Day Trip to Budapest!

An off-center selfie of us in front of the Liberty Bridge in Budapest!

My new favorite thing about being in Europe is that I can just decide to go to another country for a day.

Early last week, some friends and I decided we’d like to take a day trip to Budapest, Hungary on Saturday. Budapest is only two hours away from Vienna by bus, and the round-trip tickets only cost 18€ ($21).

The trip was fantastic. Not only did we get to see the sights in a beautiful city, but one of my friends I made at IKI last month, Orsi, lives there and was able to spend the day with us!

Castle Hill

The first place we visited once we arrived was the Castle District on the Buda side. Instead of paying to ride the train up to the top, we took a short hike up.

As we walked through the district, Orsi told us a little bit about the history of Hungary, and the various empires that controlled it throughout the years, from the Ottoman Empire to the Soviet Union.

At the end of our walk we arrived at Matthias Church and the Fisherman’s Bastion. It was a beautiful area, and from the bastion we had an amazing view of Budapest and the Donau through the middle of the city.

This panorama from the Fisherman’s Bastion is courtesy of PJ. To the left is Matthias Church and the Bastion. To the right is the view of Buda, the Donau, and Pest on the opposite shore.

The Szechenyi Chain Bridge and the Lions

After taking a bus down from the Castle District, we walked across the Szechenyi Chain Bridge. At the entrance to the bridge are two lion statues. Orsi said that people will ask you to find their tongues as a joke, because they don’t have any.

Once on the other side of the river, on the Pest side of the city, and we began to walk along the shore towards the Parliament building.

Shoes on the Danube

The shoes were a powerful reminder of the atrocities committed there.

Midway between the Szechenyi Bridge and the Parliament building, we stopped to view the Shoes on the Danube Memorial.

One section of the wall above the river is lined with pairs of iron shoes, many with candles or flowers placed inside and around them. These shoes are part of a memorial to honor the people shot into the Donau during the reign of the Arrow Cross Party in 1944-1945.

The shoes along the wall included men’s, women’s and children’s shoes alike. Thousands of people were killed during the Arrow Cross’s reign, many of them Jewish people.

Parliament

We then went the rest of the way to the Parliament building. We didn’t go inside — tickets have to be purchased in advance, and parliament is in session right now anyway — but the building itself was impressive. The architecture was beautiful, and the statues outside were also nice.

St. Stephan’s Basilica

After seeing the Parliament, Orsi took us to the center of the city near St. Stephan’s Basilica. There, we bought some souvenir postcards before sitting down to eat at a restaurant called Porta. I ordered a Hungarian dish called lescó, which had tomatoes, sausage, peppers, and onion. It was delicious, and just a little bit spicy. We also went to a Hungarian popsicle company called Anjuna, where they dipped your popsicle in melted chocolate.

When we left to go to our last destination, we took the first and oldest underground train in all of continental Europe, which was a cool experience as well.

House of Terror

The House of Terror museum front.

The final destination for the day was the House of Terror museum. The House of Terror was used as the headquarters for two terrorist dictatorships in Hungary’s history, the Nazis and the Communists. More specifically, the groups were the Arrow Cross Guard Party, and later, the communist terror organizations, ÁVO and ÁVH.

The audio guide explained the complicated history behind these groups’ rises to power in Hungary, their leaders, as well as the atrocities committed by their regimes. The violence by the Arrow Cross Guard between 1944 to 1945 included not just the shooting of thousands of people into the Danube that I mentioned earlier, but also the sending of thousands of Jewish people to the Nazi concentration camps. After WWII, when the Soviet Union and communists took over Hungary, the secret police groups (ÁVO and, later, the ÁVH), used the building as their headquarters and the location for the imprisonment, torture, and executions of “enemies of the state.”

Although it was not a “fun” experience, I feel that it was an important one for us to have. Unfortunately, I was never taught much in school about Hungarian history. I’m glad that we had the opportunity to learn more about the history and the horrors of the past.

Return

When we left the House of Terror, we had to rush to get to our bus back to Vienna in time, as the sun started to set over the city.

I definitely wish that we could’ve spent more time in Budapest, a few days at least. We barely scratched the surface of things to do there. In any case, I think it’s safe to say that we all had a fantastic time.

What I’ve been listening to this week: Vrásky štěstí by Jana Věnečková. This song was one of the music options on the bus entertainment systems, and it’s such a bop.