Budapest Diaries - Sojourn to Géllert Hill

It was still pretty early in the day, so I was off like a rocket to explore Géllert Hill, which was located about a half mile to the west of Kalvin House. Now there are a couple of things you learn about Budapest pretty quickly after you arrive there. In no particular order:

1) The Hungarians (or Magyars, as they refer to themselves) love diacritics - those little accent marks over letters. Every other word has one, and some words have two, three, or even four diacritics in them. Although cute, it makes typing and searching for things on the Internet kind of difficult, the later because the a letter with a diacritic is considered by most search engines to be a completely different letter than one without. I don't know how easy it will be to make out but I took a picture of the keyboard in the hostel.

2) Budapest is the PDA capital of the world. Seriously when I went up Géllert Hill every time I turned a corner there was another couple making out on a bench. This also holds especially true when you are walking along the Danube. I can see why though, Budapest is chock-full of a lot of romantic views - rivers, bridges, parks, great views. There were several times I was looking around for someone to smooch, but usually the only person within lip-locking range would be some older German dude.

3) There are a ton of feral cats in Budapest. Besides the ones in the courtyard next to the hotel, there were a mob of them along the base of Géllert Hill, where it appeared a park maintenance worker left food out for them (this was also the case of the other cats). You would other cats running around in other places as well. This is very different than places like Copenhagen or Stockholm, where you pretty much never see cats running about.

4) There is construction everywhere in Budapest. Fortunately, this never really got in my way although a few of the buildings and monuments I wanted to see ended up being partially obscured by reconstruction efforts (Independence Bridge, Matthias Church, the Holy Trinity Column, and part of Parliament being the ones I remember off hand).

I'll save other observations for later. I headed west over Independence Bridge (BTW I am going to use the English spellings here on the blog, but if you are weird like me you can check out the Hungarian spellings on my photo comments on Facebook - again the link to my photos can be found here). After passing the semi-famous Géllert Hotel* I found a road that started to lead up Géllert Hill. Although the paths here were a little all over the place you could generally keep your way by simply following the ones that went up (or down). My first stop was at the Cave Chapel, which was closed for mass when I first visited although I checked out the interior on the way back down. The caves here had been in use for a while, but monks built a modern entrance to them in 1920s. The Cave Chapel was shut down in 1951 as part of the Soviet crackdown on the Catholic church, and the entrance was sealed until after the fall of the Communist government. Outside the cave is a stylized statue of Saint Stephen, be sure to check out his feet.

Moving up the hill, the view of Pest (the part of the city on the east side of the Danube) kept getting better, as you might expect. After a relatively short but sweaty hike up the hill, I reached the Independence Monument, one of the unofficial symbols of Budapest. It is tall column on top of which there is a lady holding a palm leaf above her head, and there are a pair of statues flanking the base of the column. Apparently there were several other statues that were removed along with most of the Communist statues monuments and dumped into a place now called Statue Park. Originally built as a thank-you to the Soviets for liberating Budapest from the Nazis, it soon turned into a symbol of Communist oppression and after 1989 it was changed to the Independence monument. It is a pretty cool monument I must say, and it is visible from most parts of the city, especially at night when it is lit up.

After that I went on to explore the Citadella, a fortress built by the Hapsburgs in 1851 (back when Hungary was basically part of Austria) to prevent an uprising but was never really used as such. Currently it is mostly a tourist trap filled with seedy vendors (still, I was glad for the ice cream and bottled water. Oh, another FYI if you are buying bottled water in Hungary and someone asks you "gas, no gas?" they are asking if you want carbonated water or not). Besides a hostel and a restaurant, for a couple hundred forints you can roam around the Citadella and check out wax exhibits that detail some of Hungary's history. There is also a bunker you can visit that was used by the Nazi Air Defense Ministry during World War II.

When I was done checking that out I went back down the hill and stopped by the large cross on the hill, and then went back and went into the Cave Chapel. After saying hello to the local cats, I followed the road up the Danube until I got to the far side of Géllert Hill where I found the monument to Saint Géllert himself. It is a nice looking monument if I do say so, sitting over a bridge which itself is over a waterfall. Saint Géllert is one of the patron saints of Hungary, and is generally known for helping convert Hungarians to Christianity and for being killed by those same Hungarians during a pagan uprising. The monument is supposed to be the place where Saint Géllert was hurled off of in a spiked barrel.**

Finally it was off to the night cruise along the Danube, brought to you by Legenda. I choose the night cruise because according to several sources it was more exciting than the day cruise. That it was, although it definitely tested my ability to take pictures without a flash. It was a pretty classy ride, complete with headphones that offered thirty different languages as well as a complementary glass of champagne and another beverage of your choice. I choose a beer, which turned out to be Budweiser, the King of Beers. The tour itself was of course kind of sappy, but it was a great way to see a lot of Budapest lit up at night, in particular Géllert Hill, Buda Castle, Parliament, and many of the bridges, as well as pick up some more Hungarian history. Finally, a little drunk and not having anyone to snuggle with along the Danube I headed back to Kalvin House in search of rest to get ready for my big day tomorrow exploring Castle Hill.

*Hey if it has a Wikipedia entry it has to be at least semi-famous, right? Right?
**No, I don't know why they didn't just stab him or something. I guess the pagans just had too much free time on their hands.