We drove away from Banska Stiavnica Monday morning on a road that wound through the mountains with beech trees arching over the roadway. Just outside of town was a very old or perhaps abandoned apartment building across from a mine where people were living in poverty. A group of three teen boys hung out by the road. Trash was strewn around. This was the first sign of bad housing we had seen so far on the trip. There were sometimes people begging for money, often outside of churches. No big encampments of unhoused like around American cities that I saw though.
Many towns had remains of mining operations but only a few seemed to still host some industry. Nevertheless, the houses and yards seem well kept up. We passed lots of home orchards with apple trees heavy with apples. Eventually the hills evened out into pretty farm fields and larger towns. We returned the rental car to the Bratislava airport and caught a taxi to the train station. This taxi driver asked us if we liked Trump. We all agreed that maybe Trump, Slovakia’s leader, and Putin were triplets.
Monday was a national holiday, Our Lady of Sorrow’s feast day. It didn't really impact our travel except that I couldn’t mail my postcards in Slovakia. We got the train back to Budapest, and caught a taxi to our rented apartment, not far from where we stayed the first time. This taxi driver knew all the little roads without consulting a map and looked like he’d been driving a cab for 50 years. Our apartment was in a turn of the century building with a very faded exterior. Through the doors was a staircase and sort of central area with some openings. Not really a courtyard, but maybe it had been at some point. Our apartment was sort of on the second floor and had been beautifully renovated. It made us very curious about what was behind the other apartment doors! Only one section of original floor remained and maybe the orginial interior doors. We think the building would have been within the 1944 Jewish ghetto where people would have been crammed together into any building within the ghetto. Now just the four of us shared 3 bedrooms and 2 baths.
We went across the street for a very early dinner of good Mediterranean dishes (chicken livers with pomegranates, different types of hummus, a fig and grapefruit salad, a fava bean spread, falafel). Unfortunately, that dinner significantly upset Linda’s digestion, and partially upset Jake’s in the middle of the night. I slept really well and woke up feeling on the mend from the cold I’d had the last few days.
Tuesday, Jake, Jim and I did a tour of the nearby Dohany Street Synagogue, the 2nd largest synagogue in the world after one in Israel (and until NYC builds a larger one as is planned). It’s little odd for a synagogue in that it resembles a Catholic or Episcopal church to some extent. Our guide said it was an attempt to make those other Christian religions feel that Judaism wasn’t that different. There is even an organ that can’t be played by Jews on Holy days because it would be considered work. It was played by some very famous non-Jewish people though. The Synagogue was built by Neolog Jews, more progressive compared to Orthodox Jews. But the similarities to other churches didn’t seem to help prevent anti-semitism. In the 1920s Hungary passed a law allowing only a small percentage of University students to be Jewish.
During WWII the Synagogue was occupied by the Nazis and the surrounding buildings were part of the Jewish ghetto in 1944-45. It was a harsh winter that winter and living conditions would have been terrible. The park outside the synagogue became a place to bury the dead. Since then the dead have been identified mostly and reinterred there. Some were moved to a cemetery elsewhere due to other development. The park is planted with mulberry trees that are being overtaken by ivy. I found a landscape history of the park, but nothing about why mulberry and ivy were chosen as the two plants.
There’s also a memorial marker for Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews by giving them papers for safe passage. He was taken by the Soviets and no one is sure where he is buried. In the memorial garden area named after him, is a metal sculpture of a weeping willow where each leaf is engraved with the name of a person who died. The tour guide was quite good at not leaving us totally depressed by pointing out that there is still an active congregation. He has relatives buried in the mass grave, but he also had grandparents married in the synagogue (he was young enough his grandparents would have survived the holocaust).
To keep with the theme, the next day I saw the Shoes memorial along the Danube where Jews were taken, told to remove their shoes, and shot by the Hungarian Arrow Cross party members.
There’s also a memorial to victims of the Nazi occupation that some feel exempts Hungarians from atrocities committed. An alternative memorial in front of it discusses the rewriting of history by the Orban administration. It’s impossible not to think of the rewriting of history at National Parks, the Smithsonian, and on US government web sites. And also of how hard it is for average people to really stand up against government oppression. The same park has statues of Ronald Reagan and George Bush the first I think (I only saw Reagan). Surely Trump will be next if he deigns to visit Hungary? Jake visited the House of Terror while I was at at the Botanical Garden. I think it covered both the Nazi and Soviet eras.
To go back to my happy place, on Wednesday morning I visited the Botanical Garden. In the 1770s it was established at the edge of the city, but is now surrounded by a huge medical complex and apartment buildings. It had a strong focus on medically useful plants at one point and was of course a teaching garden with the section on plants arranged by Family changing as the plant families changed for some species.
The greenhouses were packed with tropical plants arranged in groups - cacti, bromeliads, orchids, African violets, ferns, carnivorous plants. I’m not sure how they keep track of them all, but they obviously have some good horticulturists there. There is an area with rock gardens displaying plants from different mountainous parts of Hungary and eastern Europe. Those could use some weeding, but new plants were being added. There are very old trees, and a small bonsai collection. Several school groups (or maybe one large one) were visiting the garden. I love that you can now use Google Translate and your phone’s camera to translate descriptive signs into English! Knowing the Latin names of plants helped with plant id. I took the metro to get there and back. Very easy to use and clean.
I did some shopping at some craft shops not far from our apartment. One called Paloma, is a courtyard with artist studios and shops. I happened to meet an artist who does great bird and insect paintings. I had purchased a few of her things at another shop, Rododendron, just before! Budapest has a lot of bookstores and seemingly a good arts community. Also lots of musicians. While having a cup of tea at a cafe near the river, we listened to two people go over a complicated piece of music as a cello in a case sat next to them.
We had dinner one night at a Chinese restaurant near our place, Biang Astoria. Our server was from the Philippines, working in Budapest the last two years to support his wife and three children outside of Manila. After 2 years he’ll have to reapply for a new work permit. He hopes to start cooking some Filipino dishes for the restaurant. I think he said there are over 10000 Filipinos in Budapest.
From our apartment window, I watched people on the street below for a bit. There are quite a few people who scrounge through the trash looking for recyclables that can be turned in for a little cash.
Our last night we went to Flava, a nice restaurant by the German Occupation memorial. I had one last glass of a very good Hungarian red wine with my chicken shwarma and grilled brocollini. Since I had had an Ischer (walnut shortbread with cranberry filling covered in dark chocolate) at lunch, and Jim and Linda had shared a chimney cake filled with ice cream (some sort of dough baked into a chimney or cone shape and then filled) earlier, only Jake was left out of the last day’s dessert-fest.
Finally, at 4am this morning we caught the Airport Express bus a few blocks from our apartment. Free for seniors! Around 7euros for the rest of us. The bus was full at that hour. Jake discovered on the bus ride that our original flight to London had been canceled due to bad weather, but American had rebooked us on Air France through Paris. We made the earlier flight easily since Jim and Linda’s flight was earlier than our original flight and we’d decided to just go to the airport with them. There are strikes of various sorts in Paris today though which held up our flight for a little, and may have resulted in a big slow down going through security at the airport. Our flight to DFW was still boarding though and we are in the friendly skies as I type.
Some other things I would like to have done in Slovakia and Hungary but will have to wait for another time! In no particular order, but for future reference:
Visit a spa
Hike in the West and lower Tatras and around Banska Stiavnica, also visit in July for more flowers.
Meet more local people, maybe by staying somewhere less touristy for longer - language was really a barrier to this
Attend a concert in Budapest or Bratislava
Visit a few museums that we didn’t have time for or that weren’t open
See a castle or castle ruins
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