Day Five: In Communist Russia, Tram Rides You!

The day dawned bright but not too terribly cold, and after rejoicing over a traditional tourist breakfast of muesli, yogurt, and a fruit, we headed downstairs to the reception desk in order to ask for directions to the Communist Statue Park.

“Are you sure want to go there?” the receptionist asked, half-standing from his chair. “It’s really far away, and it is really cold.”

“We know,” we answered brightly, hoping to preclude any other attempts at dissuading us.  To no avail.

“There’s a private bus that goes right there, but it’s expensive. . . .” he trailed off, and we nodded.

“We know.  Do you know how to get there through public transportation?”

Even if he didn’t do it physically, he totally heaved an eye roll mentally.  “Hold on one minute.”  He eventually wrote down (illegible) directions to Memento Park/Communist Statue Park (from now on CSP) and advised us to buy a day transportation pass before we finally trooped out of the hostel, teeth pulling complete.

After a quick tram ride to the Buda side, we boarded a bus that would take us to the park on the outskirts of the city.  Thank God this bus was more modern and showed the names of the stops as well as said them, because I only have ten fingers and there were 23 stops between us and the Commies.

According to both Rick Steves and Karine, CSP began after the fall of communism in Hungary when the state presumably no longer needed to remind the populace to be good little Hungarian citizens and love the government.  They moved the more famous communist statues — or, at least, the ones that escaped destruction — to a park on the outskirts of the city to remind Hungarians where they’ve been and where they never want to go again.

Or to just make fun of the overly simplistic, overly happy, and overly patriotic workers and leaders.  Which was exactly what we did.  One of my favorite Rick Steves videos shows all types of people mimicking and imitating the statues, and for a person who naturally mocks anything worth her time, I followed suit.  Verity and I spent the rest of the morning doing at least one pose with most of the statues, which we would have done even if we hadn’t been completely alone in the park.  And I only fell in the snow once.

Overview of the park.

I'm clearly about to take off in a fit of Communist glory.

We didn't have a fedora or actual glasses, so we made do.

This one was legitimately cool. Though I don't know what a cowboy and a parasol have to do with anything.

If Verity's going for an interception, she's going to fail like whoa.

This guy was really fun. Really cold, but really fun.

I think we took three pictures each on him.

Finally, some Lenin!

The gift shop is also rather epic, and French gift shops should take note here.  It sold an amazing array of communism-related goods from flasks with the hammer and sickle to Russian star pins to post cards to South Park t-shirts (“Oh My God, They Killed Lenin!”) to what I bought: a small tin can labeled “Communism’s Last Breath.”  I know it’s the worst type of kitsch, but I reward cleverness when I find it, and it pretty much slapped me in the face here.  Hope my brother likes it.

All in all, definitely worth a visit, even if you know only a little bit of Hungarian/Russian/Communist history like I did.  The entertainment value alone is worth the admission fee, and once you realize that the giant pair of boots on the pedestal at the entrance once encased the feet of an equally-giant Stalin, which was pulled down along with the Iron Curtain, the poignancy is worth it, too.

These boots are made for crushing people's souls--- Oh, that's not how the song goes?

Absolutely famished by our childlike traipse through a snow-covered park, we high-tailed it to a café in search of more authentic Hungarian food.  I had a plate of turkey paprikash, which was warm and filling and deliciously caloric, even if the dumplings looked like . . . I’ll spare you my original comparison and just say they didn’t look like how I expect dumplings to look.

Since we chose lunch based on the proximity to the nearest metro to the Széchenyi area, we hopped right onto the next metro train and sped towards our rendezvous with the House of Terror.

This museum topped both of our sightseeing lists, and we wanted to dedicate as much time as possible to its full exploration.  They wouldn’t allow pictures, and with good reason, and so to avoid a play-by-play, I’ll give some highlights.

Right after paying, you enter to a Russian tank’s gun in your face and a towering wall full of what I assume are prisoners’ mug shots.  Surprisingly, the museum covers very little about the horrors of the Nazi occupation, focusing instead on the “second occupation,” or Russia’s imposition of communism on Hungary’s formerly democratic government.  I suppose the latter is a subject less people know about, but I still would have liked to learn about Hungary’s experiences during World War Two.  There are exhibits on the Gulag camps, and how the Hungarian police morphed into the Arrowcross Agency to spy on its own citizens which “changed” to the completely communist secret service police; how religious expression disappeared under communism; how the “democratically elected” government was an out and out lie maintained by wiretaps and spying on the Hungarian people.  The music and lighting throughout the museum lent an air of unease, an atmosphere just left of normal.  It showcased video montages, original artifacts, and striking displays, even if the information involved only appeared on sheets of paper.  (However, you could take those with you, so even though the information was thrown at you all at once, you could take it with you and digest it at leisure.)

Favorite isn’t the right word, so I’ll say the most poignant part of the museum for me was the cellar of the building where they reconstructed the holding cells and “conversation” rooms for the state’s political prisoners.  The museum outright states that no room is original for obvious reasons, even if everything was reconstructed to spec: the water room where prisoners were forced to sit in about two inches of water; the isolation room, where the walls touched them on all sides and lights were shown at eye level during interrogations; the fox hole, where the ceilings were so low, prisoners couldn’t stand up straight.  It doesn’t take a museum to make me think this, but the question still demands an answer:

What limits will people go to in order to keep each other “in line”?

 

Of course, around the corner from that is a couple of rooms about the resistance followed by a hallway with pictures of the victimizers, forcing us to stare into the faces of evil and realize how frighteningly much they look like us.

Still not quite sure you can only really this from a bird's eye view. Maybe it's suggesting that we're all being watched?

House of Terror. And cars.

After such a somber couple of hours, we wanted to lighten the mood a bit and so headed up the street towards Heroes Square and Millennium Gate.  We snapped a whole bunch of pictures of it and the Museum of Fine Arts before curiosity propelled us across the street to what we thought was one giant castle but turned out to be a skating rink and a castle.

Accidental castle for the win!

Heroes Square and Millennium Gate

According to my map, the castle directly across from the Széchenyi baths was called Vajdahunyad Castle — hence Vag Castle in my mind — and it looked like its previous owners had hired a schizophrenic architect: nearly every architectural style from gothic to modern was represented in a mish-mash of colors and place and style.  The only comparison I can make is with the Blois chateau, but at least that architectural schizophrenia was contained to wings added in the appropriate time period.  We walked around Vag Castle, and after a restaurant and gift shop, we found out that it was an agricultural museum!

What!

Castle? Nope, that's the entrance to a skating rink.

Skating rink! And . . . what the hell is that?!

No really, what kind of architecture is this.

Clusterfuck Vag Castle, for sure.

That's the best damn agriculture museum I've ever seen.

I’m 1000% sure that no agricultural museum in Illinois looks like that!

I henceforth named it Clusterfuck Vag Castle, and we moved onto our last stop of the day, St. Stephen’s Basilica.  The last basilica I’d seen was the one in Lyon, and while both were similarly decked out inside, St. Stephen’s was at least twice as large.  Also unlike the Basilique de Notre Dame de Fouvière, St. Stephen’s had a guy standing over the centrally-placed donation box who stared at you while you made your “donation.”  Excuse me, but since when did it cost money to enter a house of worship?  Shouldn’t visiting a house of God be absolutely, positively free?  Verity put it the best: “It’s almost blasphemous.”

That whole donation situation set me on edge, and the rest of my impressions of the basilica are definitely colored through that lens.  The interior seemed ostentation rather than ornate, what with the gilded everything and every type of marble imaginary, and my eyes zeroed in without fail on the bajilions of “donation boxes” at every chapel or statue.  They even charged to illuminate its prized relic: St. Stephen’s still-preserved hand, the same St. Stephen who founded the city and practically Hungary.  The basilica is rather recent, too: it dates from the mid-late 19^th century, and in terms of European chronology, that was practically yesterday.

St. Stephen's, which I think should be classified as a cathedral, though I don't know much about these things.

Who's your interior decorator, because I want to write him some not-a-fan mail.

Ah, stop slapping me in the face, money!

This is what you get if you force your visitors to donate, I guess.

St. Stephen's hand. Someone else had paid to light it up, so I took advantage.

Blurry and a little over the top, but still pretty. I guess.

I left the basilica popping M&Ms to get the bad taste out of my mouth, and we set out on foot to explore the area while thinking up dinner ideas, and we stumbled upon a shoe store with rock-bottom prices — a Hungarian Jenny Mode/Payless for boots and ridiculous heels!  Verity was in the market for a new pair of ankle boots, as the ones she brought with her rubbed everywhere and therefore were clearly conducive to travelling and a lot of walking, and I am just that side of masochistic, so I sat on a pouf and pouted while she tried on warm boots.  She remarked that I could have partaken if I wanted to, and I said yes, I could have, but I didn’t need an excuse to buy boots, just like an alcoholic doesn’t need an excuse to drink.  She ended up buying a pair for around 10€, and we trekked off to Tesco’s to buy a dinner of some Hungarian bread rolls, hot dogs, a cucumber, bell pepper, and quality cream cheese, something neither of us can find in France.

A group of Americans and two U.K. people moved into the hostel that night, and I’d forgotten how loud of a bunch we Americans seem in other countries.  You could hear them through multiple walls and closed doors.  Let’s hope they don’t end up taking over our floor of the hostel.