Friday, 13 October 2017
Budapest
After the bare fields in Serbia, Hungary looked green. The trees only started to change the foliage color to yellow and red. Small farmsteads with flocks of sheep appeared by the road and quickly vanished into the distance.
The train ride was 8.5-hours and no food was available. I ate 2 apples and a chocolate bar that I happened to have with me. This was not enough and I was starving.
At 8.10 pm we were in Budapest. I walked to my hotel, going into a wrong direction only once which was an achievement for me. The hotel was a charming old building with antique furniture; my room on the last floor had two skylights in the slanted ceiling.
Overtired and hungry, I could not sleep. Next morning lightheaded from the lack of sleep and food, I ate copious amounts of bread with the famous Hungarian salami for breakfast, rested in my room and felt better.
My reservation at Inn Side Hotel Kalvin House was for one night only. I found a room at a different hotel for the second night in Budapest, carried my backpack to the next “home away from home” and went to see the city.
Budapest is magnificent. There has been so much said and written about it that I am not going to describe its grand buildings or to post its picture-perfect views. Well, maybe just a couple of photos to prove that I was there.
I could not get to any of the museums. All tickets to the Parliament were sold out for the day. The synagogue, largest in Europe and second largest in the world, was closed to visitors because it was a Jewish holiday. I could only admire the majestic complex from the outside.
I roamed around the city, found out how to get to my next destination, Lake Balaton and returned to Nova Aparthotel where I was going to spend the night. It turned out to be an actual apartment in a regular residential building fully equipped with everything that one would need to live in it including a washing machine. It was probably too much for a one-night stay. I bought something to eat from a small supermarket and served myself dinner in the kitchen.
The apartment itself was great. It was too warm in it and I opened both balcony doors. My Hungarian neighbors smoked on their balconies and instead of fresh air, I got tobacco smoke in the rooms. I closed the balcony doors. Someone else smoked on the landing outside of my entrance door and more smoke came from that direction. I closed the bedroom door too, tried to sleep, but couldn’t. Eventually, all smokers went to bed, I opened the doors again, cool fresh air filled the rooms and I fell asleep.
In the morning on the way to the railway station, I made another attempt to see the synagogue. The line to the ticket office was long and the synagogue had not been open yet. I had no time to wait in that line.
Below are interesting murals in the old city. There were more of them, I included photos of just these three.
In the late 60s the school in the Soviet Union that I went to received several letters from a school in Budapest. They were in Russian which was a mandatory subject in Hungary at that time. In these letters Hungarian boys and girls expressed a wish to correspond with Soviet children and provided their names and addresses. The letters were distributed among classes in the school and our class got one. I cannot describe how excited we all were. It was our first communication with the world outside of the Soviet Union.
My penpal friend’s name was Judit. It sounded very foreign, so different from the names I was used to. I wanted to write to her, to ask about Hungary – the country that I never dreamed of seeing, but the words did not come. I carried Judit’s address with me in the schoolbag, often looked at it and could not start writing. At 12 years old, I did not know how to express myself. My classmates already wrote to their penpal friends and some even got replies. There were rumors that a girl in our school got a parcel from Hungary with a present, a nice blouse. How jealous I was! Not because she got something material, although I did not mind a present from Hungary. Imported goods were hard to come by in the Soviet Union. The important thing was that the girl found the right words to talk to her Hungarian friend and I could not.
After weeks of suffering, I managed to put together a short letter, just a few lines in which I asked Judit to tell me about herself and Budapest. That was all I could come up with.
Judit wrote back fast enough. In perfectly correct and bookish Russian she described Budapest, its two parts Buda and Pest, the Danube and wrote a little about her interests. A passport-size photograph fell out of the envelope. I marveled at Judit’s lovely face and her neat handwriting. The letter made me feel as if I had won a lottery. I showed her letter to anyone who was willing to look at it.
The second letter to Judit was even harder to write. She sent me her photo which meant that I needed to send her mine. The problem was that I had few photos of myself and all of them looked ugly, too embarrassing to send to a pretty girl like Judit. We could not be friends; I was not worth her friendship. I cannot recall now if I enclosed my photo or not, but I do remember how awkward my letter was, how false the words sounded. I had nothing to say to that nice Hungarian girl except for common banalities. As I was sealing the letter I knew that was the end of our correspondence. Of course, Judit never wrote again.
Since then I moved houses many times and I moved countries twice. Many of my possessions got lost or left behind including photographs. Somehow Judit’s photo survived. I am sure she forgot about that little episode in her life when a silly Soviet girl wrote to her, but I did not. Visiting Budapest, the city that I never thought would be possible for me to see, brought these memories back.
Sunday-Tuesday, 15-17 October 2017
Budapest – Lake Balaton
The train from Budapest to Lake Balaton was slow. In fact, I had to take 2 trains to get to my destination, a town of Keszthely. The lake is shaped like a long sausage and Keszthely is located at its farthest end from Budapest. The railroads go alongside both, north and south shores of the lake. I took the northern route and changed trains at a place called Tapolca. The train had only 2 carriages and looked like it came from an amusement park or a museum. The little train ran with all its might stopping every other minute at small stations and in the late afternoon I was in Keszthely.
I do not know how to pronounce Keszthely. Hungarian is one of the most difficult European languages. The number of sibilants and consonants in a row are mind-boggling. The most popular foreign language in Hungary is German. Sometimes it took me a while to find an English speaking person or I resorted to gestures, but Hungarians were always helpful regardless of the spoken language.
Of course, I went to the lake right after I checked in into the hotel. In my childhood, I had a Hungarian stamp that depicted Lake Balaton. I remember that stamp very well although I sold my collection long ago before emigrating from Russia. The lake on the stamp was deep blue studded with white sails. And there it was – the real Lake Balaton. Its calm waters were deep blue and yachts with white sails were gliding in all directions. Ducks, swans, and fishermen were everywhere too.
I went for a walk and discovered that public access to the lake was limited to a few spots. Long stretches of its shores are owned by yacht clubs, restaurants, campsites and alike. My dream of taking long walks and enjoying lake views at the same time did not come true. There is a bike path between the railway tracks and the lake, but it is too far from the shore and Lake Balaton is not visible from the path. I walked for hours anyway for no other reason than just to walk. Mature trees growing on both sides of the path, an occasional little train running past with a whistle, warm weather – all that created a perfect setting for walking, but I missed the lake views.
Keszthely and other towns around the lake looked like they were from the movies set before World War II. Time did not touch them since then. If it had not been for modern cars on the roads I’d have thought that I had been transferred into the 1930s when the wealthy came to Lake Balaton for the baths.
The most interesting place to visit in Keszthely is the Helicon Castle which is actually an 18th-century palace. As in many other museums taking photos inside is prohibited. I can only refer those who want to see the palace interiors to its site Helicon Kastely. The library that consists of almost 90,000 volumes is very impressive.
Lake Balaton – Graz, Austria
Wednesday, 18 October 2017
After 2 days in Keszthely, it was time to move on. I took a 5 a.m. bus to a small town with another jawbreaking name of Szombathely. It was very early and a morning milky fog was so thick that the road was barely visible. In Szombathely, I walked from the bus station to the train station and bought a ticket for the train to Graz, Austria that was leaving in one hour.
It was not a direct train. I had to change at a small station with an even more difficult to pronounce name Szentgotthard which is at the border with Austria.
A police officer threw a quick glance into the carriage without stepping inside, waived to the train operator that everything was okay and we rolled into Austria. Nobody checked our passports. What a difference compared to the border formalities to enter Hungary! At noon I was in Graz.