Budapest

Memorial in grounds of Great Synagogue, Budapest, December 2022

It was a lovely trip with my two friends A & S, ostensibly to visit the Christmas markets as we had done in previous years in Dusseldorf and Munich. I didn't make any notes as I went along, and it now feels like it was ages ago, so I'll probably have forgotten some of the best bits, but hey! blogging is supposed to be fun, not work.

We flew on Friday and came back on Monday - Friday and Saturday were very wet; Sunday and Monday were very cold. The line for taxis at the airport was so long that we took the bus to the hotel, which was modern and in a convenient location although it took me two nights to work out how to turn the heating down. After we arrived on Friday we had a quick foray into the nearest market, but because of the pouring rain we were lucky to find a café with space indoors for us. Budapest, like Madeira, doesn't generally cater for vegetarians, but the soups were terrific. Luckily I like soup, and this was the first good one: garlic cream soup with croutons.

We started on Saturday with a wet walk along the river as far as the poignant memorial to the shooting of the Jews in 1944 on the bank of the Danube. After another foray into the Christmas markets A and I joined a pretty good walking tour while S went off to the thermal baths. The tour was of the Jewish quarter, although being Saturday the synagogues weren't open to tourists; we returned to the Great Synagogue on Sunday. The tour ended in a 'ruined bar' which was an extraordinary space comprising many rooms and many bars with glitter balls, interesting lighting, plants, repurposed furniture including chairs made from a bath tub and a piano among other things, and covered with graffiti, which was encouraged.

That evening we went to a restaurant that had been recommended and which had very peculiar decor including upside down model buildings stuck to the ceiling, mannequins, and an inexplicable model plane. Soup: mushroom with strips of egg and smoked quails eggs - another triumph.

On Sunday the rain stopped but the temperature dropped. The famous Chain Bridge was closed for renovation so after visiting the synagogue and lunch (pumpkin soup) we walked across a less interesting bridge to the Buda side. We rode up to the palace via the funicular railway and visited the labyrinths that had been formed by underground water and then repurposed for storage and various other activities over the years. Bean and smoked tofu soup was wonderful for dinner - I can barely remember any of the main courses but the soups stood out.

I learned quite a bit about the history of Hungary especially in relation to the second World War; if we'd stayed longer I'd have liked to go on one of the other walking tours that focused on Communism in Hungary. We were reminded that Mr Rubik of the cube was Hungarian, as were Theodore Herzl (father of modern Zionism), Tony Curtis's father, Estee Lauder and Harry Houdini. On Monday we finished our business in various markets, punctuated by the need to go indoors to warm up every couple of hours. We were concerned that the cold snap in the UK might close Birmingham airport, but everything was fine and even the trains were running.

Interior of 'ruined bar'