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This trip to Budapest was an impromptu one. Since I returned home in April and used up half of my vacation time this year, I didn’t have the luxury of traveling long distances, and I didn’t get out much for most of the year after that. This year’s WWI Armistice Day fell on a Monday, so I decided to take an extra day off on Tuesday to make it a four-day mini-vacation, along with last weekend, so I decided to go abroad for a bit. There were several alternatives, and because I found cheap airfare, I ended up in Budapest.
November is the off-season for Budapest. I’ve always hated crowds, and the off-season was right up my alley. When I arrived in Budapest, I realized that off-season is off-season, so there are some inconveniences. I left the airport after 2pm when the sun was still shining; I didn’t expect to go to the center of the city for a light lunch and then go out again when it was already dark and extra cold after dark. Geographically, Budapest is supposed to be an hour behind France, but in fact uses the same CET time, resulting in extraordinarily early darkness and sunset after 4pm. I refused to get up early on my vacation, and the earliest I could leave the house each day was 10:00 a.m., making the days extraordinarily short.
I didn’t get too hung up on that. Because in my opinion, the most beautiful thing about Budapest is the Danube at night. The first night I arrived in Budapest, I walked along the banks of the Danube River to make a big circle, and in the darkness of the Széchenyi Chain Bridge, the Parliament Building, the Buda Castle glittered with golden light, just like the fairy palace where the elves live in the fantasy story. If the ancients traveled to modern times and saw such gorgeous scenery, they would have been shocked to stunned, right? The next day I followed the same route, and although a few landmarks were still magnificent, they were not as stunning in comparison, with less lighting.
Budapest Castle Hill reminded me of Bruges, both with a large concentration of classical architecture in a smaller area. The famous Fisherman’s Castle turned out to be nothing more than a viewing platform, which was a bit disappointing. The colorful mosaic roof of Maghash Church is quite interesting, like a sweater pattern. Buda Castle is huge and has so many museums inside that I just wandered around outside and didn’t look inside.
When I first arrived in Europe, every time I traveled, I tried to see the sights carefully and walked through all the exhibits in each museum. Later realized that their own artistic training is limited, can not see what pattern to, interest faded. In the case of the Reichstag building, my vocabulary quickly ran out of words to say anything more favorable about it than the simple items of its height and grandeur, the beautiful statues, and the soaring Gothic Revival spires. Budapest has nine bridges across the Danube, the oldest, the Széchenyi Chain Bridge, was completed in 1849, and the newest, the Lakócs Bridge, was completed in 1995, a century and a half later, with very different styles and techniques. A connoisseur of bridges would have seen a lot of interest in this, whereas I was just casually looking at the differences in appearance. To put it bluntly, most tourists are like that. They may not be interested in architecture, sculpture or painting, but they refuse to miss a photo spot when traveling. Understanding this, I’ve gotten used to indulging my laziness and it doesn’t matter if I miss a spot.
I did take a serious stroll through two museums later, the Budapest Vintage Interactive Museum and the House of Horrors.
I’ve always been interested in the Soviet Union. Hungary used to be a Soviet satellite country in the Iron Curtain, and there are many relics of the old communist days, so of course I had to see them. The Vintage Interactive Museum is full of old books, old appliances, soaps, detergents and other daily necessities that I obviously saw for the first time, but I felt déjà vu. This is probably because communist countries were heavily influenced by the Soviet Union’s aesthetics and had a uniform style of product promotion, design, and packaging. It was a marvelous experience to see Hungarian children’s magazines from back in the day with cover paintings in a style not far from the children’s magazines I read as a child. The most interesting thing was a complete room that restored the living room and kitchen of a Soviet-era apartment. Sitting on the sofa in the room and watching videos of nostalgic programs playing on the black-and-white TV, it was as if you had really traveled back in time. Another interesting part of the exhibits are the flight suits and other technological products, fully reflecting the retro-futuristic aesthetic.
The House of Horrors was used successively by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union as the headquarters of the Security Service, where countless people were interrogated, tortured, tormented, and killed, and this museum documents Hungary’s darkest days. The museum is so well documented and visualized that it takes quite some time to go through it. The most uncomfortable part is the basement, which contains cells and gallows from the past. This is a very worthwhile museum, especially recommended for history buffs. There were a couple of drawbacks that didn’t sit well with me. Some of the artificially rendered scares seemed cheap, such as the endless and very loud scary music in the room and the unusually slow elevator into the basement. This is, after all, a museum reflecting serious historical events, not a haunted house on a playground, so there’s no need to intentionally scare people. The museum is also too politically oriented, for example, the Nazi exhibit takes up a very small portion of the museum, while the rest is devoted to the evils of the Soviet Union; the museum might as well have been renamed the “Communist House of Horrors”. Moreover, the museum does not present the full picture of history, as if all the tragedies were caused by ‘foreign villains’ and Hungary was a pure victim. The day I visited I happened to meet a group of local teenagers, probably a patriotic education event organized by the school, which just proves the political propaganda role of this museum.
Next, let’s talk about the essential food and drink components of traveling. I love meat, I love strong flavors, and Hungarian food is very much to my liking. The most famous and must-try is of course the Hungarian stew “Goulash”, which I ate once at a cheap roadside restaurant and once at a famous traditional Jewish restaurant, and both were delicious. The street food “Langos” tastes like a combination of scallion pancakes and pizza, with simple and straightforward flavors. I had the chimney cake at a very popular online restaurant, which honestly wasn’t anything special except for its appearance. Budapest has a sizable Chinese community and I had 𰻝𰻝 noodles in a Chinese restaurant before I left.
Budapest is known for its thermal baths. The Széchenyi Thermal Baths in the City Park has become a tourist attraction, I didn’t go in for a soak but just wandered around the surrounding squares and parks. There were just too many tourists there, making me question the sanitary conditions. I looked for a more isolated sanatorium with a very unassuming appearance, open to the public after 3pm, and visited almost exclusively by locals. It proved to be a good choice, clean, less crowded and very relaxing.
I wandered around the central bazaar and Watts Street, which is slightly shabby compared to the shopping streets of the big cities in Western Europe. It was interesting to see Thai massage parlors all over the business district, couldn’t figure out why there was such a demand for customers.
Another place worth mentioning is the Ruin Bar, which was converted from a ruined building in a former Jewish ghetto. The first time I went to the infamous Szimpla Kert bar was in the afternoon, and the place looked so dirty in the sunlight, with the walls, floors, and furniture all messy and dirty, that I left after a quick look around. I went back again later in the night and with the neon light, the place did have some funky punk flavor to it. Unfortunately, the image of daytime filth lingered in my mind and I really wasn’t in the mood for a drink here, so I just turned around and left anyway.
As a tourist, one always walks around with only a superficial understanding of the city one is visiting. This is true everywhere, but Budapest made me realize this in a very deep way. Tourists and locals seem to live in two parallel worlds that do not intersect with each other. Hungarian is a strange language that has little to do with any other language and is very difficult for foreigners to learn. I was completely illiterate in Budapest and couldn’t even pronounce the names of places. I passed by a movie theater, saw a completely unfamiliar movie poster, and suddenly became intensely aware that I was a foreigner. Hungary has a tragic past and is still a relatively poor country in Europe. How relevant are the castles and palaces that tourists like to see to the reality of the local people’s lives? In just four days, what ability do I have to understand the history and current situation here, and empathize with the locals? Traveling is just entertainment and consumption, there is no way and no need to expect more.
Finally, an interesting little allusion to performance artist Chen Qiang’s visit to Budapest for a performance in the 1950s. As a memento, he named his eldest son Chen Buda and his second son Chen Pesi.