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Bill and Chris
One of our many lunch/coffee stops along the street Budapest, Hungary
Der Kleine Prinz is tied up on the Pest side of the Danube in the center of Budapest. This is a city of bridges connecting the Buda and Pest sides of the river. The Pest side is mostly flat while the Buda side is clustered around high rocky cliffs. On the highest hill overlooking the city is a statue of woman the Hungarians call their “Statue of Liberty”. It was put up during the communist years and once had a large red star on the pedestal. The star was pulled off after the Soviets were driven out in the late 80s but the statue remains. The view of the city from the top of the hill is superb.
Budapest of a most beautiful city. Of course much of it was also bombed during the Second World War. Most of it has been restored and here there are not so many reminders of its communist past. The concrete apartments and office blocks proliferate but aren’t quite as crumbly as I saw in Romania, Bulgaria, and Serbia. It is odd how the condition of concrete gets better the further west and north one ventures on the Danube.
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The Danube from a hill in Buda I expect to see superb concrete when I get to Austria. German engineering has a far better reputation than that practiced by the communist regimes from the late 1940s until the breakup of the Soviet Union and its’ Eastern Block empire in 1989.
We were told that before evacuating Budapest at the end of WWII the Nazis lined up many of the remaining Jews along the banks of the Danube in the city center, ordered them to remove their jewelry and shoes and then shot them and dumped their bodies into the river. We passed by a memorial on the levy which marks the spot. People sometimes leave shoes here as a reminder. The Nazis then blew up every single bridge over the Danube to try and stop the advance of Soviet troops from the east. I learned about some of this in history class in college. Being on location helps, but the destruction and atrocities committed in war is so difficult to get my head around. I have lived such a privileged life away from such turmoil.
Two days is just not enough time to even get a feel for Budapest, but I did have time to
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Pest side viewed from Buda explore the beautiful downtown food and merchandise market built in the late 1890s. It makes Pike Street Market in Seattle look like a roadside fruit stand. Here I also found the one item I wanted to buy to remind me of this trip; an old Russian Icon of Christ. There are probably a gazillion of these around the world, but now I have mine and I can say I bought it in Budapest.
Der Kleine Prinz left Budapest after dark. The city at night is just absolutely beautiful. The bridges and major buildings and churches as well as the parliament were all handsomely lit as we glided upriver toward Bratislava.
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