My House in Budapest, My Hidden Treasure Chest

George Ezra's song called "Budapest" begins with the truest words about the city, "My house in Budapest, my, my hidden treasure chest."

That's really what this city is. Its a combination of poor and rich, flowing with history of occupation since the 1600s by Romans, and Ottomans, Nazis and Soviets, its a combination of everything and it is a hidden treasure chest as far as the rest of the world is concerned. It sits on the Danube River which has run with blood in the past, has also filled with nudist swimmers, and now sits poluted and serves as a marker between the wealthy Buda side of the city and the up-and-coming Pest side. Its the home and capital of the Hungarian world.

Although I heard of Buda and its wealth, I noticed the division within it as well, when I walked through the residential area getting lost after spontaneously hiking up the Citadella mountain - with no idea how to get down the hill, other than perhaps to make a sled out of whatever I could find and surf down on mud - I followed the road swirving through streets of complexes and upper class apartments or torn down buildings and closed shops with graffiti on them. 

Although both sides of the Danube are popular for sites and tourists, the Pest side was far more crowded, more touristic, easier to get around with public transportation, and far richer in history. Yes, Buda has the Buda Castle where I enjoyed a wine festival throughout the scenic terrace, and the labrynth beneathe where Dracula was once kept prisoner, and the Citadella with countless ruins and statues all along the mountain. But Pest was of the people. It had the Jewish Quarter where first it was a section with synogogues, then divided into a tightknit Ghetto during WWII of over 70,000 Jews, and now it is a jive place for locals to drink their soda mixed with rosé or the vodka made with gas bubbles in it, and of course to enjoy goulash, matza balls, or some true Israeli Shankleesh. 

I stayed on the Pest side of the city in a cheap 20€ a night loft all to myself. Budapest, the unknown gem that it is, is also very cheap, still using the Hungarian Florin, and not quite abiding by European influences. Its confusing for some major cities, like Athens, or Brussels - trying so very hard to remain Greek or Belgian but also trying so very hard to be European. There isnt as much of that in Hungary, its mostly just Hungarian. Or maybe now I am so used to "European" that even the slightest bit of non-European is resounding.

Most of my time was spent on the Pest side of the city. It was full of markets with fresh Hungarian meats, sausages, and cheeses. Full of interesting people, buses, trams, and a new underground system. There are random statues commemorating random people, keeping alive memories of communism and now freedom. The city is so unorganized. I think that the river, the castle, the parliament, and the Jewish Quarter are the only distinguishably separate parts of the city. It wasn't until the last day, when I returned to my hostel after dark, that I realized I was staying in the "sex shop" and "peep show" part of town. I guess I'm not much of a night owl anymore. But I'm usually fairly perceptive.

The synogogues still sit on the Pest side in the Jewish Quarter. Saved by the height of their entrances, the Nazis used them for satellite communications, and now they remind us of the power of Jewish heritage and the somberness of those days. Naturally I learned a lot of this from the friends I made on the Jewish Walking Tour of Budapest. One of my new friends Elinor, especially. Coincidentally, a fun-sized ball of life, she was an NYU alumn, New Hampshirite born and raised, and now a fellow world traveler - we were quick to befriend and learn from one another. 

First stop, the synogogues. The main synogogue, the largest in Europe and second in the world - the first being in New York City. It was beautiful and complex. Another confusing thing about this city - although Hungarian is unlike any other language in the world, and the culture similarly unique - the city of Budapest is such a vast melting pot of influence and history that it really is hard to tell where some traditions come from. The synogogues in Budapest are all made with Moorish influence, much like La Alhambra in Granada, Spain. The synogogues resembled Moroccan Mosques more than they did synogogues - even fashioning the Moroccan star rather than the star of David.

I stood at the gate of the backyard of the temple where one of the Jewish memorials of the city was kept. I had been to this place, this city, with my high school group during a mission trip to Romania in 2007. I rembered everything from that one day in Budapest, and revisited it all - from the secondhand shop we stopped in, to the memorial, to the Elezbert statue where we had an evening picnic. It warmed my heart to think of that time. The statue is much smaller now than it was when I was 16.

And there I stood again at the synogogue. I looked at the metal strings of the "Tree of Life," every thread of branches represented a Jewish Hungarian killed during the war. I looked behind it and saw thousands of diamond shaped cubby holes along the wall, with notes and rocks, each with a name, each commemorating a person. A real person. A real tragedy. Its sad to remember what people can or will do to each other. I like that Jewish tradition is to leave rocks rather than flowers. Why leave a flower to mock the unlived life? Or to let it die with the already dead? Who is going to smell it? I like that a rock isnt alive. Its a symbol - strength, resilience, death, stillness. It will always be there. I like that - that it will always be there.

Just around the corner of the synogogue is one of my favorite memorials in the city. Its not so noticeable unless someone points it out, but theres a statue coming from a wall (that used to be a window) down to the ground outside. Its of two people, one at the top where the window was, and one on the ground, connected by a long fabric. Well, a statue of a fabric. The story behind it goes, that the old building used to be a fabric factory in the old Jewish quarter. And when the Nazis came to take them away to God knows where, or to lock them away doing God knows what, or to just kill them then and there - some of the workers used the fabric to slide out the window and get away. The statue was to remember  them. Their instinct, their struggle, their humanity. All thats there is a quote about resilience. No names, no dates, and no written story.

My other favorite memorial... I should clarify that I say 'favorite' because I am so grateful for the way that it reminds me of the real struggle of people, the humanity, oppression, murder, and love. So I have favorites for what touches me most. I realize it may have sounded a little insensitive to say I have a favorite memorial. In a way these memorials remind me of my humanity, my cowardice, my heroism, my ambition, my desires, my ungratefulness, my trueness as it were - how to be a better human.

Anyway, my other favorite memorial is on the Danube to the lefthand side of the Parliament building facing the water. Its a small memorial, statues of shoes along the banks edge. There is no plaque that i saw. Like many memorials throughout the city, people just know the story, its not necessarily written there. The Shoes memorial was quite dirty. Different copper shoes filled with dirty water, old candles that flooded, some trash, and rocks. The story goes, that one night during the mass killings, a group of Nazis took an unspecified amount of Jews - certainly more than 30, but I dont think more than 60 - to the edge of the Danube River. They forced all of the men, women, and children to strip naked and take off their shoes. This was only for one last humiliation, since all of them were shot one by one into the river. So many shoes - different kinds, different sizes, some thrown to the side, some placed neatly together. I stood on the edge of the bank and looked into the river. I imagined what it would have felt like if I knew that view would be the last thing i saw. I wouldn't even have a moment to reflect, or to cry as I listened to my brothers and sisters die next to me - bang bang - and i watched the river fill with red. Bodies of my neighbor and husband and child's school teacher. The water was filthy. Its hard to imagine that at all, let alone imagine it with the additional humiliation of being naked. Or maybe humiliation is a feeling that gets set aside when you know you are about to die. It was a beautiful memorial.

Whether I liked the topic or not, it was the best put together museum I had ever been in, better than the Anne Frank Hus or the Berlin Jewish Memorial. It brings you into the life and the experience. It was full of videos, and paper handouts in every room. I took all 30 of them home. A fantastic history and humanity lesson. At the end of the tour I entered the basement where the old prisons and executions were held. 60 Andrassy Utca. It didn't all sink in, the relevance of this building, until I noticed no one was going into the room in the corner. So i was curious. I walked in and within an oddly shaped closet sized room, between the concrete slabbed walls, was a single 1950s wooden cross with a noose on it. It took my breath away, so that I had to compose myself. People were hung here. People died here. If that didnt remind me of the real history and death, and life, that took place where I stood, then nothing would. The only memorial where I have felt that connection in the States, was the twin tower memorial - even then there are waterfalls, not giant replicas of airplanes or people trapped under rubble. Most likely because it is less than 20 years ago. They couldnt make an elaborate memorial of something so fresh and painful, and if they didn't make a memorial at all then people might have lost faith in their government for not caring enough. Then again, communism only just ended 23 years ago for the Hungarian people, and much of Eastern Europe. No wonder Russia is trying so hard to get their bounce back now.

I went to the House of Terror museum too. A perfectly curated and captivating museum about Soviet and Nazi occupation. Literally, I walked through parts of the museums and said, Jesus... Who curated this? It was an extremely captivating, well written and distinctly organized museum. In the center was an open space with walls covered in faces of people in memorendum, with a soviet tank at the bottom.

 There were some people from the twin towers that had brave self sacrificing stories, and we don't know them or we don't hear them - at the memorial we just see water flowing. Granted I haven't been to the new museum yet. They have lots of stories of firefighters and priests and police officers, I'm sure. In the House of Terror I watched videos of survivors of torture telling their stories about how they were put into camps or prisons, for decades of torture, just because someone told a lie about them once. Just for opening a door for the wrong person, or getting on the wrong train, or changing homes at the wrong time. One man told his story on a black and white screen, saying that he was captured and put into a torture prison for 12 years. And when he found out what he had done, it turned out that someone said that he was - at the age of 17 - a spy. The man wept and asked what he did to that man to deserve such a lie, a betrayal that took his life from him. I watched at least 20 videos like this.

 I made sure to do all of these terribly sad things in no more than 2 days. I love Budapest, and even though I'm not Jewish, I feel so connected to the history here, so touched by it. I wonder, if I were alive then, who I would have killed to save my family or myself? Who would I have saved? I wonder what person I really am in a moment of crisis and fear. We all like to think we're the heroes, but we never know until opportunity presents itself in the face of tragedy. I hope I would be a hero, even if all that means is silently surviving without causing more casualties. I don't think I would ever point at someone and say he did it when I know in fact that I did it or someone else did - at least not since I was a child and not for matters other than flatulation.

I am always really touched by these stories. We dont choose the times we live in but how we live in those times can change history, and if it doesn't then maybe our stories can make one heart feel what we felt. And if we feel what they felt, we can be stronger, braver, even happier with what we have. 

The history of Budapest is truly so beautiful and touching that the sad stuff couldn't go unsaid. From 1600 to 1990 they were occupied by some empire or other, and they survived and managed to keep their language and their culture. I think that makes the Hungarians pretty damn resilient. And now that we look back on it, the history is equally sad as it is triumphant.

Unfortunately, the day after the walking tour, my dancing in the rain, a ballet at the Budapest Opera House (for 1€ might I add), and an evening walk in wet clothes, I came down with a terrible flu. Now recovering.

Cheers