Playing the Tour Guide

Community Highlights Europe Playing the Tour Guide

6.9. Friday

We arrived yesterday evening to warm Budapest and today is time to show my favorite city to Toni! I spent 3 months here in student exchange some years ago and absolutely loved it. And today I would fully embrace my new self-titled role as tour-guide. I have dubbed this a Toni's Best Day at Budapest, Toni is saying that it is actually my best day, but he doesn't fool me, he is going to have fun!

Before we arrived to our first stop, we kind of stumbled upon Museum of Ethnography.

This building wasn’t here when I last visited. We didn’t go inside but it has a cool structure, you can climb a steps to it’s roof where we of course did a little detour to. It is situated in the castle park of Vajnahunyad vara. Vajnahunyad vara was built in 1896. My student exchange was in winter so it was nice to see surroundings in summer too. In winter they make an ice rink in the yard, where you could rent skates, that was fun. During summer there are festivals, concerts and exhibitions. Like Magnalica festical, festival of hairy pig. It wasn’t held now nor can you visit inside the castle without the tour, but we were happy to just stroll around in the park and around the lake.

Hösök tere (or Heroes Square in English) was the very first sight I saw in Budapest back in the day. It is just beside the castle and walking by Millennium Memorial is hard to miss. In the middle, is column with Archangel Gabriel and surrounding him are the chieftains that founded Hungary in the ninth century. Albeit, Archangel Gabriel was just been taken down to get some TLC, lots of tourists were milling around and the weather was going to be hot. In mid-morning it was already several degrees above +20 Celsius. Luckily it was cloudy so it wasn’t unbearably hot.

From Hösök Tere we continued our journey via metro. Budapest metro is second oldest Metro, only preceded by London Underground. Budapest Metro was opened in 1896, London 1890. They still have the old decor and traincarts, which I wanted to show Toni. And it didn’t hurt it being a convenient way to travel to our next destination, Café Gerbeaud. Our first pitstop for the day. I promised you touristy, didn’t I? This is it. Or part of it anyway. Gerbeaud Kavehaz was first opened in a different name, in different location in 1858. The café in Vörösmarty square were opened in 1870, and in 1880 owner get himself an new business partner named Emile Gerbeaud, hence the name Cafe Gerbeaud.
Prices were definitely touristy, and while Gerbeauds is known for it’s cakes and pastries both of us took more liking to their coctails ,than their cakes.

When we are travelling, usually Toni is the one doing all the navigation but this time it was almost completely me! And I am proud to say that I went wrong only once! Which I noticed immediately. If you look the photo from the metro below, you can see that there are two stops almost identically named, Vörösmarty utca and Vörösmarty ter. As you might have guessed, I jumped the gun and ordered us out on the wrong stop. But, knowing my navigation skills, this teeny-tiny-itchy-bitsy glitch is nothing. If I would have steered us on several kilometer-long detour, even that would have been just a normal Tuesday for me. So, we just got back down in the station and waited for the next train.

“Forward, said granny in the snow”, they say in Finland, and after finishing our coctails and peep inside of the café, forward we went. It is only short walk from Vörösmarty Square to the banks of Danube where we headed next. To see the Little Princess statue and the holocaust memorial Shoes on the Danube Bank. Statue of Little Princess was inspired by the sculptor’s own daughter who played princess when she was a little. Now statue wearing of her princess attire (bathrobe and raggedy crown) is sitting in the tramway railing.

Yet another short-ish walk separates this whimsical statue and the more morbid reminder of the nazi regime, Shoes on the Danube Bank.
In 1940’s Arrow Cross militiamen shot several jews, and for them it was convenient to do it at the river bank, so that the Danube would whisk away the evidences, of their acts. Often, they ordered their victims to remove their shoes. Now on the bank of the river lies a memorial for the victim of this genocide in the form of 60 shoes made of iron.

On the opposite bank, little to the south, is another historical place, Budas Castle.
It is one of the Unesco World heritage sites, this, Hungarian Parliament building and Chain Bridge, with its lion statues are the most famous landmarks of Budapest. First castle on this spot was built 1265 but palace that you can see now is “only” 250 years old, built between 1749-1769. The old medieval castle took damage during the centuries and was destroyed all together in great siege of 1686. At that point, era of national rulers had ended, due to the Ottomans, and castle decline had already begun. And even before that, Ottomans had transferred to Constantinople all the valuables, like King Matthias Corvinus’s statues of Pallas Athene and Hercules and the palace had been badly damaged. Huge part of the final destruction of the medieval castle were explosion that happened during a siege. Ottomans used one of the old towers to store a gunpowder and when it was hit by a cannon, it went BOOM.

And even since that, the castle had been built back up several times and have been the residence of library, nunnery, University, Palatine Court and a Royal Court. Being deemed too small for holding a court, the palace, have been enlargened several times. In somewhat vain, fighting between nazis and Soviet Red Army destroyed this palace too. The medieval remains were reconstructed in 1966 and the Palace were modernized. Seems that the building and rebuilding of this particular piece of history is never ending. In the 21st century, for example, there have been modernization and demodernization and, the Prime minister’s residence has been relocated back to the castle.

Castle Hill is popular place for the tourists and locals alike to roam around. There is funicular taking people up to the castle but we opted to pass it and walk up. We ended up in the Fisherman’s Bastion. In my opinion, it is one of the most beautiful places in the city. First time I visited here, it was winter and dark, the lights were on, and there was violinist playing in the steps to the Bastion. Now the weather couldn’t be more different, it was broad daylight and the violinist were replaced by tourists. It was still fun, though. And this time I didn’t need to wear a quilted jacket!

Bastion was built in between the late 1890’s and early 1900 and it was never intended to be part of the fortification but a place for the people to enjoy the panoramic views of their city. Since its building, it has obviously become a place for the tourists to do the same.

In castle district there are several little boutiques and cafes, pubs and restaraunts. Not yet hungry we opted to stop for a beer and enjoy the warm weather, in one of the little pubs. They had live music. Musicians where partly annoying, partly endearing, moving through the customers, asking where they were from. After hearing the origin, they played a song, or at least part of the song, from the homecountry of the customer. They also knew song from Finland which they played, Säkkijärven Polkka.

I had planned us for to head in Westend Mall after touring the castle hill, which we did, and watch a movie. To reminiscence my student-exchange (our home town doesn’t have a movie theater so of course it was WOW-thing to be able to go to the movies when-ever you wanted while living in big city like Budapest). But. In Hungary they dub most of the movies. They do have few movies playing with subtitles but all of those would not start until too late so we opted to get dinner now instead.
We found a great Italian restaurant just beside the movie theater, the food and wine were amazing!

After little break at the hotel, we headed to Ruin Bars to spend an evening. In early 2000’s buildings in former Jewish ghetto were abandoned. Some entrepreneurs did a little gamble and opened bar called Szimpla Kert in one of these buildings. That was the beginning of Ruin bars of Budapest. Apparently now some people travel to the city just to do some bar hopping and partying in there. I tried to take photos to catch the atmosphere but wasn’t that successful. The place definitely has a great vibe and because of that, even if we were exhausted, we ordered a second drinks. Which sadly didn’t revive us as much as I had hoped for. I had planned us to spend a whole evening here, but if we want to go to bed before 11PM on a holiday, who would, dare to stop us? Hah.

This featured blog entry was written by hennaonthetrek from the blog hennaonthetrek.
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