Yesterday, it was August 20th, Holiday of the Foundation of the State, one of the largest national holidays of Hungary. It is celebrated with as much, or more, gusto than the July 4th in the States, and I was told that many stores will be closed for the entire weekend, the 20th to the 22nd. My flatmate and I decided to try to find some of the festivities, and so walked to the city center. As it always is when you walk around in Budapest, we saw some nice buildings along the way:
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| [This was a particularly tourist-heavy area.] |
Eventually, we got to the Szent István church, and it was the most beautiful church I had ever seen.
We walked inside, and marble-and-gold pillars stretching up to support embellished domes met our eyes. The sun filtered in through stained glass windows and the openings at the apex of each dome, and at the front center of the church, the sun dropped a stage of light on the procession.
Around lunchtime, we wandered around these streets that used to be roads but had been turned into walkways.
We found a place and had a couple panini's, and I also had this excellent grapefruit lemonade drink that came with a chunks of grapefruit, lemon, and lime inside it! It was slightly carbonated, not-too-sweet, and not Hungarian. It was a touristy place, yes, but it was noon and we were hungry.
After lunch, we decided to wander over towards the Danube, since neither of us had seen the river yet. Along the way, we saw mini-parks squeezed in between busy roads.
When we got to the Danube, we were greeted by what seemed to be the backstage of a circus act.
We walked a bit further, and saw that we had come across this festival, which is only open from the 20th of August to the 22nd.
It was set up on the Pest side of the riverbank, and you could see the Buda castle right across the Danube.
Between the stages, there were lots of vendors selling their merchandise to tourists and locals alike. One sold candy:
One sold meat:
This place sold some sort of fry bread.
They had bands of gypsy-style music
And they even had a merry-go-round pulled by actual horses.
After several dozen little stands of music, food, and entertainment, the festival died down, and all that was left was the sound of traffic, trails of people moving towards the vendors, and a river that stretched to the horizon under a beautiful blue sky.
It was extremely sunny, so we decided to find some shade. We happened upon this stretch of grass, laid out the blanket we had brought, and sat down to read and rest and soak in the fact that we were lounging by the Danube, in Budapest, Hungary, on one of the most beautiful days known to man. There was a slight breeze, a few stray clouds in the sky, and we were surrounded by green.
Several hours later, we decided to get something to eat, so we went back to the meat place and got dinner. My flatmate, Eva, got a sausage, I got some sort of mixture of chicken and vegetables, and we shared a plate of fries. It was delicious, but as it is with all Hungarian food, it was too greasy, and half an hour later, my stomach was scolding me for consuming such an access of oil.
On our walk home, we talked about the buildings of Hungary. For the newer, touristy ones, like the sparklingly white one at the beginning of this post, there isn't much to say. But for the ones like the church, the ones whose walls look splotchy with black soot, the ones with windows that have been long forgotten to be cleaned... just imagine how much history they have seen. They have housed families and seen the happy times, and they have been there for their inhabitants in times of turmoil. They are walls, and if the walls had mouths, they would be the wise elders, the storytellers, the survivors of the beauties and cruelties of our world.
But the walls don't have mouths, and they are treated as walls, and so they are timeless, and in our time, the popularity of plastic and bright colors is forced upon the walls.
Back at the apartment, we continued working our way through the puzzle, and got through the second stage.
We had planned on going out to see the fireworks, but our feet were sore and the comfort of the apartment was too much to leave and walk half an hour to watch twenty minutes of fireworks with hundreds of thousands of other people, so we stayed inside, and finished the puzzle.
We're planning on gluing it onto a piece of cardboard and then hanging it up on the blank stretch of wall above my desk. We're going to do another one, I think, and we're going to try to get something Hungarian.
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