A long weekend in Budapest

Hello subscribers!

Yesterday I uploaded a new Blog Post with a short report of the long-weekend trip I made to Budapest over the Whitsun period. It comes with 20 photos, including some pretty atmospheric ones (e.g. from a cemetery).

It was a fruitful short trip despite it having given me only a good 48 hours in the fabulous city that is Budapest. In fact, this trip confirmed that for me Budapest is one of the greatest cities in the world. Not only does it have plenty to offer for dark tourists (see below – and of course the new post), it is also the grandness of the architecture, the way the River Danube is so much more part of the cityscape than is the case here in Vienna, the countless intriguing monuments and sculptures, and one thing that Budapest does exceptionally well: “shabby chic”. Unlike in many other European capital cities, in Budapest it’s not (yet) the case that all 19th century façades have been polished up and given a facelift. Instead you find great architecture in various states of beautiful decay. And I happen to like that. It gives the city a rougher edge. This is also taken on board locally, as evidenced by the so-called “ruin bars” you can find in Budapest, in courtyards of dilapidated former industrial compounds, now turned into street-food and party zones.

Speaking of food and drink, it was also nice to resample some of the Hungarian classic dishes such as fish soup (the pescatarian equivalent of goulash soup) and langos (of so much better quality than what you get here in Austria). Budapest now also has a flourishing craft beer scene and I made several very tasty discoveries. The weather was nice throughout so just walking around was a joy – although I also made extensive use of Budapest’s excellent (but cheap) public transport system.

DT sites I visited, and introduce briefly in the new Blog Post, included the Hospital in the Rock (a WWII/Cold-War-era tunnel system inside Buda Castle Hill), the Semmelweis medical museum (be warned, there are some graphic photos included in the new Blog Post that may not be for the squeamish!) and the New Municipal Cemetery, especially the Plot 301 memorial, the final resting place of victims of the brutal crushing of the 1956 Uprising in Hungary, including the then prime minister Imre Nagy. Also related to this is the official 1956 Uprising Memorial by the parliament that I discovered on this trip. And then there was a particularly poignant sort of monument that I had long wanted to finally see with my own eyes. That’s the “Shot into the Danube” monument commemorating the Jewish victims of mass executions by the Arrow Cross (the Hungarian Nazis) in 1944/45. The photo at the top of this Newsletter was taken at that unusual memorial site.

By the way, I did not revisit the three dark attractions already fully covered on my main website, namely the House of Terror Museum, the Memento Park of socialist statuary or the Holocaust Memorial Center. That was not just because of time constraints and the fact I had been to these places before. I also gathered from looking at newer photos, e.g. on Google Maps, that not that much seems to have changed at those places. But I have reason to revisit Budapest yet again (e.g. to see the Hungarian National Museum and its coverage of WWII and the communist period), and might pop into these three places again too, time permitting.

But first I have to write new chapters for the sights described in the Budapest post to add to my main website. And I also still have to write several new chapters for Tirana (though the ones that were already on there are now fully updated – see National History Museum, National Gallery and Hoxha Pyramid). And then I’ll also have to make a new country entry for Kosovo and write a few subchapters for that as well. So I still have plenty of stuff to keep me busy …

But so much for this instalment of the DT Newsletter.

Until next time,

all the best,

Peter