June 8th: The Hungarian Open-Air Museum

The museum is 3 miles from the campsite, and we decided to a visit on Whitsun Sunday when lots of additional events were taking place.

The museum is an open-air collection of traditional buildings from all over Hungary, on the same lines as one we had visited in Wales, the Welsh Folk Museum near Cardiff.

This is an example from the vast range of buildings. It was helpful that many of the descriptions were in well written English especially when trying to follow the processes of, for example, a dye works or the types of carts and carriages used down the ages. 

However, it would be fair to say that after a while the different building styles and regional variations tended to blur together, which was perhaps inevitable unless you knew a lot about Hungary’s regional diversities or were prepared to swot up extensively before going.

There were some exceptions, though. This is a recognisably different, a Tartar yurt that was being erected.

But where does the yurt fit in? The Mongols (or Tartars) invaded and devastated Hungary in 1241. The following year they retreated due to the death of their leader, but a few remained. These number today about 6,000 and, whilst happily integrated into Hungary, they have retained their traditions and Mongolian appearance.   

This next photo shows a well-to-do family room. What’s odd is the floor.

The floor is just beaten earth and seemed to be quite common, in bedrooms too with gleaming white bed sheets. I couldn’t work out how the floor did not become a muddy goo when liquids were spilt or wet feet trailed water in. And how could those sheets stay white.

Now for some of the extra activities. Hungarian dancing featured for most of the day, in well over 30 degree heat. The violin combo backing gave a gypsy feel to some of the dances but others could have been Irish reels- and not a bottle of Guinness in sight. It was all very colourful.

Needlework was another traditional skill featured, producing patterns like those on the dancers’ outfits. The lady here is wearing such a pattern, at the same time painting a stitching design on a paper template. Jane says to notice the beadwork on her hat.

You imagine the needlework is all done by elderly matrons, but not so, as the next photo demonstrates. I bet he’s a dab hand at cleaning, cooking and ironing too. Bet the girls are queuing up.

 Parading through the museum were grotesque masked Buso figures from the town of Mohacs where a pagan ritual is enacted each year to chase away winter. These characters created much noise with bells and rattles, presumably as part of the chasing winter away process and were in fact something of a nuisance. If anything, they had been too successful in seeing winter off as the temperatures were around 90F in old money.

 There were many stalls selling traditional products, and we managed to buy some traditional ice-cream: Magnums. Most welcome in the heat. Altogether, a good day out, but as with most places visited you only absorb a small portion of the cultural information presented.

Tomorrow we leave for Poland.

The Buda Side: 6th June

Castle Hill is a mile long ridge, containing the Royal Palace and Buda old town, looming directly over the Danube. It’s a great defensive position, which accounts for it having been ravaged eighty six times in the last 700 years according to my guide book. The last occasion was in early 1945 when the Red Army and Nazis slugged it out with all the destructive power of modern weapons. So what you see today is a painstaking, faithful reconstruction - and you’d never guess.

We cross from Pest to Buda via the “famous chain bridge” (quote from Hop-on, Hop-off commentary) that I’d never heard of before, but it was quite striking. 

It’s a hot day, so on arriving at the far bank we use the cog railway to ascend Varhegy, Castle Hill to us. This was cutting edge in its day, the second funicular railway in the world when it opened in 1870. It’s now cutting edge restoration as it was hit by a shell in 1945.

At the top you’re right next to the Royal Palace that houses the Hungarian National Gallery, the Budapest History Museum and the National Library. The exterior is magnificent and ornate, but inside the reconstruction is functional and did not seek to replicate the elaborate palace that was destroyed in battle of late WW2.

Strolling into old Buda, the most noticeable feature is Matyas Church. The original building dated from the 13^th century, but it was adapted and altered so many time that the post 1945 rebuild hardly seems to matter. During the 160 years of Turkish occupation it was even a mosque. It’s beautifully proportioned with a patterned tile roof.

Inside the recreated colour scheme is overwhelming. It looks like mosaic at first glance but is in fact painted: every bit of wall and ceiling, and it’s stunning.

 Outside, next to the church and overlooking the river, is the Fishermen’ Bastion. The fishermen in the Middle Ages apparently stoutly defended this part of the town. But not from the Bastion, that’s a later decorative addition. It looks the biz though. What’s wrong with a bit of Disney?

We take another look at the view from the Palace terrace. It’s a terrific panorama of Buda, Pest and the Danube, which is definitely not blue, more a muddy brown. You can’t get all of that in one photo, so this is us with the backdrop of Pest, the Danube AND the Chain Bridge, getting more famous by the minute.

Budapest provided an interesting explore, what you could normally expect from an historic European capital city. It helped that many notices, leaflets and other communications were in English because Hungarian is not one of the languages you can easily guess, in fact it has no connection with any other language apart from a slight similarity to Finnish. And with that, we finish in Budapest.

Budapest: 5th June

Budapest as a city was created by joining the two towns of Buda and Pest, on opposite side of the Danube, in 1873.

Buda is hilly whilst Pest is flat, and we’ll start with Pest only because the Hop-on Hop-off bus goes there first, and we’ve just hopped on the bus.

From the bus, plenty of elegant buildings drift by that could just as well be part of any European capital. The yellow taxis could be from New York.

We sail past the Gresham Palace, a fine art nouveau building finished in 1904 by a British insurance company. It is now a hotel.

Budapest was occupied by the Turks for 160 years from 1526, so leaving some particular legacies like the Szechenyi Turkish baths. The front looks like a royal palace, and it appears that a favourite pastime, while wallowing in the water, is to play chess. It’s mixed sex, too, so you could take your Czech mate.

This is a building with a more sinister history. First, the HQ of the Arrow Cross fascists in WW2, the Hungarian Nazi Party, then the AVO, alias the KGB, under the communist regime. Now it’s a museum called The House of Terror that commemorates the inhumanities that were committed there.

Hosok Square constructed in 1896 is the area for big meetings and parades. At other times it’s the domain of a few skateboarders, rollerbladers, and pedestrians. That forlorn emptiness could easily be filled by parades of Hop-on Hop-off buses.

Now for some modern architecture. But the ING building looks like it’s cracked into segments and been repaired with bits of wire. Not perhaps the solid image an investment company like ING should be striving for.

 I’ve been neglecting the churches. This is St Stephens Basilica that contains the mummified right hand of St Stephen. This is paraded through the streets on his saints’ day Aug 20^th  when the devout can engage it with a “high five".

The Jewish synagogue here is the second largest in the world, after New York. It’s pretty impressive with an elaborate front and gilded towers.

There can be no doubt that the most stunning edifice from any era here is the Parliament Building, completed in 1904. It has 691 rooms and is 315 feet tall: the largest building in Hungary, and the tallest in Budapest. Not that any of this make for better parliamentary decisions or integrity.

We visit Buda the next day, on foot this time, so we’ll see you tomorrow.

Szentendre Town

Szentendre was one of Huntingdon’s twin towns, and maybe still is.  Huntingdon Town website shows it as currently twinned with Szentendre, but not the other way round!

It’s an attractive town on the Danube that has become a magnet for working artists, about 200 of them. This is the market square, from which radiates a network of cobbled streets.

 Predictably, the main thoroughfare is full of touristy shops and restaurants designed to appeal to the trippers, most of who come by boat or bus from Budapest. Here they are swarming along the High Street.

 To be fair, there are some genuine Hungarian goods on sale as well as the cuddly toys and memento trinkets obviously made in the Far East. This shop is selling only traditional indigo dyed Hungarian clothes. There was even a faded letter in a glass case, dated 1990, from Princess Diana’s lady-in-waiting thanking the shop for presenting Princess Di with some garments.

Taking to the side streets and lanes provided some pretty views that seemed to capture the spirit of the real town more than the crowded commercial areas.

As we walked back to the camp, I thought that Huntingdon’s got some catching-up to do if it wants to attract that many visitors

June 3: To Budapest

The motorway system runs seamlessly from Slovenia into Hungary. Too seamlessly it seems, because at the border there are warning signs against travelling on Hungarian motorways without a vignette (a permit), and there’s nowhere to buy one.

Is this a scam to catch the tourists? We pass a stationery police car. It doesn’t follow. In about 50 miles a sign directs us off the motorway to a hotel that sells them, so all is well.

We are heading for a campsite at Szentendre, a small town on the other side of Budapest. There is no ring road from our direction so we have to go through the centre of the city: Jane drives, I navigate. It is busy, chaotic, and the road surface is rough, but the Hungarians aren’t too aggressive and we get through just fine. Top driving, Jane.

Camping Pap-Sziget is potentially a peaceful riverside site. It’s currently full of school parties that don’t seem to need any sleep. I’m sure we were like that once upon a time, but one doesn’t think quite so charitably at 2.00am.

Now let’s introduce you to Dave who checked in the day after us and set up next door. 

Dave has cycled all the way from Doncaster in the last five weeks, following the course of rivers, currently the Danube that runs past our campsite. Great achievement, but it’s the tip of the iceberg: Dave’s en route to Doncaster, Australia, over the next two years, through places like Kazakhstan, China, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia.  If he’s pedalling past where you live, do give him a wave.

Ptuj

Pronounced Put-toey, in case you’re wondering, but I reckon for me it’ll always be Per-tudge. This small town was chosen as a picturesque stop-off on our way east and is the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in Slovenia. This is the approach to the town from the campsite along the path atop an embankment of the river Drava.

Stone Age remains have been found, but recorded history starts with the Romans, followed by numerous other occupiers and invaders the latest being the holidaymakers. The old town is full of buildings like these in the photo. They look somewhat Austrian in appearance which is not surprising as the town was part of the bishop of Salzburg’s domain for many centuries.

The white monument in the right of the photo also doubled as a stocks to which offenders were chained from rings in the base. Ringtones had a different meaning in those days.

From here we walked up to the castle, a 12^th century structure built by our favourite bishop from Salzburg, but much altered since so that is currently looks like a bigger version of the George Hotel in Huntingdon. I say you can’t be a proper castle without a moat, a keep and drawbridges.

The photo below shows a panoramic view over the town from the edge of the castle courtyard. The Town Tower on the left is a splendid feature with its onion dome, and the river Drava top right which has been dammed into a lake. The Drava is an unknown river to us Brits but it’s twice as long as the Thames and has a huge volume of water as can be gauged from the first photo taken from the embankment. 

The olde worlde cobbled path down from the castle was typical of many in the town and the Town Tower again adds its attractive presence. I ought to be writing this stuff for an estate agent. 

Our campsite is 1km from the old center and is part of a thermal baths complex. The site itself is pleasant and modern with cabins and camping pods to let as well as camping pitches. Camping pods? In this case, huge barrels converted into sleeping accommodation (necessarily located close to the loos). If the river overflowed you’d presumably just bob about a bit until rescue arrived.

We also made a quick trip to Ljubljana to meet up with nephew David for lunch and have a wander around in the afternoon. This is us later in the central square snapped by an obliging tourist. 

Ptuj, and Slovenia in general, is a delightful place. There is a great variety of scenery and history, and everwhere is so neat and tidy, particularly the gardens, that it’s a credit to the residents. 

Next stop Budapest, Hungary.

May 28: Garda to Ptuj via Trieste

Trieste is a one night stop-off on our way to Ptuj in Slovenia, and we arrive early enough to walk along the clifftop behind the campsite. There are some pleasant sea views looking down towards Trieste although the path is made of sharp limestone and quite stumbly underfoot.

Presently we come to some military lookout posts hollowed out of the rock. These date back to the First World War. However, this corner of Italy didn’t belong to Italy at the time but to the Austro-Hungarian Empire who were the enemy. And Italy was on our side in WW1 so was fighting to capture this part of today’s Italy. Confusing, isn’t it? You could end up fighting yourself.

The information board outside the lookout cave showed a picture of the enemy observers, who were German naval personnel.

The photo looks humorously boy-scoutish, but there was nothing funny about the war in the Trieste area; it was as hard fought as on the Western Front. There were especially high casualties caused by the shells splintering the limestone into deadly shrapnel, the same sharp shards that I complained was making the path uncomfortable to walk on.

We walked as far as the next photo point where I took this silhouette of Duino castle in the falling light. It was rebuilt in 1920, having been virtually destroyed by Italian artillery in WW1.

Whilst on the walk, we met an Englishman with his wife whose father was from Trieste. His dad considers the Trieste area still as an entity separate from Italy and my guidebook states this is generally felt. Unfortunately, they don’t have any oil like Scotland to fuel an independence movement.