Two On Tour

We have to pass through en route to Krakow. Why not pause a few days?

Monday 12 May

The road from Novi Sad to Budapest certainly isn’t the world’s most spectacular drive. When I eventually spot Buda Castle from the outskirts of Budapest rising on a rocky outcrop, it’s the first natural feature of any note since we caught our last glimpse of Fruska Gora as we left Novi Sad 250km away.

I’ve slept poorly the night before leaving Novi Sad. This turns out to be excellent preparation for the bus journey as there’s very little to see except for fields stretching to a distant horizon. At least now in spring, the fields pass by in contrasting shades of green. It must be a forlorn here in winter. Still, fifty shades of green aren’t enough to keep me awake and I doze much of the way to Hungarian border.

The bus is full and crossing the border is slow. After lining up for passport control on the Serbian side, we’re told to all line up again with our luggage for a bag-by-bag inspection on a portable metal table. The border guards are polite enough, but the thoroughness of the inspection easily trumps the border inspections I recall when crossing communist-era Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. The guard inspecting K’s bag asks if she has any cigarettes in her case. I presume this is what they’re looking for. Either that or he just wants a cigarette. She can’t help.

Hungarian border control is much more efficient. We’re all in and out in five minutes. Our bus finally plunges into Hungary.

Southern Hungary is as relentlessly flat as northern Serbia and I soon doze off again. I awake to find our coach speeding past hundreds of trucks stuck in a slow-lane traffic jam that continues for several kilometres. I don’t know why they’re all stuck, but I’m glad we’re able to zip past them. The scenery has changed from fields to light forest, but it’s still flat. 

Half an hour later, we arrive at Budapest bus station. We’re a bit too disorientated to navigate the public transport system, so after locating an ATM in the bus station we settle for a taxi. Our Airbnb host has warned us that this will be an expensive option, and it is. There’s no meter and we pay just above the upper range of what our she reckoned it might cost. We’ll take the hit for the sake of getting smoothly to our flat. While ripping us off, the driver is friendly enough. He’s charmingly shocked when he learns how old I am, and he insists on typing a list of places to visit in Budapest into my notes app. (I’ve already marked all of them on Google Maps, but never mind…)

The flat is clean and tidy, but inevitably feels small after our vast Novi Sad Airbnb. Although it’s in a crumbling old tenement block, it’s been skillfully modernised. The bedroom doesn’t have a door, but is at least tucked away down the corridor away from the living room. It’s fine for a week.

It’s already late afternoon. We head out for groceries and – two minutes away –  stumble into the biggest supermarket we’ve seen anywhere on our travels. We both reel from the choices we suddenly have to make. It must have at least 50 brands of everything. Still, not everything is a choice: beer comes in 500ml cans; there’s not a 330ml can to be had anywhere.

We lug the groceries up to our third floor flat (there was a lift once but now only an empty lift shaft remains), then head out to explore a bit of Budapest. I’m tired and dehydrated, and don’t want to venture too far. We find our way down to the Danube and wander the riverbank for a few hundred metres towards the city centre. The sun is hanging low in the sky over Buda and the city – handsome at the best of times – looks rather splendid on this dazzling spring evening as kids play basketball and pull tricks on scooters, careering up ramps that must have once entertained skateboarders.

There are lots of Asian food options, and I can think of nothing better than a bowl of soup noodles tonight. Nearby Wok Express serves up a decent ramen and even sells beer (one choice: Heienken). Back at the flat, I doze off before even the third game on Match of the Day.

Tuesday 13 May

Our first full day in Budapest gets off to a slow start. First, there’s a bit of work to sort out, then we’re on Zoom with Lena in Hong Kong. We’ll be in Krakow a week from now and Lena wants to brief us on her flat.

It’s already mid-afternoon when we eventually leave the flat. We start by riding the metro back to the bus station so that we know the drill next Monday morning when we depart for Krakow. After this useful reccie, we head into the centre of Budapest, aiming for the magnificent parliament building. We pause at the poignant and beautifully conceived Shoes on the Danube memorial. No matter how unpleasant the current government of Hungary can seem, at least there’s public recognition that the Hungarian government collaborated with the Nazis in World War II. Good luck with findings that sort of reflection in China.

The parliament building is every bit as spectacular as I recall it from 30 years ago. It occurs to me that when I first visited Budapest as a 25-year-old, I had a spectacularly limited grasp of history. Back then, Hungary meant little more to me than being a plucky ex-communist state that in 1956 had been brave enough to give the middle finger to the Soviet Union. I simply hadn’t grasped its historic significance as a major European power for hundreds of years. I didn’t even pause to consider why Budapest was so handsome and grand.

I still have a lot of European history to grasp, but after travelling most of the way here from Istanbul overland, Budapest makes a lot more sense.

Back at the flat, we push on with the World War 2 theme by watching the 1958 film Carve Her Name With Pride about British spy Violette Szabo, who was captured and executed while serving in Nazi-occupied France. It came to my attention from The Underground Map blog, which continues to dig up fascinating stories of London. I’m now planning a modest pilgrimage of Violette Szabo-related sites next time I’m in London.

Wednesday 14 May

For the first time in many months, I take an early morning stroll. I used to enjoy a regular pre-breakfast constitutional in the first year of our travels, but I’ve fallen out of the habit – especially after breaking my arm last summer. Today’s stroll isn’t in any sense spectacular, but it’s refreshing to be outside at a different time of day. I’m back home by seven thirty feeling that I’ve started the day with a new memory.

We wander across to Buda after lunch, planning to climb the hill up to the citidel. (I mistakenly identify this as the place where Paul de Forges took a photo of me in 1994.) Halfway up the climb, I realise I’ve left our flask of lemon water in the flat. We retreat and have to walk back across the Danube into Pest to find a bottle of water. Back on the hill, we find that the citidel is closed for restoration. We won’t be getting what we feel is our well-deserved view from the top, but we do find a contour path leading around the hill. From this, we still have a fine view of the city:

Back in Pest, we stop for a coffee (pricey, but we’re right in the middle of the most touristed part of town), head to the supermarket, and back to the flat. Tonight’s viewing is a Hungarain drama on Netflix, ‘Treasure City (Bekeido)’: “Stories of the city at night reveal the dark side of relationships among people“. A thumbs up from both of us.

Thursday 15 May

I’m having trouble buying the finasteride tablets that I need for my post-op hair medication. I’m facing two challenges: one, in Hungary only 5mg tablets are available, not the 1mg tablets that I’ve been prescribed; two, my prescription is four months old, but in Hungary prescriptions are only valid for three months (even though my prescription clearly states that I should be on finasteride for six months).

It’s frustrating to say the least. I only have three days of medication left. Perhaps I could have bought the tablets without any issues in Serbia. I’ll never know. All I can do is wait until I reach Poland and see if I can get what I need there. If I can’t, my options are to ask Ashley to buy some finasteride in Turkey and send it to me, or stop taking it and lose much of the trasplanted hair.

This dilemma is very much on my mind today as we explore the graceful, historical heart of Buda. Later, after coffee and a delicious piece of sour-cherry strudel, we wander the three-and-a-half kilometres home, stopping for equally delicious goulash and paprika chicken on the way. K’s extraordinarily talented art-class friend Affa died earlier today in his mid-60s. We talk about the art group’s plans to organise a posthumous exhibition of his best work.

Friday 16 May

I have a mildly sore throat and feel just a bit under the weather. It’s thus with some reluctance that I go along with K’s plan to visit the Széchenyi Thermal Bath in the City Park. I have a habit of falling ill after visiting these places.

But when we arrive (and surprisingly manage to buy tickets on the spot), my reluctance disappears. The 100-year-old neo-baroque complex is a warren of indoor pools and a large outdoor pool, and it’s pleasantly busy without feeling overcrowded. We’re far from the only tourists here. There’s a group of young British lads, whose overheard banter suggests they might be here for a stag weekend. But I also hear French and German, and there’s a steady smatter of east Asians too.

We potter our way around the complex pool by pool, preferring the hotter ones – as does everyone else. The water apparantely contains sulfate, calcium, magnesium, bicarbonate and fluoride. When we leave ninety minutes later, we both remark how soft our skin feels and how relaxed we are.

We stop for a refreshing iced tea in the city park before taking the metro back. The metro line running out to the city park has clean, handsome platforms with walls covered in white and black cherry art deco tiles. Unfortuantely, the two exceptions are the station where we get on and the station where we get off, so I don’t manage to take a photo.

Today’s photos of the bath are from the internet as we’ve left our phones in a locker while we bathe:

Saturday 17 May

We’ve only just arrived, yet we’re already heading into our final two days here in Budapest. We walk to the handsome neoclassical Hungarian National Museum, where we strategically bypass the stone age tools and ancient pottery to focus on the story of Hungary itself. It’s an excellent, beautifully curated collection. By not lingering too long in each room, we just about manage to bring ourselves up to the present day by the time the staff are ready to start ushering us out at 5.30. I take photos of several explanatory panels telling the story of Hungary through the ages; when we reach the flat, I plunge into Wikipedia for a more thorough understanding.

Two photos from the gallery commemorating the 1956 popular uprising against Communist rule: On the left: the symbol of the uprising was the national flag with the Communist Party insignia cut out. On the right, the right hand and an ear from the enormous statue of Lenin (or was it Stalin?) that was torn down at the height of the uprising.

Sunday 18 May

We spend our one Sunday afternoon in Budapest in City Park, strolling, people-watching, and bagging a free ice-cream.

The thermal bath we visited on Friday afternoon is tucked away in one corner of the park, but there’s so much more to see. We emerge from the metro on Heroes Square, a wide open space decorated with long-since oxidised copper sculptures. The neo-classical Museum of Fine Arts graces two opposite sides of the square. If we had longer, we would have liked to visit. Instead, we push on into the park. It’s huge and there are dozens of possible paths to take. We spot an arresting building that resembles a double-ended ski slope and wander over to investigate. It’s the new ethnographic museum, and the landscaped ski slope is a publicly accessible roof garden. We clamber up shallow, grated metal steps to the top for views across Budapest on this fine spring afternoon.

Back on the ground, an ice cream stall outside another impressive modern building, the Music Academy, catches our eye. The chocolate ice cream is particularly sticky and the young chap scooping it for K accidentally breaks the cone as he tries to disengage the scooper from the ice cream. He can’t sell it, so K chooses mango instead and gets the broken chocolate ice cream as a freebie.

Suitably sugared up, we stumble into a musical playground. The centrepiece is a ‘cimbalon circle’, a mosaic of stepping stones that generate sound when they’re stepped on. A couple of young kids are scampering about on this at length. You might expect the resulting sound to be a shocking racket. But it’s far more sophisticated than that. In fact, the music it generates sounds not unlike Tangerine Dream. It’s rather wonderful.

We wander on and poke around the grounds of the Vajdahunyad castle – these days the Hungarian Agricultural Museum. A farmers’ market is wrapping up for the day, and we’re able to walk around a usually-closed cloistered area of the adjoining church. Finally, we pause for a coffee before heading back by metro to Kalvin ter, where we find an agreeably cosy restaurant to wind up our week in Budapest: