A Travel Blog (Or Something)

Day 2 / Budapest: Hungary’s dark history

This was the first day of our honeymoon when Ryan and I mutually agreed that we were ready to wrap things up and head home. We were exhausted, our feet hurt, our backs hurt even worse, and getting out of bed in the morning was becoming increasingly difficult. This isn’t to say that we didn’t love every second of our remaining time in Budapest, but we were a little more…slow-going, to say the least.

That being said, I wasn’t the happiest camper when Ryan told me late the night before that we had 9 AM tour tickets to see the Parlamento, or the parliament building of Budapest. The tours are notoriously crowded during the rest of the day, hence the early hour—and once we arrived, I was glad Ryan insisted on it. This parliament building is among the most beautiful we’ve ever seen, both inside and out. The interior hallways, domes, and even doorways are so carefully decorated that every detail is noteworthy, but the combined effect is far from overwhelming. We saw the crown jewels, which Hungary handed over to the U.S. for safekeeping during Nazi and Soviet occupation (the U.S. returned the crown only a few decades ago, when all was safe again); we saw the congress chambers, where important governmental decisions are still made to this day; and we saw one of the grandest two-stairway entrances I’d ever seen, which only opens with the induction of new congress members every few years.

Outside the Parlamento was a starkly different experience: The underground 1956 memorial, which descends from the building’s main square into the vaults beneath it. On October 23, 1956, Hungary made a bold statement against Soviet occupation and the terror it inflicted on government members and low-class families alike. No one was safe under their rule, and Hungary peacefully reminded the occupying soldiers that they were a free nation. For about an hour, it seemed like the Soviets agreed, and were stepping back; so crowds gathered together in front of the parliament building to celebrate and sing Hungary’s national anthem. Not a single person in the crowd was armed, and no one made so much as a move toward the Soviet soldiers who were watching.

And then, out of nowhere, Soviet snipers began shooting into the crowds. Other soldiers followed suit, climbed into their tanks (the U.S.S.R. had sent almost 200 to Hungary to remind local governments who was in charge), and began mowing through the crowds, shooting everyone in sight.

This 1956 revolution—also called the 1956 massacre—is one of the most scarring memories in Hungary’s past, and so many citizens are still alive who watched the slaughter of friends and family members in a single day. Soon after, the Soviets captured (and later, publicly executed) Hungary’s beloved—and gently anti-Soviet—leader, who is commemorated in a statue that stands looking across the square at the Parlamento.

So it should be easy to imagine how a 1956 memorial might be a horrific experience. They’d gathered video footage, photos, testimonies, and other relics from the days and weeks that followed.

The entire visit was an incredibly heavy one, as was our next destination: The “Shoes on the Danube”—a Holocaust memorial featuring statues of shoes left messily along the shore. When the Nazis occupied Hungary, they lined members of Budapest’s Jewish population up along the freezing Danube, made them take off their shoes and valuables, and shot them into the water. When they started running out of bullets, they would tie four or five Jews together and shoot only one, who would drag the rest down with them.

Yeah…Hungary’s seen a lot of shit.

Looking back at this day and at the rest of Ryan’s notes to cover, it was a really depressing day of sightseeing. You’ve been warned.

As a small respite from the horrors, we toured the inside of St. Stephens, the most renowned church in Budapest (and, possibly, in Hungary). Although the interior was absolutely beautiful, we were particularly excited about climbing up to the dome for a bird’s eye view of the city. Side note: Ryan added a note here to draw attention to just how many domes we’ve climbed throughout this honeymoon. There have been so, so many.

We then followed Rick Steves's written tour of Budapest’s historic Jewish quarter, which I mentioned briefly in the previous blog post. Most notably, this tour took us to the Dohány Street Synagogue, or the second largest synagogue in the world (after Manhattan’s shockingly huge temple, which Ryan has also explored). This synagogue envelopes part of the area where the Nazis kept a vast majority of Budapest’s Jewish population in badly cramped living conditions, which allowed illness and infection to run rampant. When the Soviets assumed control of the country, they entered the main square of the synagogue to find thousands of bodies piled up in the center. Those bodies now rest in the ground beneath it as a graveyard dedicated against war and anti-Semitism. At the end of the square is an upside-down Menorah that creates a metal weeping willow—the Tree of Life—where every leaf is engraved with the name of someone lost in the Holocaust.

Small break from depressing sightseeing: We next hand lunch at KönyvBár, a bookshop and restaurant that ended up being my favorite meal (and one of Ryan’s favorites—although he preferred Italy’s adventurous fish dishes). We sampled several traditional Hungarian dishes, including an insane lavender-garlic butter made from Hungarian lavender, and dessert was some crazy combination of thick, crumbly cottage cheese, basil, rhubarb, and raspberry that was perfect for the hot day outside.

We paused by the Liszt Ferenc music conservatory (note: in Hungary, surnames are placed first), then headed into the House of Terror. Without going into too much detail, this museum is exactly what it sounds like: The former Nazi—and then Soviet—headquarters and torture chambers, now used as a monument to the terrors faced in Hungary between the Warsaw Pact and the fall of communism many, many decades later. It was one of the hardest museums I’ve ever gone through, but was also one of our favorites—and we spent so long reading each and every word from room to room that we spent the entire afternoon there, and were kicked out just before closing.

We then rode the M1—the world’s second oldest subway, which opened in 1892—back into the Jewish District, which at that time of day was hopping with hipsters and food trucks. We grabbed dinner at Karaván, a collection of no less than 15 food trucks with string lights and picnic tables strewn across the alley between them. This was where I had my second-favorite meal (yeah, it was a good day for eating)—a hunk of delicious bulgogi, kimchi, hot sauce, and black sesame seeds squeezed between two densely packed rice patties. It was literally a bulgogi onigiri-like sandwich, and I was so in heaven that we actually went back for the exact same meal on our last day in Budapest. No shame. We ended our night at Szimplakert, the ruin pub mentioned at the end of the previous day’s blog post, where we taste-tested Hungarian wines and beers while watching hoards of hipsters cycle through the old building.