A Taste of Hungarian Patriotism

Daily Blog #5 — Celebrating St. Stephen’s Day

It’s been a consistent theme of our trip that we somehow time our stay in a city just a couple days shy of some important or fun event. Nothing major, but there have been just enough of them to make us go, “Oh damn. I wish we’d known…”

You’d think this would have taught us to look at the events coming up in a city before we book but, alas, you’d be wrong. It’s always either a fun way of saying we’ll just have to come back or a conversation starter for what we got to enjoy instead. It’s made us more grateful for the experiences we’ve had rather than feeding the perpetually hungry FOMO monster.

It was still a delight to figure out three days before our flight from Vilnius to Budapest that we’d be just in time to join the local population in celebrating the founding of Hungary. The icing on top was finding that our lodging was going to be walking distance from the center of the action and we would be able to enjoy a food festival all weekend.

I guess the universe thought we were owed a little fun after all those near misses.

We arrived in Budapest on a hot humid Friday afternoon — our least favorite weather. We’d gotten up at 6:30am that morning to pack still damp laundry and ensure we had ample time for taxi high jinxes before our 10am flight out of Vilnius. Ian had also gallantly insisted I drink our last cup of coffee since we were down to one espresso capsule in the apartment. Luckily, our driver had been a quiet solid type who delivered us quickly to the departure area and we’d used the extra time to secure Ian some java at the airport business lounge. Two flights and more instant coffee later, we were tired, a little grumpy, and loathing the heat we knew was coming.

The Budapest airport lies an hour or so south east of the city proper so we hefted our bags and squeezed into the standing room only bus of luggage and fellow passengers. The driver kept barking what I can only assume was some variation of Keep moving back, I know there’s more room hidden on here somewhere, you foreign ninnies. We tried not to shove our backpacks into anyone’s face and held on as the bus peeled away from the curb.

The city of Budapest is actually formed between two cities — the old and affluent Buda on the west side of the river Danube and the only marginally newer busy Pest on the flat east side. It’s a city of bridges and as a Portlander, I felt instantly like I got this city in some weird way. What I didn’t get was the heat. As we left the air conditioned cocoon of the bus, humid stickiness rolled over us in waves from the asphalt as it ricocheted between massive sun-swollen stone buildings; the speeding vehicles only adding to the feeling of exhaustion and miasma. Even if I had been a snake I’d have been seeking some hole to hide in. This place needs more greenery, I thought as we made our way to the next bus. We angled our way into a thin patch of shade from a street sign and watched the buildings shimmer.

The next bus left us in the middle of what I can only describe as an urban ravine. Train tracks and roads ran between two steep hillsides and I faced an impossible looking series of stairs climbing straight up. Ian and I traded gripes and sarcastic quips along the lines of are-you-sure (yes) and let-me-see-that-map (fine). Our cheerful host Norbert opened the door to find us both drenched in sweat and out of breath.

“Welcome! Ready for the stairs?”

Ian drew deep from some well I’ll never possess, plastered a smile on his face and chatted back and forth with Norbert up the ten flights of stairs as I wheezed behind them. Norbert showed us around the apartment and gave a brief crash course in Hungarian before waving goodbye. As the door clicked shut, we immediately stripped down and shamelessly stood in front of the AC unit in our underwear.

A couple of hours later after unpacking, finding a tasty cheap dinner around the corner and settling in for the evening, I stared out at the beautiful Buda Castle across from our apartment and watched the fireworks going off down the river with a renewed sense of excitement for a new city and country to explore.

Welcome to Budapest indeed.

The heat and stairs had scared us so despite it being the first day of the national holiday weekend, we spent the majority of Saturday in our icy tower. We had some trip planning get done for the Balkans and the excuse of 90°F weather seemed as good as any to buckle down and clear out our To Do lists. By 5pm however, neither of us could stand it anymore, so we descended and headed towards the festival to hunt down dinner.

The Buda Castle sits on the edge of a mesa which dominates the cityscape. Pedestrians have three choices: go around, go over, or go through. Norbert had warned us not to go through the hill via the traffic tunnel due to the exhaust fumes, but to our delight, we discovered the tunnel had been closed to cars to allow folks to walk in and out of the festival en masse. We emerged from the darkness into a crowd of people and smack dab into the Taste of Hungary festival.

Do you feel the crush of people? Good, because it was panic inducing at times.

Food stalls selling everything lined the river from the Chain Bridge to Elizabeth Bridge — cheese, meats, pork knuckles the size of our heads, beers in any color of the rainbow, funnel cake concoctions, and, I kid you not, boar testicle goulash. We walked down each row with our eyes wide as dinner plates before settling on a heaping pile of paprika chicken, boiled potatoes, and sauerkraut. I sipped the best dark cherry beer I’ve ever had the pleasure of imbibing and felt strangely at home.

If we’re somewhere for a significant period of time, we like trying to master the basics of the local language so, as we licked our lips and utensils clean, we practiced our Hungarian hello, please, thank you, and goodbye. The elderly couple next to us at our shared table initially found it very confusing to hear their neighbors repeatedly saying hello, but as we got up and I said köszönöm while indicating the table, they laughed and indicated we were most welcome.

I felt like I’d somehow gotten a gold star on a pop quiz.

We splurged on liquid dessert and sipped on strawberry lemonade and apricot wine as we meandered up a cobblestone street towards the top of the Buda Hill to discover the Folk Arts and Crafts market still open for business. The evening light on the medieval stalls displaying wares of all colors, styles and materials seemed to send us back in time and neither of us could stop exclaiming just simply how cool it all was.

Wood, bone, wool, metal — you name it, they’d created it into something interesting and unique.

Through a stone archway and up a flight of stairs we came into the middle of the Buda Castle and stopped dead in our tracks. Ian laughed out loud in wonder, saying “Where are we? Is this real?”

A small girl was singing on a stage while a troupe of traditionally clothed dancers spun circles and an audience sang heartily along with her light soprano voice. We drifted this way and that between the stalls, mesmerized and feeling drunk on the old world magic the locals had summoned. We decided on the walk home that Budapest had made the list for places we might consider living if circumstances and politics changed someday.

The dancers were moving so quickly my camera caught only blurs, but the Buda Castle was polite enough to stand still.

Sunday followed a similar pattern and 5pm found us exploring a new section of the food festival and walking to Elizabeth Bridge where a heavy metal concert had appeared in the turnpike. The Hungarian screams of the lead singer echoed up and down the river as police, punk kids, and parents with babies mingled across the bridge — not a pair of noise canceling baby muffs in sight.

We snapped photos and made our way over to the Pest side of the river, the concert music following us easily.

We followed the Danube up towards Parliament and enjoyed a spectacular sunset before crossing the Chain Bridge and heading home for an early night.

Tomorrow was going to be a long day.

Monday morning found us huddled in sparse shade waiting for the Air and Water Parade in front of the glorious Parliament building while two radio announcers rattled loudly over the crowd. For two hours, we watched helicopters, bombers, jets, and propeller planes dance over the Danube.

The pilot of this helicopter must have been having a blast making his bird perform loops, figure eights, and circles in the air.

While colored smoke cleared, para-gliders appeared as if out of thin air with colored smoke and massive Hungarian flags. They spiraled down performing air tricks before landing in the icy water as police boats rushed to pluck them out.

Three para gliders descended hanging on to one another’s feet as the last glider unfurled a massive flag. They split into three and majestically splash landed together in the river directly in front of Parliament.

Following this impressive display, a flotilla of river boats moved down the river in sequence as an Airbus flew overhead.

Yep. An Airbus passenger plane flew over the Danube in front of the Parliament.

America, eat your heart out.

Museums are typically closed on Mondays. However, due to the holiday all of the city’s museums were open and free to visitors. As if by some trick of fate, the tourists hadn’t figured this out, so for the afternoon we enjoyed the Hungarian National Museum almost to ourselves.

If you ever make it to Budapest, definitely visit. It has one of the best exhibits I’ve seen on Celtic clans and their sometimes combative relationship with the Romans who “conquered” them. Well-lit displays show original artifacts including ornate gold jewelry and weapons from burial chambers. The detailed maps on tribe migration patterns are some of the most up-to-date I’ve seen on the period leading up to the fall of Rome as we know it outside of niche history books. The basement is full of Roman funeral stones, sarcophagi, and an impeccably preserved mosaic floor. Ian laughed under his breath as I rattled off gods, legends, and facts dredged up from memory of my Roman Art and Architecture class in college.

“You’re so cute when you’re nerdy,” he said, and kissed my forehead.

Evening found us squeezed in-between families on the edge of the river waiting in eager anticipation for the final celebration of the day: a massive fireworks display in front of the Parliament building.

I’ve seen a lot of firework shows and I can honestly say this one blew them all out of the water. The show opened with the appearance of a fleet of LED drones that maneuvered to give the impression of a hundred-story tall deer leaping across the river. Then, a hundred feet from our position, fireworks screamed off the Chain Bridge and shattered the air above our heads. Down the river, they rocketed up from a barge positioned in such a way to make the lights shimmer above the lit Parliament dome. Reds, greens, and whites were favored — Hungary’s national colors. The kids in front of me yelped in glee each time a boom echoed across the river while pigeons dove in terror.

The finale exploded in flashes of white and I’m not unconvinced there weren’t some flash bangs thrown in for good measure. As the final smoke cleared, the drones reappeared to form a slowly rotating crown and the Hungarian National anthem played with the crowd around us joining in.

Well done, Hungary.

The entire thing was pretty inspiring and certainly made up for us missing our hometown American Fourth of July celebrations. Hungarian politics isn’t far from our own currently and the cynical side of me couldn’t help but feel some strange revulsion at all of the pride on display knowing the darker side of state rhetoric at the moment.

But that’s what national holidays are for: to feel proud of where you come from and celebrate everything that makes it what it is. You can embrace the love of home and still separate it from its current place in time.

So for a weekend, we joined in celebrating a country that has existed since 895 C.E. despite barbarian hordes, monarchies, occupations, Communist regimes, and both World Wars. They continue to thrive, drink their incredible wine, and spread paprika over everything.

From an American who can only claim 242 years of existence against your 1123, Happy Founding Day, Hungary.

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