July 22 –
Arrived in Budapest on July 15th, and spent the first few days dedicated to bodily needs and pleasures: got a pass at a local gym, rented bikes to get around and get to know the city on the ground, and explored 2 of the fabled bathing facilities – the Palatinus and the baroque pleasure garden of the Szecheny. Immediately we realized that our eyes would be in for a treat with block after block of spectacular architecture of the XIX century, from the over the top bourgeois Neo-Baroque to the more avant-garde fin-de-siecle art nouveau and early modernism. A big part of the city has been now immaculately restored, and we got neck cramps from looking up at so many ornate cupolas, capitals, friezes, mosaics, and turreted roofs. Still, there are also areas that look no different than they did before the collapse of communism 1989, and it is in those gray stone facades that one can imagine more clearly the dour existence that emerged in this city after WWII.
Only then, after 3 days, and after our dear friend Neon joined us here, did we explore some of the sites with more historical significance. At the National Gallery, housed in a wing of the impressive, rambling former Royal Palace on Buda Hill, we were intrigued by a collection of Late-Gothic altar pieces from churches all around Hungary – all done in a peculiar style combining polychrome wood carvings and paintings. One particular scene of the Massacre of the Newborn was horrifically graphic and would find an echo hours later when we visited the House of Terror, a museum dedicated to the rememberance of the horrors of life under the rule of Fascism and Communism. The museum itself is overproduced and incoherent, with poor presentation of the context of its exhibits, aiming more at effect than at historical information, but a visit to the underground prison cells, and many of the recollections of now ageing victims of those regimes were chilling. More than anything we felt enormous sadness to see how a prosperous and vibrant city, at the heart of the cultural and scientific heart of Europe was not only physically destroyed, but also robbed of its soul by decades of war and brutal repression.
Late afternoon we drove to the Statue Park, a kind of open air museum-graveyard for all the monumental sculptures that were taken out of the city after the fall of communism. It was ironic to see such grandiose statues demoted to signify a footnote in history – albeit a very painful one. In a little exhibit area at the park, we watched a screening of a mesmerizing film made with archival footage from educational films created by the communist secret police to train spies and informers. The fascinating – and frightening - thing about these clips is that all the scenes in them are recreated by police officers who enact the “performance” of their under-cover activities. It would have been funny in a Maxwell Smart kind of way if we didn’t know that these people were actually committed to erasing even the smallest trace of dissent from their society. The level of perversity in devising how to spy on people, how to break into their homes, how to use informers, and above all, how to maintain a constant atmosphere of fear and paranoia was simply horrifying and it made us understand more completely what the people in this country have had to survive and how it must have affected their collective psyche.
Arrived in Budapest on July 15th, and spent the first few days dedicated to bodily needs and pleasures: got a pass at a local gym, rented bikes to get around and get to know the city on the ground, and explored 2 of the fabled bathing facilities – the Palatinus and the baroque pleasure garden of the Szecheny. Immediately we realized that our eyes would be in for a treat with block after block of spectacular architecture of the XIX century, from the over the top bourgeois Neo-Baroque to the more avant-garde fin-de-siecle art nouveau and early modernism. A big part of the city has been now immaculately restored, and we got neck cramps from looking up at so many ornate cupolas, capitals, friezes, mosaics, and turreted roofs. Still, there are also areas that look no different than they did before the collapse of communism 1989, and it is in those gray stone facades that one can imagine more clearly the dour existence that emerged in this city after WWII.
Only then, after 3 days, and after our dear friend Neon joined us here, did we explore some of the sites with more historical significance. At the National Gallery, housed in a wing of the impressive, rambling former Royal Palace on Buda Hill, we were intrigued by a collection of Late-Gothic altar pieces from churches all around Hungary – all done in a peculiar style combining polychrome wood carvings and paintings. One particular scene of the Massacre of the Newborn was horrifically graphic and would find an echo hours later when we visited the House of Terror, a museum dedicated to the rememberance of the horrors of life under the rule of Fascism and Communism. The museum itself is overproduced and incoherent, with poor presentation of the context of its exhibits, aiming more at effect than at historical information, but a visit to the underground prison cells, and many of the recollections of now ageing victims of those regimes were chilling. More than anything we felt enormous sadness to see how a prosperous and vibrant city, at the heart of the cultural and scientific heart of Europe was not only physically destroyed, but also robbed of its soul by decades of war and brutal repression.
Late afternoon we drove to the Statue Park, a kind of open air museum-graveyard for all the monumental sculptures that were taken out of the city after the fall of communism. It was ironic to see such grandiose statues demoted to signify a footnote in history – albeit a very painful one. In a little exhibit area at the park, we watched a screening of a mesmerizing film made with archival footage from educational films created by the communist secret police to train spies and informers. The fascinating – and frightening - thing about these clips is that all the scenes in them are recreated by police officers who enact the “performance” of their under-cover activities. It would have been funny in a Maxwell Smart kind of way if we didn’t know that these people were actually committed to erasing even the smallest trace of dissent from their society. The level of perversity in devising how to spy on people, how to break into their homes, how to use informers, and above all, how to maintain a constant atmosphere of fear and paranoia was simply horrifying and it made us understand more completely what the people in this country have had to survive and how it must have affected their collective psyche.
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