Day 2 - Buda is no Pest

by
Mick (Mrigank) Das

The white envelope that stayed unopened was my first target as a 6:30 am alarm woke me up after about 5 hours of sleep… strangely I felt well rested.  After the long journey,  the plush bed in the Radisson's fourth floor with me and myself ensured that even an abbreviated somnolence was strangely adequate;  I ripped open the envelope and found a nice welcome note from Dean my Serbian tour manager; since I had missed the prior evening's 7:30pm pow-wow in the lobby with the rest of the nineteen tour group members, Dean was thoughtful enough to have written this note.  The first matter of import was the meeting time…  it was 8:30am… reasonable. I was ready by 7:00am because of my excitement level -  I love breakfast buffets.  Bring it on! Muchos gracias.

I proceeded to the first floor where the breakfast café was.  Breakfast buffets makes your heart grow warmer… almost as warm and delicious as a flirtatious exchange with the opposite gender, not quite.. But almost!  There is a certain invitation for a gastronomic conquest… do you start with the juices, do you start with the Italian espresso machine with some very authentic European coffee (a certain friend will scoff and stand by Nescafé), do you dig in to the croissants and scones (red flags galore!) or do you go to the omelet bar and put down a request to the chef in full regalia with the white top-hat to prepare you a nice two-egg omelet with red peppers, onions and mushrooms ?  I forget the order of operations, but I did all three; one could albeit go for the many assorted sausages and meats too (a note to myself that this could be 'Hog' heaven for my bud Subu).. Even some smoked salmon!! (no fishy breath in the morning please). I finished off with some hot food:  sautéed potatoes and red fava beans called foul madammes (a funny name). I might have grabbed a yogurt cup on the way out too…

While I was splurging on the tremendous fare all around the dining room,  I noticed a steady stream of people all wearing the same company badge hanging around their neck trickle in… Out of normal human curiosity I peeked… some Indian girls, some Indian boys were also sprinkled in there… all wearing the same badge.  I was in mild consternation.  Here I was in Budapest,  had maybe seen very little brown skin up until this point. What gives with the Patels, the Dhaves, the Balakrishnans and the Radhakrishnans :) all swarming the Breakfast hall in the Radisson in the center of freakin' Budapest ?

I waited until an opportune moment, when at the table next to me two young girls with the same company badges sat down; not Indian… one was white and the other, the one next to my left a smartly dressed young black girl with carefully coiffured hair at a two-person table, next to my two-person table.  I asked the black girl what is going on… is there a convention or something?  It turns out that GE (General Electric) one of the largest US companies had sent their IT new-hires on a two week orientation camp to Budapest; these folks came from all over the globe.. And it made sense as Budapest was within easy reach of both Asia and US and of course Europe.  The IT angle also explains the liberal helping of brown skin!!  This was their second week and GE was footing the bill.. Nice!  After a casual exchange of words, I said bye to them and headed for my rendezvous with the tour group in the lobby.

I got my first look at the tour group… it was smaller than the usual size, which was actually pretty good as we could stick together well.  There was a big contingent of a single family, a grandma, her two daughters both married to attorneys, and a horde of kids, one high-school girl; one of the daughters was a Pediatric Dentist - oooh la la - the smell of cash :) :). Then a ER nurse (male) from LA Joel whom I got along real well with.. And a few older women….… A mother daughter duo from Milwaukee,  the daughter a high-schooler the mother Linda also a nurse in OT, two ladies from Philadelphia…  one other senior lady was from Boca Raton.  No Indians… the daughter from Milwaukee was an adopted Guatemalan, she kinda looked Indian from the northeastern part - like Manipur, Mizoram types.

For the Gate 1 crew, Dean was an affable, courteous, friendly, in shape mid-forties tour manager - with a shining top singularly devoid of any hair :) ; Super nice-guy, helpful, smiling, always in a good mood and gave a lot of current affairs overview of Europe as the tour went along; Gabor our lumbering giant of a Hungarian driver with a bulging gut, and Erna our local Hungarian tour guide, a slightly overweight, pear shaped, pale-skinned woman who made a living speaking about her country with passion. A bit more about the fellow tour-mates as we go along;  That was the posse!! 

The tour bus was beautiful… a modern bus, painted with the Gate1 logo… two huge cargo holds on both sides for our luggage.  Inside very comfortable executive leather seats in inviting colors of a medium tan with black accents,  nice air-conditioning and modern extras like electrical USB ports to charge your mobile phones in between the seats. Very deluxe…very impressive. Since we were only nineteen, we were able to grab two seats per person and really had extra leg room, hand-bag room.. Whatever.    We were UNDERWAY… right out of the hotel our first stop was to cross the Danube to the hilly Buda side and head for the massive tourist attraction of St. Matthias Church complex. 

The city is divided into two sides split in the middle by the mighty Danube river…which at many points plays as an aquatic cradle for many eastern European capital cities, Budapest being one, Vienna, Prague and Bratislava being others.  The Pest side is where 75% of the population lives and has all the main businesses and offices of government including the parliament. The Buda side is hilly, picturesque and residential… only twenty five percent live there. There are at least two bridges that span the two sides… the one we came across was the Elizabeth bridge.  This is a very old and historic city… there are still old buildings where the German troops stayed; it brings to life a vivid atmosphere if you could walk back in the corridors of time to see that it survived a war of epic proportions with a lot of lives lost.  The history is not all grim though; human beings have an indomitable spirit to laugh, love, dance, sing, paint and build beautiful things and that is on display too.  For example, Andrassy Ave. a tree lined street with some superb buildings whose façade showcases columns, figurines and ornate trimmings on the front side. Apparently in the days of yore, twenty percent of a building's cost on Andrassy had to be allocated towards the façade's decoration which of course led to architects outdoing each other to put the design equivalent of poetry into the frontage of the buildings.

St. Matthias Church complex is atop a hill and is a beautiful spectacular building with surrounding structures of towers, minarets and a statue of the Saint himself on a horse; almost like a warrior saint - an inattentive person could easily mistake it for a Don Quixote statue - all those statues kinda bleed into one another.  We headed into the church's interior - the building has a very interesting history…. For a period of two hundred years it was also a mosque when the Ottoman Turks conquered the region and people did namaaz inside. There is a sculpture of  a crescent and cross combo to denote this aspect right outside.  I went inside and it felt dark and cavernous but also very ornate, with stained glass windows painted with murals of saints and kings;  I didn't pay real close attention to the guide, was just taking it all in visually.  I might have said a silent prayer - it is very possible that potent wishes can organize a small fraction of the world after all :)… After touring the inside of the church, we went out and as you walked around there were spectacular views of the Pest side, the river, the Spires of other churches and the two bridges from atop the hill. I was thankful for having dressed in a soccer shirt and shorts, for the heat was sweltering; even for this time of year, it was unusual for Europe. This year rainfall was short too… the Danube's level was lower than usual and some river cruises were disrupted and the parties had to be diverted to land tours - for the cruise companies it meant heavy losses.

The whole complex had amazing views - the most famous of them being a vista point called Fisherman's Bastion; had I paid attention as a front-bencher to the guide talking through the orange walkie talkie I would have remembered what had fishermen got to do with the Bastion;  but fortunately or unfortunately I paid scant attention to the guide with the volume at level zero but the earplug in my ear out of courtesy and respect to the hardworking, articulate guide; noticed a lot of Chinese tourists… .underscoring their importance as a wealthy superpower whose citizens now have a lot of dough to travel globally and buy houses with wads of cash even in supposedly developed nations like Canada and New Zealand; look out for the Chinese!!  

Next up was Heroes Square, the largest square in BDP and a very popular tourist destination…. Many times in history the citizenry of this city has gathered here for important events, demonstrations etc.  The centerpiece is a huge pillar/tower atop which there is a greenish statue of Angel Gabriel..  On both sides of the central tower, there are Roman style colonnades where Hungarian freedom fighter statues are stood up and also on the base of the center tower the statues of the 7 chiefs of the tribes that originally formed Hungary. On the day we went a substantive horde of multicultural tourists were traipsing through the square, including some deposited by the ubiquitous double-decker Hop/on Hop/off buses bathed in intense sunlight and the temps were around 90'F - but dry heat. The square is flanked by some important museums, the War Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts and one other something…  Such a historic plaza would be rare in the US… some builder would have usurped it with corporate avarice and converted it into a tawdry mall with Starbucks and Nike stores among others. The one funny anecdote that stands out - a young woman in a summer dress was posing for a picture with her toddler daughter… she was being very cavalier in propping the toddler up on one of the ledges at the base of the Gabriel tower. It was very high and had the toddler toppled it would have led to grim consequences. She kept on trying to pose on the lower ledge and held the toddler by one arm;  all the onlookers needless to say were holding their breath at this foolhardy maneuver. Dean has a guttural Serbian accent, very similar to other Slavic languages like German… he said to me ' Meeek,  what du you think aah? Tuuu  day-nge-rous aah?  Eet is tuuu risky, no?  baby might fall… she going tuu far tuu teyk a pikchur no? , Some tu-rists  I tell you…'  vigorously shaking his head in disapproval all the while.. :)

I have to give the nod to our guide Erna... along the way she pointed out several other historic and grandiose monuments and buildings... the City Opera House undergoing repairs, the Royal Palace which had taken three or four bombs in the war but was rebuilt and restored as a museum, the Parliament house which was on our agenda to visit the next day, the Nightlife district called the 7th district where all the night-time party action is and various other attractions all with a very nice and super knowledgeable narrative...  She said now 50% of Budapest's university was comprised of foreign students as the quality was good and they instructed in English;  and several other scientists who went over to US and won nobel prizes etc. 

Once we were done, the bus brought us back to the Pest side and our afternoon was free until the evening, where there was an Optional dinner cruise which you had to pay ninety bucks extra which I did;  Dean told Joel it was a can't miss and Joel told me… Lord knows when I will pass this way again so let's take this, and I was by myself so pull the trigger.. And I am glad I did.

In the afternoon people did their own thing;  Joel, Linda, Zoey and me decided to band together.

Our first walking excursion was to the giant Ferris wheel aptly named the Budapest Eye which was walkable from our Hotel. The Ferris wheel was also the start of Vaci street, the huge mile of pedestrian only street of roadside shops.  We didn't get on the wheel but we came up close to it and had some gelato in the shade of a cafe. It was too hot to get into one of the enclosed modules of the wheel, but the area around was a city park which afforded cafes, people watching opportunities and so forth. Then we did some souvenir shopping along Vaci street and talked. Zoey and I talked a bit about Paris which she and her mom had visited and on my hot list; good kid, she speaks both French and Spanish.  

After all that soaking in of one of the city's prime spots, we decided to come back to the hotel and headed towards the biggest mall in Budapest called West End city center; it was big but underwhelming with mostly chain stores from the US; I come from the land of malls, so ho-hum! However I just chilled out with a strawberry Frappe and a cheesecake from Starbucks and watched languidly from a well-padded and comfy lounge chair with a nice vantage point as a bevy of stylishly dressed and good looking young girls (not too many guys) milled through the joint…  Joel joined me after buying some Hungarian boots; he bought four pairs of boots during the trip - Imelda Marcos passion for shoes seeps through most Filipinos? !  We had a nice time at the Starbucks Joel and me :) - this one was not anything like the regular frumpy ole Starbucks back home.

After heading back to the hotel, refueling a bit with some snacks and water and a short catnap headed down for the finale.  The highlight was the dinner cruise.. Which started around 8 pm - Gabor took us everywhere in royal style, we didn't need to Uber around - the only thing he was being a Scrooge about was water bottles which he kept locked up in a cabinet up front of the bus ( 'only tu bottles per day Meeek' - which irritated me because he hadn't even given even one yet and I had paid good money for the trip; I had a little aside with Dean, and Dean told me to come to him for water next time and skip Gabor -  my relationship with Gabor actually improved dramatically after the first day or so - as I was nice to him, said his name and hello to him in the Breakfast buffet room; he warmed up to me considerably,  no more issues after that.

  The city looked romantic and beautiful after it turned dark. Dinner was a real royal spread; I couldn't eat some of the traditional stuff like Goulash which is like an Indian mutton curry but with beef and eaten almost as a soup, but I tried a lot of the other stuff and some special fish dish was made for me and one other person. There was a lot of fruit, cheeses, stuffed peppers etc. so I ate good. The stuffed peppers were awesome!  Desserts were good; had a bit of champagne too. Talked to some of the other tour people, everyone in a happy, relaxed, carefree mood. 

The real highlight though was on the U-turn and return cruise up towards the dock,  night had set in on the city and the illuminated buildings including St. Matthias Church, the Parliament building, the Royal Palace (now a museum) all were looking spectacular with their night lights. Their reflections were shimmering on the waters of the Danube, golden in color and there was a virtual promenade of light on the edge of the river.  The whole vista was just magnificent and the viewers gallery on the cruiseboat 'Istler' was on the top deck where you could feel the gentle rocking action of the moving waters below, and the sound of the small waves lapping up against the boat's hull in an aria of its own, rhythmically tuneless yet in tune with everything. There was another boat that passed by which is a famous party boat where there was a party on full swing; next time I am in Budapest, will opt for that one, maybe;) -

Well the evening came to a very satisfying end, we headed back to the hotel and turned in for the night…. .but not before Dean had lit the lights of a romantic city in the canvasses of our dreams, one of the top ten richest countries in the World, one of the three capitals of the United Nations, and a powerful financial center for Central and Eastern Europe… along with lot of beautiful and friendly people we hoped; for the  next day at around 1:00 pm,  we were driving across the Hungarian countryside for the beautiful city of Wien as it is called in German, or its regular name Vienna.