We had hoped to be able to do a little tour inside, but apparently one can only do so with a tour group. Otherwise, it is for bathing and sunning, and eating and massages.....etc. we has to content ourselves with a photo through the bars of the gates! There are many baths in Budapest, a tradition from the Turkish occupation. This one was crowded....and full of young tourists. You can rent bathing suits and towels. We did not.
History break here. I am not going to relate the history of Hungary. Wikipedia does a nice summary. It is very complex, as you can imagine, spanning centuries from Magyars to Soviets with Turks and Hapsburgs in between. That's the nutshell. Statues of heroes, liberators and statesmen abound.....Some rather fierce looking...forrowed brows and drooping mustaches. The Magyars (pronounced madge-ar) looked pretty fierce. Heroes' Square at the entrance to Varosliget, with its central column and side sculptures is very dramatic.
Budapest was 80% destroyed during the last war. She found herself in the wrong side of history in both was. Rebuilding of palaces and bridges started in 1950 or so. Other buildings later. What is left, especially on Andrassy is essentially a 19th century city of stunning buildings with extraordinary architectural details....especially statuary, including caryatids, over or around entrances. There are a few churches dating back to the 18th century. But this is mainly a 19th century city with some "good" Stalinist brutalism as you get further out. There are also some old crumbling buildings...one can see that there hasn't been enough money to take care of all the war damage.
Also in Varosliget is a complex built for the millennium celebrations...millennium of Hungary, that is...in 1896!! It looks like a fairyland castle, but is actually a series of connected buildings representing every style of Hungarian architecture.
Across from this "castle" is a lovely pavilion with a lakeside restaurant. And there we lingered, eating salads and drinking Hungarian lager, Borsodi, which has a nice bittersweet aftertaste.
View from our table.
Then it was back on the bus which took us down Dózsa György Avenue, past the monument to the 1956 uprising, down Rákóczi Avenue, past the magnificent railway station, back down to the Danube and then up József Attila Avenue to Andrassy. Far too many places of interest to list here.
After a rest we went back to the Callas restaurant for dinner. I had veal paprikash with oven baked curd pasta. For dessert Dobos cake with a glass of Tokay. A quartet of keyboard, bass, cello and violin played throughout. Of course, the violinist came over and asked if we had a request! I said....something classical....no Blue Danube. (We are so tired of it!) He played a Mozart which we both know, but cannot name!
A word about Hungarian. It is a Finno-Ugric language. This group includes Finnish, Hungarian and Estonian in Europe and some Uralic languages in Siberia. Hungarian and Finnish may be related to Turkic languages....way back. Hungarian has 44 letters and a host of diacritical marks. And that is the language lesson for the day. There are so few words that seem familiar. We feel quite at sea! We've tried to learn please and thank you, but have given up. Two languages teachers have given up!
By the way, as you can well imagine, the Danube is not blue! LOL.
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