Herbstferien, Episode 2: Budapest

Royal Palace

“When you are in Budapest, you don’t walk around like this,” says my Hungarian tour guide Sarah, tucking her chin under and staring at her feet. “Or like this,” she adds, this time looking at us, the thirty-odd tourists she was shepherding through the city, head on. “When you are in Budapest, you walk like this.” Sarah lifts her chin and raises her arms, gesturing at the buildings that surround us on Vöröszmarty Ter as if to say, Look at this! And this! We are in Budapest, isn’t it amazing?

If you ignore the fact that anyone who actually walked around the city like that would probably A.) draw some very strange looks and B.) walk headfirst into a building, a statue, or an oncoming streetcar, you can see Sarah’s point. Budapest isn’t a city where you can hurry from landmark to landmark and museum to museum, and during the in-between time put up your blinkers and focus on what’s directly in front of you. Or, more accurately, you can take this turbo-tourist approach, but if you do, you do so at your own peril, and if you miss something, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Geographically and architecturally, Budapest is an absolutely stunning city, built on the banks of the aquamarine Danube, which splits the city neatly into a western part, Buda (or the fireplace side) and an eastern part, Pest (or the water side); holding court atop Castle Hill in Buda, the Habsburgs’ Royal Palace and the Matthias Church dominate the skyline, facing off with St. Stephen’s Basilica and the Parliament building on the Pest side. The two halves of the city are connected by a series of five bridges, which light up at night. And everywhere you look in the city, there’s something interesting to look at—a statue commemorating some Hungarian hero or a stunning piece of nineteenth-century architecture (Pest, it turns out, was largely designed by the same architect who designed nineteenth-century Vienna).

St. Stephen's Basilica. St. Stephen was the first king
of Hungary. His mummified hand is on display in this
church (I decided against seeing that one). 

I logged much less time in museums and churches in Budapest than I did in Amsterdam, in part because walking or tramming around the city gave me plenty to do during daylight hours, and also because the weather was absolutely spectacular—a balmy sixty-five to seventy degrees and not a cloud in the sky. During the tour, I asked Sarah if there is an equivalent to “Indian summer” in Magyar, and she said they call it “old spinster summer” (which, incidentally, is also what it’s called in German—Altweibersommer). But, since high tourist season in Budapest lasts through the middle of October—I was there on the tail end of it—I have the distinct feeling that the weather I saw in Budapest wasn’t even unusual for that time of year.

\Of the three cities I visited over the last two weeks, Budapest was by far the biggest “risk.” Geographically, historically, and culturally, it was the farthest removed from my sphere of familiarity. Yes, Budapest is still a major metropolitan city and, yes, Hungary is still (technically) in Western Europe. Nevertheless, in Budapest I had a “you’re not in Kansas anymore” feeling that I hadn’t before, for all of the culture shock I went through during my first couple of weeks in Frankfurt. 

View of Parliament from one of the five bridges. Sarah
said that the building is a lot prettier than the mess
that goes on inside it. By which she means the government.
She was a very outspoken and opinionated tour guide.

As if to underscore this point, that Budapest is a different kind of city from those you find in Western Western Europe, while we were waiting in Vörösmarty Ter for the other two tour groups to get a head start on us and Sarah was attempting to give us a ten-minute overview of the incredibly lengthy and complex history of Hungary and Budapest in particular, a Hungarian man sauntered over to a tree next to the statue where we were perched, dropped trou, and promptly started to relieve himself in full view of a group of about thirty tourists. Sarah, clearly annoyed and a little bit embarrassed—whether it was on behalf of the man or herself or her country, I’m not sure— interrupted her oration, turned and exchanged a few words with the man in Hungarian, then turned back to us and announced, “He’s completely pissed.” She then went on to explain how this kind of behavior was representative of a certain post-Communist attitude one encounters in Budapest, and in Hungary in general.

Contributing a great deal to my discombobulation, of course, was the language barrier. Hungarian, which in Hungarian is called Magyar. is a curious anomaly of a European language with absolutely no ties to the Romantic, Germanic or Slavic languages families, despite the fact that over the centuries nations with languages of all these persuasions have had influence in the area. The only language even remotely related to Magyar is Finnish, and the similarities there are slim. According to Sarah the Tour Guide, when Hollywood moviemakers want an alien language in their movie, but they’re too lazy or cheap to actually invent a new language, they use Magyar. This means that when space movies are dubbed into Magyar, the alien dialog has to be dubbed out, otherwise the audience will know exactly what the aliens are saying, and the effect will be ruined. Additionally, the unusual syntactical patterns of that most beloved of little green aliens, Yoda, is modeled on Magyar: all of his lines were written in English, translated into Magyar, and then mirror-translated back into English, with the Magyar syntax left in place.

In the end, I managed to master about five words of Magyar: igen (yes); nem (no—particularly useful when I first got off the train and was accosted by sketchy men wanting to know if I needed a taxi); kerem (please); köszönöm (thank you); and egészségedre (Cheers. Also bless you). Of all of these, köszönöm was probably the most useful, and the one I used most frequently: good manners are appreciated in any language.

Of course, my failure to master Magyar in four days would have been no problem if Budapest were one of those cities, like Frankfurt or Amsterdam, where everyone understands English at least well enough for a tourist to get what she wants from them. And in truth, everyone under the age of 35 (which comprises most of the people in the tourist business, like hostel employees and waiters, anyway) does speak English pretty well. Over the age of 35, meaning those people who were in school before 1989, and thus when Hungary was under Communist control, your chances get considerably slimmer, and with the over-60 set, you might as well forget about it.

However, my complete inability to communicate with them did not prevent me from having a few delightful interactions with members of Hungary’s most distinguished generation. While I was waiting for the number 2 tram on the Pest side of the river, a tiny, stooped Hungarian woman came up to me and started asking for directions. At least I assume that’s what she was saying, though for all I know she could have been cheerfully hurling the worst kinds of profanities my way. I found this immensely funny, of course, because just by merit of being Hungarian, she was automatically more qualified to decipher the Budapest public transit system than I was. When I made clear that I had no idea what she was saying, she laughed, patted me on the shoulder, and continued to chatter away happily at me for a further two minutes, while I did my best to smile and nod politely.

Great Market Hall, with stands selling everything from
vegetables to wine to cute touristy "Hungarica."

Langos. Also known as a heart-attack waiting to happen.

Later that same day, I went to the Great Market Hall in search of what Sarah assured our tour group was “the best Langos in town” (a Langos is essentially a Frisbee-sized piece of fried dough, to which can be added a wide variety of toppings). I found the place, which I counted as an immense victory in itself, and ordered my Langos—traditional style, topped with sour cream and cheese—then turned around and realized to my dismay that there were absolutely no free seats to be found at the tables lining the walkway opposite the Langos stand and its neighbors. Until, that is, an older Hungarian man noticed me standing there, and immediately stood up and started gesturing insistently at his seat. Because I was starving, and because this Langos was clearly a sit-down kind of culinary adventure, I took it. The elderly gentleman promptly disappeared, and returned a few seconds later with a pile of napkins, which he proceeded to place on the table in front of me, all the while talking to me in rapid, to me utterly unintelligible Magyar. From his manner and his gestures, I got the distinct feeling that he was lecturing me—whether on the history of Langos or the importance of neat eating habits, or some other random topic, I guess I’ll never know.