Three days in Budapest. We did a lot of walking in this city, which has a feels totally different from Prague. Often, we ate in the gigantic Central Market. This grand structure originally incorporated an indoor canal by which goods were delivered to the market’s traders. It must be four times the size of the St. Lawrence Market in Toronto, and houses only god knows how many tons of sausages. I particularly liked snacking on lángos, flat disks of fried dough which came with a variety of ingredients, sort of like pizza slices. They would be a big hit in Canada if they were introduced.
The architecture of Budapest is quite different from Prague. The Hungarians seem to like monumental grandeur. There are broad Parisian-style boulevards. Statues of mighty-thewed Magyar warriors, looking like they stepped out of a Conan comic, are everywhere. But the most distinctive feature of the city is its unusual number of bookstores. I have never seen any place with such a number and variety of bookstores, from humble little nooks to huge multi-floor emporia. The Hungarians must read a lot. Almost all of this huge mass of printed matter is in Magyar, though you can usually find a few German, French, and (more rarely) English shelves in any store. Almost anything of significance seems to be translated and published here.
Our most serious tourist foray was to the National Museum. This was a very well planned and organized museum of Hungarian history, proceeding systematically, room by room, from prehistory to the present. The museum even included a reproduction of a 1930’s Budapest cinema, with newsreels running, and posters of Hungarian movie stars on the walls. I was particularly pleased by the Avar room, since I had never seen any artifacts from that culture before. The Avars were an Asian tribe, either Turkic or Mongolic, or some combination of both, who pushed their way into central Europe, and had a more-or-less stable kingdom based in Hungary from 568 AD to 810 AD., after which the self-identified ethnicity quickly vanished. Presumably, they simply melted into the growing Slavic population. When the Magyars arrived in Hungary, in 895 AD, there was little trace of them. But during the height of their power, they were the principal threat to the Byzantine Empire, and it was their invasion that drove the Germanic Lombards across the alps into Italy.
In the basement, there was something really fine. Budapest, in Roman times, was the city of Aquincum. The city had around 30,000 inhabitants by the end of the 2nd century, most of whom would have been Romanized celts. But a full Roman legion was stationed there, so there would have been a fair number of people from all over the empire. Aquincum was a center of stonework, mass-producing tombstones, among other things. Because of this, the museum has an entire room of engraved tombstones, often for people of quite humble station. A mule-driver, for instance, had quite a nice tombstone. There was an extraordinary variety of styles, religious symbols, and types of inscription. There were poignant stories: a beautiful girl who died young, a legionnaire from Cyprus who married a local girl. Rarely have I felt so strong a connection with people in the Roman world, as in this room.
We walked all over the city. We climbed the steep bluffs on the Buda side of the Danube. We entered a church inside a cave. We walked the full length of Andrássy Avenue, all of which is designated a World Heritage Site. We walked the grounds of the High Castle. We some of the luxurious Baths, which are essentially ancient Roman baths as transmitted through Byzantium and the Ottoman Empire to the Hapsburgs, with rooms at different temperatures, masseurs, and so forth. I was tempted by this sybaritic paastime, but Isaac was not, and I didn’t feel like going alone. We saw a bizarre little castle in a park which contained a statue memorializing the works of “Anonymous“. It is definitely an elegant city.
The hostel we stayed at was built into one of the typical inner-court apartment blocks. These are the linear descendants of the Roman insulae, each one being a little village in the city. The hostel was run by a young Canadian and American, and it happened that there were other Canadians staying while we were there, so we found ourselves in a long evening of poker, followed by a trip to a sleazy bar. We discovered that Hungary produces some of the world’s most inedible potato chips. Isaac experienced momentary terror when the slats of the bunk-bed above him broke under the strain of a guest known as The Behemoth.
I determined that if I stayed in Budapest, I would soon weigh 200 lbs. Just too much good food, most of it involving potatoes and sausages. A dangerous place for me.
After three days, we returned to Prague. Isaac is headed off, alone, to Australia. I’m staying for a few days, until I catch my flight back home.
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