Day 3: Fisherman's Bastion & Concert

After visiting Heroes' Square and St. Stephen's Basilica, we drove across the Danube to Buda and uuup the hill on which the castle sits. There we climbed the Fisherman's Bastion (left). The name comes from the Middle Ages, when that guild was responsible for defending that part of town, but the building (really mostly a facade) dates to the turn of the last century. Its seven towers represent the seven original Magyar tribes, and a statue of King/St. Stephen on a horse stands in the square between it and Matthias Church,which was used as a mosque when the Ottomans were in charge and was under renovation when we were there. There's a restaurant on the first floor, and the ramparts above are a popular vista point with tourists.

Across the river you can see the Parliament building (right). Constructed in a frilly, Gothic Revival style, it was the winner of a design contest, inaugurated the same time as Heroes' Square (1896), and completed in 1904. They liked the two runners-up so much, they built them, too (facing Lajos Kossuth Square on the other side). This is the largest building in Hungary and the second-largest Parliament building in Europe, after London's. Today it is rather out-sized for the single-chamber legislature, which only uses half the building.

Despite all that sightseeing, can you imagine that this day was only half over? Dear Husband and I ate a quick lunch before setting off on our own for a hour or two at the Gellert Spa. We had to meet the group at a nearby restaurant for an early dinner, because this evening they rehearsed and gave their first scheduled concert, in St. Matthew's Church back in Pest. DH accompanied them and played a few organ pieces; I organized his sheet music and turned pages. As you can see below, the venue was really beautiful. The concert was, too. I had several "musical moments," and I know the audience did as well, because they were very receptive and appreciative.

Day 3: Heroes' Square & St. Stephen's Basilica

In addition to afternoon and evening concerts, the tour company organized guided tours each morning. On our first full day in Budapest, we were driven up to Heroes' Square (Hősök tere). Built in 1896, it commemorates 1000 years of Hungarian history in statues. (The area was supposedly first settled in 896.) In the center of square, the Angel Gabriel stands aloft on a pillar; beneath him ride seven horsemen, one for each of the founding Magyar tribes. That's the Museum of Fine Arts on the left (above); on the right behind the column you can see one of two curved colonnades whose interstices are occupied by the succession of rulers. Below left is the first figure and the most famous, King Stephen I (r. 1000-1038). Below right is one of the figures atop the semi-circles, Labor (with scythe) and Wealth (with cornucopia). (I note that she is wearing a dress, but he apparently can't afford clothes. Somebody get that worker a union!)

After a quick tour of the square to hear some facts and take some photographs, we piled back on the bus to drive around the City Park and down the boulevard that used to be the swankiest in the capital (Andrássy Avenue). A number of foreign embassies are still located there. 

Next stop: St. Stephen's Basilica, named for the king. He is the patron saint of Hungary, and his saint day (August 20) is still one of three national holidays, as the Communists were not able to stamp out devotion to him during their forty-one-year rule. In fact, Hungarians are so devoted to St. Stephen that while erecting the basilica, they asked the Vatican for a special dispensation to put a statue of him on the main altar, rather than a crucifix. It was granted. In addition, his right hand is preserved in the reliquary.

At 96m (315ft), the Basilica is one of the two tallest buildings in Budapest; the other is the Parliament, completed a few years earlier. No building in the capital is allowed to be taller. The church would have been done much earlier if the first architect hadn't died, leaving unsound plans for the dome. When the second architect couldn't get permission to alter them, construction went ahead. The dome collapsed, just as the replacement architect had predicted. They had to tear it down and start over! The interior is gorgeous, warm with gold and brown and sunlight. Good acoustics, too, despite the bustle of tourists hurrying to the next place. The group had decided beforehand to do a sort of "flashmob" and sing one song from their repertoire, which they did.

Day 2/3: Aquincum & Gellert Spa

Panoramic shot of some of ruins at Aquincum. 
That's the rich man's house on the left and the amphitheater on the right.

"Hey there, lil' buddy!"

On our first afternoon in Budapest, a bunch of us went out to the Aquincum museum and Roman ruins in Obuda, about 20 minutes north of the city center. The recently renovated museum has dig finds from the site that go back to the Neolithic period, but most are from the time when Aquicum was a Roman military outpost on the far eastern frontier of their empire, c. 100-200 C.E. When looking at old things pulled out of the ground, I am often impressed at the fine metal work that went into making jewelry. Dear Husband's second favorite object was from the governor's palace that had been located on an adjacent river island: a slightly larger-than-life statue of the Emperor with a removable head. When one died, the next one's likeness could be added to keep the cult of the emperor up to date.

DH's favorite find--and the reason for our trip--was the remains of the oldest known pipe organ. It was a hydraulis, a water-powered organ, gifted in 228 C.E. to the town's volunteer fire brigade by a rich musician whose wife had played it but had recently died at the tender age of 35 years, 3 months, and 14 days. Too bad they were only a volunteer team of boiled-wool merchants and the like, because the town burned down and the firehouse with it!

The organ was discovered, in pieces, in the building's basement in 1931. Those are now laid out in a glass case. The museum also includes three reproductions: a wooden one (with video of how it sounds), a see-through plexiglass one, and the large one outside (above). It had 13 keys, 4 registers, and 52 pipes and apparently sounded something like a glass harmonica.

The name of town comes from the Latin word for water (aqua) and refers to the area's natural springs. No Roman town was complete with a public bath, and Aquincum was no different. In addition to houses, shops, and a temple, the town boasted a large bath with cold, hot, and steam rooms (below). The floor was raised for a fire to burn underneath + water = sauna.

In fact, Budapest has long been famous as "Spa City." The afternoon DH and I got to experience one of the famous public baths, the Gellert Spa & Baths, opened in 1918. Gellert is very popular with tourists, probably because it claims to be tri-lingual (Hungarian, German, English). Unfortunately, this is only partly true. Some of the staff speak reasonable amounts of German or English, and some of the signs are in all three languages. But a very important one--for the men's and women's changing rooms--is in Hungarian only with no pictogram or the like! The signage was generally confusing about the steps for getting from the front door to the lockers, towel counter, various pools, and massage room. In the end, though, DH got a massage, while I lounged in the 36-degree inner pool and the swam in the 26-degree outer pool. Now we can say we got the "spa experience" in Budapest.

SPLASH!

Shades of Meaning

On his way out the door this morning, Dear Husband looked over the top of my laptop to kiss me good-bye. Catching sight of my split screen--primary source on the right, highlighted notes on the left--he said, "You know, Faulkner wanted to publish in multiple ink colors already, but they wouldn't let him. Sorry, you can't be the first to do that." Unsure of whether he was being a font of trivia or of sarcasm, I googled it. It turns out that someone has in fact made Faulkner's wish come true: publishing has "grown up" enough to put out a 14-color edition with a color-coded bookmark to track the jumbled time periods and tenses in his stream-of-consciousness masterpiece, The Sound and the Fury. (It's limited to 1,480 hand-numbered copies at a cool $345 each.)


I've used multi-colored highlighting ever since Word started supporting it, especially in order to organize my reading notes from oh-so-many book reviews for my preliminary exams a few years ago: yellow for useful factual information, teal for the author's argument, green for praise, red for criticism, hot pink for important ideas or theories. For my own writing, blue is usually for my own thoughts and ideas, green or maroon for a section I'm still working on, red for things to look up, orange or italics for text that probably won't stay but I don't want to delete it yet, purple for sections to work on in the future, and black for text I've settled on. My documents often look like the screen shot below, at least in the writing/editing stage. I have entertained the thought of trying to get my advisers to read chapters in technicolor, but probably they would just print them out in black and white anyway. When I turn in the first draft of the second chapter of my dissertation at the end of this month, I guess it will be in plain (authoritative?) black and white after all.

Day 2: Budapest

The bend in the beautiful blue Danube River in Budapest.
Margrit Island is in the background.

Day 1: Got a ride to bus pick-up spot, rode bus to airport, sat/slept in airplane to Frankfurt am Main.

Day 2: Connected to flight to Budapest, met travel guide (Karel) and bus driver (Armin), and drove into Budapest. Learned that in this city of nearly 2 million people, it is almost impossible to make a left turn, so we circled around for a while until we were able to cross a bridge to green, hilly Buda, on the left bank of the Danube. This photo was taken from the Citadel, facing north (and Slovakia in the distance). On the right is flat Pest (pronounced Pesht), on the right bank of the Danube (Duna in Hungarian).


The capital of Hungary is a pretty typically big, central-European city with old and new buildings. Some of both are ugly (either the result of neglect under Communism or questionable architectural style later), while others are quite nice to look at (like the Parliament building). Alexandre Gustave Eiffel designed its train station, which was just down the street from our hotel.

After checking in, showering/changing, grabbing a slooow bite to eat from the restaurant next door, getting the local currency (Hungarian forints, HUF), retrieving hats and cameras, and buying tram tickets from the concierge--a bunch of us set off to view the Roman ruins and museum at Aquicum in Obuda, twenty minutes north of the city center. That's the subject of the next trip post. At dinner at the hotel that night, two musicians serenaded us on violin and cymbalum. This gentleman sang for us, and once he figured out we were a singing group, the two of them played songs for us to sing along to. "If I were a rich man" from Fiddler on the Roof was probably the hit of the night. Having traveled for a day and then spent the afternoon in the hot sun, we went to bed exhausted but excited that night.

Our Trip, By the Numbers

Clouds over Frankfurt am Main.
Photo credit MAH.

Dear Husband and I have returned from our choir trip to Central Europe, a whirlwind 9-day tour of 4 cities in 3 countries. I keep using the adjective "fabulous" to describe the traveling, the hotels, the sight-seeing, the performances. It took me 2 hours to go through my photographs (not to mention his). Over the next few weeks I will write up and illustrate some remembrances for you. This first installment is "our trip, by the numbers."

Key: B-Budapest, E-Eisenstadt, V-Vienna/Wien, P-Prague/Praha, T-Terezin/Theresienstadt




For the record, we traveled in 2 cars, 4 planes, 3 buses, 3 trams, and 9 subways. There were no boats, rickshaws, or hot-air balloons on this trip, but there was plenty of walking. DH even went for a run three mornings (around St. Margaret Island-B, in the gardens of Schönbrunn Palace-V, and along the Vltava River-P). 

Scheduled concerts: 5 (St. Michael’s Church-B, Haydnsaal-E, St. Charles Church-V, Jutta Unkart-Seifert's apartment-V, St. Nicholas Church-P)

Impromptu “flashmobs”: 4 (St. Stephen’s Cathedral-B, Esterhazy Palace Courtyard-E, St. Vitus Cathedral-P, Terezin Ghetto-T)

Setting off from home. Photo credit NJE.

Dear Husband played 3 organs, 4 keyboards, and just 1 piano, at the apartment of former opera singer and current music-charity organizer Jutta Unkart-Seifert. All in all, the instrument situation was rather disappointing, from a grand piano locked in the wings of the Haydnsaal to a sorry excuse for an electronic organ at the concert venue in Prague. However, the two old pipe organs were fun to play. I even choreographed a liturgical dance for one piece on the concerts in St. Charles and St. Nicholas. (More on the instruments here and on my European dancing debut here.)

Countries visited: 3 (Hungary, Austria, Czech Republic)
Currencies: 3 (forints, Euros, crowns)
Cities: 5 (Budapest, Eisenstadt, Vienna, Prague, Terezin)
Rivers: 4 (Danube/Donau-B & V, Vienna/Wien-V, Vltava/Moldau-P, Eger-T)

Bridges: no idea—I lost count

Churches: 6 (in addition to the 5 already named, also St. Giles-P to hear an organ, soprano, and violin concert)

Palaces: 2 (Esterhazy-E, Schönbrunn-V)

Art museums: 2 (the Belvedere-V, the Albertina-V)

Roman ruins: 2 (at Aquincum in Obuda-B + the fake ones at Schönbrunn-V)

Theaters: 1 (Ta Fantastika black light theater-P)

Former prisons/Jewish ghettos: 1 (Terezin-T)

Medieval-themed rest stop
between Vienna and Prague.

Missing group members: 1 (showed up in time for the concert)

ER visits: 1 (after a fall, thankfully negative scans)

Marriage proposals: 1 (at Jutta’s apt)

Surprise visits by German cousins: 2 (not mine, although I did some translating)
Lost passports: 1 (recovered from the seat-back pocket)

Ice cream cones/bars: 5

Glasses of wine: 1

Beers: 0

Pálinka (Hungarian brandy): 0 officially, but my water smelled and tasted of it one night at dinner-B

Slivovitz (Czech plum brandy): ½ shot each-P

Schnitzels: 3

Polkas: 1

Photos taken: 630 between the two of us

We packed our towels!

View Chorale Trip 2012 in a larger map

Thursday morning we leave for our 10-day trip to Central Europe. Above is our concert itinerary (click the map to find out when and where the choir will be singing).

p.s.--This is why in a drawer in the kitchen I keep a Cool Whip tub of rubber bands and twist ties from every bunch of broccoli or loaf of bread I have ever purchased:

Because when searching for the right "little dongly thing"* to pack from the enormous box in the closet of cables, chargers, and dongly things, I might just be inspired to put all those little stretchy circles and pieces of paper-covered wire to good use. Voilá!


* Yes, that's a technical term. Bonus points if you know who coined it!