Outside Munich: Hunting blinds, green and orderly farms, traditional Bavarian houses, and churches with tall, sharp steeples. A few roadside crucifixes in weathered little wood housings. A canoeing course on a river, and the Bavarian alps in the background. Austria is more or less the same. Then you cross into Hungary, and things are immediately different. Train platforms and equipment go from clean and polished to old and battered. Buildings with crumbling Habsburg-yellow plaster. Low houses backing onto the tracks with big, ramshackle gardens. I see a stray cat dodging away. In Austria, the cat would have a collar, a microchip, health insurance, possibly a job.
There's a ridge with dozens of new windmills. The flat plains of Hungary: Good news for the Hungarians when they were sweeping in as a horde of mounted warriors, bad news when the Mongols did the same, a mixed blessing in the era of tank warfare, now handy for generating power. Just before Budapest, an empty field with a billboard in the middle of it: "PREMIER OUTLETS!" And an arrow pointing down, which I guess is Hungarian for "ahead".
Keleti, Budapest's main train station, is a surprisingly third-world operation. Dusty and mostly empty, with what there is crowded into dark alcoves and hidden offices. I needed an ATM and a Hungarian Railways ticket machine (to collect my tickets to Sighisoara) and made a complete circuit of the place before finding both together stuck away in a quiet corner. The signs for the metro took me on a long looping tour of the building and environs before leading back to where the entrance actually was.
The metro operates on a ticket-cancellation/ proof-of-payment system, something like GO transit's, but more personally threatening. Most of the station entrance is blocked off with striped tape; everyone is funneled through to the three central ticket-canceling machines so you have to pass within a foot or two of the watchful guards. The transit system turns out to be better than this suggests: A network of metro, bus, and tram lines. The trams are much like Toronto's streetcars, except efficient, cheap, uncrowded, punctual, clean, quiet, spacious, and safe.
Coming up the steps at Battyany Ter, I see the Hungarian Parliament across the Danube. It is a stupefying building. After the compromise of 1867, the Hungarians celebrated their hard-won autonomy within what then became the Austro-Hungarian empire by building themselves a Neo-Gothic fairytale palace that makes the Disney castle look like a Westfalia on blocks. Stretching up the river on either side of the parliament are rows of slightly dusty Art Nouveau mansions, with occasional modern hotels as you go north -- like bad teeth in an otherwise beautiful smile.
I stayed in a Novotel, which is exactly where I needed to stay after the hostel in Munich. The Novotel had a shoe-buffing machine outside the elevator, a comfortable bed, and curtains that blocked the light so effectively I almost missed May 16 completely: I sleepily checked my phone in the middle of the night and saw that it was 10AM. My only problem with the place was that the shower had one of those glass half-walls instead of either a sliding door or a curtain. I don't know who's responsible for starting dumb fads in shower design, but I think in this case they should be found and held accountable. If I want water all over the floor and cold drafts while showering, I can always arrange that; the half-barrier just takes away my options.
I went for a long walk in Pest, which was a loud, dusty Art Nouveau jungle. Men in tiny street cleaners cruised up and down the sidewalks. Bronze statues of mounted Magyar warriors in traditional dress -- a floppy hat, a sabre, loose trousers, and a long, proud, luxuriant moustache -- wave at each other across slightly overgrown squares. Mansions in various states of disrepair and refurbishment. Many of the most spectacular hold silly chain clothing stores; which seems like a shame, but it's really not so far from their original purpose, and it's hard to know what else could be done with them. If you have one of these buildings, you could stick a major museum in it. If you have a city full of them, some are going to have to house fast food restaurants and Gucci stores.
The new laptop continues to work out fine. The only worry is that someone might try to use the old one to steal my identity. I've already asked coworkers to notify the authorities if they find a sinister, German-speaking man at my desk, and they've promised to do so as long as he's not significantly better at my job than I am.
There follows some stuff about some things I looked at.
House of Terror
The name in English has kind of an unfortunate, Madame-Tussaud's luridness; it's actually about oppression and injustice under the fascist and communist regimes that ruled Hungary for much of the 20th century. It's a strange place. Almost all of it is dedicated to the Soviet era. Critics have noticed that there's quite a lot about Hungarian victims of foreign oppressors, and very little about Horthy or Hungarian fascism.
The House takes a disorienting, rock-and-roll approach to memorializing national tragedies. At one point, you thread your way through a maze of narrow white corridors where the walls represent -- I think -- stacks of foodstuffs requisitioned by the Red Army. There are offices of communist party officials, a room on religion with a huge cross set into the floor, walls and desks painted with propaganda posters. Here and there, uniformed guides shout lectures in Hungarian to groups of schoolchildren.
Towards the end, there's a single elevator that takes you down to the last level. In the elevator, some kind of presentation seems to play. Possibly to give time for this, the elevator moves incredibly slowly; and a gargantuan bottleneck therefore builds up here. I missed the museum after this point altogether. I backtracked a bit and watched a propaganda film on the show trial of Nagy in a room painted with images of books and documents, came back, found that even more Hungarian schoolkids were thronging the approach, and just made my way back to the entrance. Through the maze a second time.
The room of propaganda posters was interesting partly because it was almost possible to understand them. In most of Europe west of Hungary, knowing English and some bits and pieces of Romance languages will be at least a little bit useful. Hungarian, as a non-Indo-European language, offers you absolutely nothing. The big words that political satires and propaganda are concerned with, though, are all loan-words. And so, on the cover of Ludas Matyi, you can actually work out that the 7-headed chimera being slain by "saint" Gyorgynek represents Reactionism, while the naked lady cowering in the background is Democracy.
If you need to make sense of vintage propaganda, Hungary's no problem. It's only if you need to know which washroom to use or what the menu says that you're helpless.
(Ludas Matyi means "Mattie the goose-boy". Mattie the goose-boy was, Wikipedia says, an approved satirical ("szatirikus") publication during the Warsaw Pact years. It was named after a Hungarian folk-hero. Mattie was a boy who looked after geese -- not a minor superhero with the attributes of one (tenacity, the ability to fly awkwardly after a long run-up) -- who avenged himself on a nobleman who falsely accused him of a goose-related fraud.)
Fashion street (Váci street)
This is a pretty awful place where, by common consent, the dumbest tourists go to hang out and get ripped off. Drunk bachelorettes, who have come from other countries because they're not welcome there until they sober up, reel around and ask tourists for money while their friends stand in the background giggling. Sports teams in uniforms walk around together. Guys claiming to be collecting money for unnamed charities stop you to make their case.
An urban archery range
Outside the royal palace on 'Castle Hill' is a small green space. Scanning their list of sensible ideas that couldn't possibly go wrong, authorities chose to set up an archery range there. For a price, you can fire arrows into targets about twenty feet away. For a bit more, you can attack the targets with crossbow bolts, spears, or, for those who want to truly immerse themselves in medieval European history, shuriken. There are no meaningful barriers between the range and the adjacent open areas where tourists mill around taking pictures. Parallel to the little range are a couple of benches, which, unlike all the others around, were empty. I sat on one for a few minutes, then decided it wasn't worth the risk of taking a throwing star in the back of the head.
Aquincum
The ruins of an ancient Roman town, and site of some lavish reconstructions and an expensive-looking museum. When I went, there was no charge, and it was a sunny Saturday in May. Staff outnumbered visitors. Outside each reconstruction was a woman who smiles and follows you in to make sure you don't pocket any of the Roman bric-a-brac or try to fire the reconstructed catapult. A man adjusted garlands around columns in a courtyard.
It's all a bit like Ostia Antica, but on a smaller scale, and even quieter. They have all the usual things these sites have -- ruined baths and houses, temples, long covered sheds where weather-beaten funeral stele and beat-up statuary have been parked -- plus a strange children's playground, a carefully reconstructed house, and assorted other junk. A famous pipe-organ found on the site. An ancient map of the Roman road network, with regions that, sort of like the 'homonculus maps' neurologists draw, are distorted according to their importance in the mind of the mapmaker.
There's a ridge with dozens of new windmills. The flat plains of Hungary: Good news for the Hungarians when they were sweeping in as a horde of mounted warriors, bad news when the Mongols did the same, a mixed blessing in the era of tank warfare, now handy for generating power. Just before Budapest, an empty field with a billboard in the middle of it: "PREMIER OUTLETS!" And an arrow pointing down, which I guess is Hungarian for "ahead".
Keleti, Budapest's main train station, is a surprisingly third-world operation. Dusty and mostly empty, with what there is crowded into dark alcoves and hidden offices. I needed an ATM and a Hungarian Railways ticket machine (to collect my tickets to Sighisoara) and made a complete circuit of the place before finding both together stuck away in a quiet corner. The signs for the metro took me on a long looping tour of the building and environs before leading back to where the entrance actually was.
The metro operates on a ticket-cancellation/ proof-of-payment system, something like GO transit's, but more personally threatening. Most of the station entrance is blocked off with striped tape; everyone is funneled through to the three central ticket-canceling machines so you have to pass within a foot or two of the watchful guards. The transit system turns out to be better than this suggests: A network of metro, bus, and tram lines. The trams are much like Toronto's streetcars, except efficient, cheap, uncrowded, punctual, clean, quiet, spacious, and safe.
Coming up the steps at Battyany Ter, I see the Hungarian Parliament across the Danube. It is a stupefying building. After the compromise of 1867, the Hungarians celebrated their hard-won autonomy within what then became the Austro-Hungarian empire by building themselves a Neo-Gothic fairytale palace that makes the Disney castle look like a Westfalia on blocks. Stretching up the river on either side of the parliament are rows of slightly dusty Art Nouveau mansions, with occasional modern hotels as you go north -- like bad teeth in an otherwise beautiful smile.
I stayed in a Novotel, which is exactly where I needed to stay after the hostel in Munich. The Novotel had a shoe-buffing machine outside the elevator, a comfortable bed, and curtains that blocked the light so effectively I almost missed May 16 completely: I sleepily checked my phone in the middle of the night and saw that it was 10AM. My only problem with the place was that the shower had one of those glass half-walls instead of either a sliding door or a curtain. I don't know who's responsible for starting dumb fads in shower design, but I think in this case they should be found and held accountable. If I want water all over the floor and cold drafts while showering, I can always arrange that; the half-barrier just takes away my options.
I went for a long walk in Pest, which was a loud, dusty Art Nouveau jungle. Men in tiny street cleaners cruised up and down the sidewalks. Bronze statues of mounted Magyar warriors in traditional dress -- a floppy hat, a sabre, loose trousers, and a long, proud, luxuriant moustache -- wave at each other across slightly overgrown squares. Mansions in various states of disrepair and refurbishment. Many of the most spectacular hold silly chain clothing stores; which seems like a shame, but it's really not so far from their original purpose, and it's hard to know what else could be done with them. If you have one of these buildings, you could stick a major museum in it. If you have a city full of them, some are going to have to house fast food restaurants and Gucci stores.
The new laptop continues to work out fine. The only worry is that someone might try to use the old one to steal my identity. I've already asked coworkers to notify the authorities if they find a sinister, German-speaking man at my desk, and they've promised to do so as long as he's not significantly better at my job than I am.
There follows some stuff about some things I looked at.
House of Terror
The name in English has kind of an unfortunate, Madame-Tussaud's luridness; it's actually about oppression and injustice under the fascist and communist regimes that ruled Hungary for much of the 20th century. It's a strange place. Almost all of it is dedicated to the Soviet era. Critics have noticed that there's quite a lot about Hungarian victims of foreign oppressors, and very little about Horthy or Hungarian fascism.
The House takes a disorienting, rock-and-roll approach to memorializing national tragedies. At one point, you thread your way through a maze of narrow white corridors where the walls represent -- I think -- stacks of foodstuffs requisitioned by the Red Army. There are offices of communist party officials, a room on religion with a huge cross set into the floor, walls and desks painted with propaganda posters. Here and there, uniformed guides shout lectures in Hungarian to groups of schoolchildren.
Towards the end, there's a single elevator that takes you down to the last level. In the elevator, some kind of presentation seems to play. Possibly to give time for this, the elevator moves incredibly slowly; and a gargantuan bottleneck therefore builds up here. I missed the museum after this point altogether. I backtracked a bit and watched a propaganda film on the show trial of Nagy in a room painted with images of books and documents, came back, found that even more Hungarian schoolkids were thronging the approach, and just made my way back to the entrance. Through the maze a second time.
The room of propaganda posters was interesting partly because it was almost possible to understand them. In most of Europe west of Hungary, knowing English and some bits and pieces of Romance languages will be at least a little bit useful. Hungarian, as a non-Indo-European language, offers you absolutely nothing. The big words that political satires and propaganda are concerned with, though, are all loan-words. And so, on the cover of Ludas Matyi, you can actually work out that the 7-headed chimera being slain by "saint" Gyorgynek represents Reactionism, while the naked lady cowering in the background is Democracy.
If you need to make sense of vintage propaganda, Hungary's no problem. It's only if you need to know which washroom to use or what the menu says that you're helpless.
(Ludas Matyi means "Mattie the goose-boy". Mattie the goose-boy was, Wikipedia says, an approved satirical ("szatirikus") publication during the Warsaw Pact years. It was named after a Hungarian folk-hero. Mattie was a boy who looked after geese -- not a minor superhero with the attributes of one (tenacity, the ability to fly awkwardly after a long run-up) -- who avenged himself on a nobleman who falsely accused him of a goose-related fraud.)
Fashion street (Váci street)
This is a pretty awful place where, by common consent, the dumbest tourists go to hang out and get ripped off. Drunk bachelorettes, who have come from other countries because they're not welcome there until they sober up, reel around and ask tourists for money while their friends stand in the background giggling. Sports teams in uniforms walk around together. Guys claiming to be collecting money for unnamed charities stop you to make their case.
An urban archery range
Outside the royal palace on 'Castle Hill' is a small green space. Scanning their list of sensible ideas that couldn't possibly go wrong, authorities chose to set up an archery range there. For a price, you can fire arrows into targets about twenty feet away. For a bit more, you can attack the targets with crossbow bolts, spears, or, for those who want to truly immerse themselves in medieval European history, shuriken. There are no meaningful barriers between the range and the adjacent open areas where tourists mill around taking pictures. Parallel to the little range are a couple of benches, which, unlike all the others around, were empty. I sat on one for a few minutes, then decided it wasn't worth the risk of taking a throwing star in the back of the head.
Aquincum
The ruins of an ancient Roman town, and site of some lavish reconstructions and an expensive-looking museum. When I went, there was no charge, and it was a sunny Saturday in May. Staff outnumbered visitors. Outside each reconstruction was a woman who smiles and follows you in to make sure you don't pocket any of the Roman bric-a-brac or try to fire the reconstructed catapult. A man adjusted garlands around columns in a courtyard.
It's all a bit like Ostia Antica, but on a smaller scale, and even quieter. They have all the usual things these sites have -- ruined baths and houses, temples, long covered sheds where weather-beaten funeral stele and beat-up statuary have been parked -- plus a strange children's playground, a carefully reconstructed house, and assorted other junk. A famous pipe-organ found on the site. An ancient map of the Roman road network, with regions that, sort of like the 'homonculus maps' neurologists draw, are distorted according to their importance in the mind of the mapmaker.
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| Shouldn't that be rex Pannoniae? What's wrong with taggers these days? |
