch (60 Slovakian whatevers = 5.8 Euros for drink and entree) we walked back to the train station. Although the rain had lessened a good deal during lunch, the temperature began to drop as the sun set. This coupled with clothing wet from out previous dousings meant that it was hard to tell whether the weather had improved at all or just changed tactics. Oh, and we missed the train, which meant an hour’s wait for the next one.

So that concludes my adventure in Hungary. We leave Budapest Keleti station at 1pm and settle in for a 6-hour train back to Salzburg. Overall, I didn’t like Budapest nearly as much as I did Vienna, but at least the trip’s over and I can start planning my next outing to the Austrian capitol, this one to make up for the scant time I spent this time around.

My schedule’s going to be pretty packed until we finish up in Salzburg on the 24th of September. I’ve got class on Saturday (the 20th) to make up for lost time, but Sunday the 21st is free. Most of the class are training up to Munich for Oktoberfest, but I intend to spend the day in a considerably more peaceful manner, wandering the Aldstadt of Salzburg and practicing photography. Then we leave Salzburg on the morning of the 25th, and I take a night train at 9:30 that same day to meet Dad in Düsseldorf for the start of my ten day’s break.

Until next time,

-JA