Some places you need to experience raw. Hungary is one of them. But if you are not a proud member of the long-underwear travel club, late spring and late summer, when the humidity has passed, are better times to go. With long, sunny days, you can tour comfortably through Wolf's Meadow Cemetery just outside Budapest, where the exiled Hungarian composer Bela Bartok is buried alongside conductor Georg Solti and other poets, writers and musicians. You can explore Margaret Island in the middle of the Danube River. Or you can take a ferry cruise on the Danube, the second- longest river in Europe, after the Volga.
During our December visit, Suzy and I, both members of the long-underwear set, settled for a cold hike up a winding hill to watch the city unfold from the vistas of the medieval Buda Palace, which now houses the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Hungarian National Gallery, the Budapest History Museum and the National Szechenyi Library.
In Budapest, on the Pest side of the Danube, chefs cook up an outdoor feast of such Hungarian classics as goulash.
(Jackie Spinner -- The Washington Post)
|
|
We donned thick mittens and hats to tour Pecs, about 105 miles south of the city, and Sopron, about 135 miles west. We were more than walking off our meals. We were walking the roads of a determined people who had survived hunger and fear.
There are memorials, monuments and museums at every turn. In the smaller towns, few, if any, are translated into English. Sadly, Suzy's dream to tour Sopron's Museum of Forestry died at the door when we realized we would not be able to understand the displays.
We had better luck in Budapest, where I bonded with my grandparents' Lutheran roots at the National Lutheran Museum. An English-speaking guide was eager to show off the last will and testament of Martin Luther, as well as an intimate display of centuries-old Communion cups and other religious artifacts.
Budapest is divided into two distinct halves, the Buda side and the Pest side (pronounced "pesht"). We divided our trip as well, staying in and touring Buda when we first arrived and then Pest when we returned from Pecs and Sopron.
Buda is the quiet side, its culinary offerings similarly subdued, with the exception of the Ruszwurm patisserie, which dates to 1827. In Buda, we bypassed the museums and hiked long hills, peered up at the old church steeples and went into Pest to eat.
In the livelier Pest, we discovered cafes, bookstores and market squares crammed with people, tourists like ourselves and women in gray coats jostling each other at the pickle barrel of the corner market. This side of the city is home to the Opera House, the massive St. Stephen's Basilica, the city park, more churches, more museums and the train station, where we darted off for Pecs, a college town on the slopes of the Mecsek Hills.
We parked ourselves in the Art Nouveau Hotel Palatinus in the heart of the old city, with narrow streets that allowed us to explore neighborhoods cramped with stone houses with orange- and red-tiled roofs, their chimneys spewing wood smoke into the cloudy winter sky.
As our guidebook suggested, if you only visit one place in Pecs, make it the Csontvary Museum, where the works of Kosztka Tivador Csontvary are on display in a simple upstairs museum, and a cafe downstairs offers live music in the late afternoon.
