Fulbright Bus Tour around Budapest
On Wednesday of orientation after a day of learning about Hungarian politics, higher education and language, we took a city bus tour around Budapest. Families were invited to this excursion, so JonPaul and the kids met us at the hotel before the tour started. They were very excited because one of the other Fulbright scholars also brought his family, including a daughter Willow’s age and a son Ronin’s age. Ronin and the other boy were fast friends.
We took a big bus first around the Pest side and then over to the Buda side of the river. Budapest (pronounced Budapesht—in Hungarian the ‘s’ alone make a sh sound) is the capital of Hungary and separated by the Danube river (the Duna). The west side is Buda, which is hilly, more residential, and has the Buda Castle, Fisherman’s Bastion, and the Citadella. The east side of the river is Pest, which is flat, and has most of the financial, business, and touristy areas, the Parliament, Heroes’ Square and city park, the Opera House, the old Jewish quarter, and the Inner City.
We started on the Pest side, where we drove past the famous Hotel Astoria (which even has a metro stop named after it) and the famous Opera House, which unfortunately is undergoing renovation and will not be available to view inside and not hosting and performances until next year. The International Eucharistic Conference, which is held every four years (this time it was five because of a one-year delay due to Covid) was being held this week in Budapest, so a lot of preparation was being done before the big celebrations on the weekend, including the arrival of the pope. We drove by Heroes’ Square, which is a huge monument on the west side of Városliget, the big city park. We were supposed to get out and walk around, but there was nothing really we could see!
As you can tell, Willow was not very interested in all of this. She took a nice nap and was grumpy that we had to wake her up when we were ready to get out of the bus.
We drove across the bridge to the Buda side, where we got off the bus on Castle Hill and took a short walking tour. We stopped by the statue András Hadik, which it is rumored that if you rub his…ahem…nether regions you will get good luck (apparently it is very popular during exam time with students). Ronin really wanted to do this, but we told him we would have to wait for another time since the group was moving on. Willow was still sleepy and not too excited about it all. We walked through some pretty streets, and Willow finally perked up when she saw a polka dot car!
Next was a short walk to Matthias Church. This is a beautiful church, but we didn’t get to go inside since there was a service going on. Outside of the church was a float created out of flowers to honor the Eucharistic Conference. A version of this church has been standing since the 13th century, and it holds quite a bit of significance in the history of Budapest. The roof of the church is decorated in colorful Hungarian Zsolnay tiles. These tiles, that come from the Zsolnay factory in Pecs, Hungary, are vibrant in their colors and can withstand both extreme cold and hot temperatures.
Behind Matthias Church is the Fisherman’s Bastion, or Halászbástya. This is a cool structure that supposedly was part of the castle walls that was protected by the fisherman guild. Like many Buildings in Budapest (and Europe in general), the Fisherman’s Bastion was severely damaged during WWII and was restored. There is a statue of Szent István (St. Steven) in front of the Bastion beside Matthias Church, which was commissioned during the millennial celebration year of 1896. Views from the back side of the Bastion are great, where you can see across the river to the Pest side. Ronin’s friend is pointing out the big Ferris wheel, which is by where they live.
From here we walked down the steps on the back side of Fisherman’s Bastion to meet the bus to return to the Pest side to end our tour, which took quite a while because of traffic. More and more I like the public transportation of trams and metros (and even the city buses) that aren’t stuck in city traffic during rush hour!
