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Published: July 10th 2015
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Europa Europa
Central Europe is a world both familiar and new to me As our Easy Jet flight from Paris approached Budapest I peered out of the cabin windows at the fields below. To the right of me sat a young Chinese couple, the man sporting a Mohawk haircut and a sleeveless Nike brand t-shirt. To my left across the aisle sat my father, his ears clogged and ready to land. Various thoughts scurried through my mind:
100 years ago Europe was full throttle in self-destruct mode and the Austro-Hungarian Empire seconds away from collapse. 70 years ago the Soviets had succeeded in forcing the Nazis to retreat from the city to take over as its newest imperial master. In which neighborhood did Theodore Herzl spend his childhood? Should I remove my Jewish star as I had been advised by some due to renewed expressions of antisemitism? (Hell no, I'm keeping it on and visible) We are getting closer to my family's central and eastern European geographic origins. How will that feel? It was late in the afternoon as the non-English speaking taxi driver delivered us to the spanking new Budapest Hilton. After a conference with a tour guide and a quick bite to
eat we rushed back out to to the river bank at about 8 pm to embark on a sunset tour of the Danube by boat.
What a breathtaking ride. As we passed under the many impressive bridges and heard the narration about the history of the buildings it was not a great bound of the imagination to imagine the glory days of Budapest at the fin de siècle époque when so much of the architecture was constructed - although not all of it. As the sun set and the lights glowed from the old palace of Emperor Franz Joseph on the Buda side of the river and the Parliament building on the Pest side of the Danube it was hard not to feel the power of the once powerful Central European monarchy.
But lest we forget that times never stay the same, after the river tour my father and I crossed the street to the Marriott hotel. The last time we were there with my mother and brother in 1972 it was called the Pan American Intercontinental. My parents had driven a rented Volkswagen Beetle across the border from Austria during a heat wave in search of a
Parliament
When it was built in the 19th century it cost as much money as it would have required to build a city for 20,000 people. It is still the seat of the Hungarian parliament today. cool lake, which they found. But there were no hotel rooms and it was suggested they go to Budapest. We arrived in the grey and drab city, unadorned and Communist, and we were forced to hand over our passports to the hotel manager after a long wait to see if a room was free.
To make a long story short my father had to almost provoke an international incident to get our passports back. We escaped Budapest never to return until yesterday. Needless to say this time around we enjoyed a full panoply of delicious desserts and coffee and my father was not arrested for eating too many of them.
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Sarah Siegel
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International incident averted
I remember your sharing that story with me, about your dad having to work hard mentally to get the passports returned. Was both cool and just a little chilling to see the exterior and interior of the scene of the incident -- cool because look at you now and look at Budapest now! And chilling because it looks like I'd imagine a luxury hotel in such a European place to look -- darkish, and '70s-ish still.