Budapest

Here is how I'd imagined Hungary: very poor, lots of farms and farm animals, strange old women in clogs who want to bring you into their small houses with low roofs (really what I'm getting at here is the witch from Hansel and Gretel, and her house, if it weren't made of candy. I realize this is a German folktale, but for some reason in my mind it screams Hungary), highly caloric food (lots of bread), folk dancing involving a lot of strange little hops, ugly language. For some reason I'd lumped Hungary with Poland, though they're nowhere near each other on the map. But both have that harsh sounding language with a lot of "ch"s and both are small countries in Europe that I know almost nothing about. The only Hungarian person I knew was the evil cleaning lady "Ilona" on my painting program in Italy, summer 2008. She was fired half way through the program for being so rude to both students and faculty on the trip.

Anyways - Hansel, Gretel, and Ilona aside, Budapest is in fact stunning. It's the most underrated city I've ever been to - no one told me it was like a smaller, cheaper, funkier Paris - and I want to spread the word.

Train Station

Last Friday, Lizzie and I woke up at 5 am to make our 8:30 flight. We met Mandee at the airport. Two flights and a metro ride later, we arrived, exhausted, in downtown Pest. By then it was about three o'clock. After checking into our hostel, we decided to walk around and get our bearings. By about 4:30 the sky was pitch black, and I think we all shared the same odd feeling of not really knowing where we were or who we were or what time it was. Stumbling around Hungary under a black sky, feeling drunk with exhaustion, it was all very twilight zone.

But even in the dark, the architecture in Budapest is spectacular. It reminded me in many ways of Paris, because every building is its own brand of beautiful. There's a lot of art nouveau influence, which I was excited to recognize from my Modern Architecture class at Brown.

On Saturday, we headed to Margaret Island, a 2.5 km island, smack in the middle of the Danube River, which separates Buda from Pest. Budapest became a single city, occupying both banks of the river, in 1873.

The Danube

The island is like a little forest oasis in the middle of an otherwise fairly cosmopolitan city. It was lovely to see some flaming fall foliage - there's none of that in Greece. (It's also seventy five degrees here in Greece, which feels a little strange). The smell of fall reminded me of North America and got me pretty excited about going home for christmas.

Last year at Brown, I auditioned and was called back for a play called "The Danube," by Maria Irene Forbes. I didn't end up getting the part, but through auditions and callbacks I had to do a pretty thorough reading of the script. The play starts out as a fairly realistic love story, apart from the repetition of many lines in Hungarian. Gradually it becomes more hallucinatory as Budapest is overwhelmed by war, which goes unmentioned in the actual script. There's a whole lot of coughing and bleeding, and it's pretty damn depressing, not to mention weird. This play is what I thought of when I heard the name "Danube", and I'm glad I was able to replace that image with one of a river reflecting sunlight.

On Margaret Island

View of the city from Fisherman's Bastion

Fisherman's Bastion

We then made our way over to the Buda side of the river, and walked up "Castle Hill" to the Fisherman's Bastion.  It reminded me of the castle from Beauty and The Beast, and for a minute I convinced myself that Beauty and the Beast must have been set in Hungary. Then Mandee pointed out that the opening song in the movie begins with "Bonjour!" 

Saturday night we went to a lovely orchestra concert in St. Stephan's cathedral, which puts some of those grand old cathedrals I saw in Italy to shame.

Sunday, Mandee and I went to the baths. Actually, we went to the largest medicinal bath in Europe, Szechenyi. That was relaxing but also just weird. The building was impressive, yes, but so are all of the other buildings in Budapest. Szechenyi's beauty did not make up for the horrible smells inside. We opted for the standard bath: it was basically just ten different public pools, each of a slightly different temperature, that we went and soaked in with a bunch of old Hungarian people (thankfully this was not a nude bath).

Buda Castle

Then to the national gallery, which is housed in Buda Castle (the first Hungarian royal residence). There was a lot of cool art - I especially liked the room with poster prints.

Poster I was diggin at the National Gallery

Sunday night we went to a Hungarian opera called "Bank Ban." We got the 2 Euro seats so couldn't see anything, which was fine because it was a concert version of the opera anyway. It was nice music, but I must confess- as much as i love music and singing, operas bore me to death. When my brother Alex was a young and budding opera star and performed in "Tosca," I think I fell asleep. That was about twelve years ago, and things haven't changed. However, it was worth it just to see the building - the Hungarian Opera house is pretty spectacular.

Inside the opera house

Opera House Ceiling 

I guess I caught the travel bug, while there. This past Tuesday, I booked a flight to Berlin for this coming weekend, because (surprise suprirse) we have another long weekend. But then Wednesday I woke up feeling pretty sick, and today cancelled my flight.  :(

I guess you could say I'm hitting a bit of a "slump" in the program, and maybe my desire to get out of here, and my sickness, reflects that. It's nice to have all this time off, but I  feel pretty tuned out when it comes to work, and have no routine at the moment. I'm also feeling pretty lonely. Please come visit me!

Hearing Hungarian and not understanding a single word made me realize that I actually DO know some greek, so that was satisfying. I would find myself trying to speak Greek in Hungarian restaurants and museums.




More pretty stuff:

A painting I like

Dudes on Unicycles (there were lots of these)

Proof of Life in the Danube

This house reminds me of a cake

Budapest at Night

Over and out!