Budapest

I just got back from a week-long trip to visit my old friend Matt in Budapest. Matt is there for the year tutoring English for underprivileged Hungarian kids. He shares an apartment with a French guy and three "Ukrainian boys" about 30 min by metro from the city center.

Budapest is a very interesting city with a long and tumultuous history. The architecture is a mix of glamorous Hapsburg era buildings with intricate stonework and paintings on the exterior walls and the nondescript cement building typical of Soviet Bloc countries in the 20th Century. I got the impression that there is a period that the country would be happy to forget. In the national history museum, the rooms that focused on the era from World War I to about 1990 were largely empty and the other visitors I saw were usually moving pretty quickly through the exhibits. The rooms displaying the glory of medieval and renaissance Hungary, on the other hand, were packed and I felt like I was moving faster than everyone else.

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I also had the unique opportunity to visit Momento Park, which is a small park on the outskirts of Budapest that has gathered together a bunch of old communist memorials, statues and plaques. Most were made of cement or copper or both and glorified workers, revolutions or party leaders. Some were beginning to rust and rot away, but most were very imposing and impressive. There were few other people in the park when I was there (the warmest, sunniest afternoon during my time in Budapest) and the other visitors I encountered were all foreigners.



Some of the more impressive historic sites I saw are from the era before communism. St. Stephan's Basilica is the largest and most ornate cathedral in Budapest. It was built by and to glorify St. Stephan who united Hungary into one empire in 1001 AD. It has a number of impressive paintings, including one of God himself, but the centerpiece is a series of bronze plaques that depict Grand Prince Stephan winning battles, uniting Hungarians and generally looking glorious. In the center of the pulpit there is also a large statue of Stephan under a sort of pavilion. The basilica also has St. Stephan's fist in a glass case in a side chamber. There are few things I love more than the Catholic affinity for relics (usually meaning body parts).



My favorite building though was the Parliament building situated right on the Danube. It has some of the most intricate stonework I have ever seen and it's done on the grandest scale imaginable. Up close it appears to be bristling with spines, but from a certain distance the stonework blends together and makes the building look almost blurry or soft. It was completed in 1904.




The best part of the trip by far was reuniting with an old friend so far from home. Matt and I grew up together in Westlake and I found myself feeling a bit like I was home in Cleveland a few times during the week (though this may have had more to do with the grey skies and the light rain slowly eroding the dirty, week-old snow). It had been too long since I had seen Matt and it was really a blast to get a glimpse of his life in Europe, compare notes on what it's like to live life as a foreigner and reminisce about high school.