Our Budapest tour: Pest

Budapest wasn't always one city, and the Buda-Pest divide (the boundary of which is, of course, the Danube) makes a convenient way for me to break up my posts about our tour of this last city on our European super-trip.

This was one of the best, of many, great tours that Viking provided us. And one of the reasons it was so enjoyable was this two-part structure.

We spent the first part of the over-four-hour-tour in Pest, which is the flatter and [at least slightly] newer half of this great city.

One of its great attractions are its thermal baths, which we didn't have time to sample, unfortunately. But we did see some of them from the outside, including the gorgeous buildings above, which are in a lovely park next to Hősök tere* ("Heroes Square"), our first tour stop.

After a brief introduction by Nicolette, our great guide, we had some time to wander around this fabulous space on our own...and take lots of photos!

Here's a more or less panoramic shot of the sculptural decorations the provide the focal point of the large square...

Originally built to commemorate the millennium anniversary of the arrival of the Magyars in what is now Hungary, it's taken on additional symbolic weight over the decades. (The curious non-similarity of the two ways of referring to residents of this country was explained by our guide: "Hungary" comes from what the Romans called the region; "Magyar" is how the people referred to themselves, in their definitely non-Romance language.)

One addition is their Tomb of the Unknown Soldier...

Although the heroic figures at the base of the column represent the Magyar tribes that conquered the area 1100 years ago...

...the pride of place at the top of the column is taken by a Christian angel...

The sweeping curves of the colonnades on either side of the main column are not only decoratively impressive... 

...but also showcase more figures from Hungarian history. This guy is Stephen I, according to Wikipedia (the link I provided above tells you who all of the statues are), and our guide informed us that he's the monarch who converted the Magyars to Christianity...

Another neighbor of the Hősök tere is the Műcsarnok/Kunsthalle/Hall of Art...

We did see more of Pest, although just from the bus windows, but there were several remarkable and handsome sights, many of which Nicolette drew our attention to. For example, here's the old synagogue...

I wish we'd had time to go in!

---

*A few words about the Hungarian language. Throughout these #Europe2017 posts I've tried to give both native language and English names for the sights we saw. In addition to seeming fair, longtime readers should know that I just really love languages and learning bits and pieces of as many as I can.

Hungarian presents a unique challenge. Not since we were in Korea in 2005 was I surrounded by a language that didn't exhibit hardly any points of reference. (And before we went to Korea, I had spent at least a little time with Lonely Planet's Korean phrasebook; this time, I spent my pre-trip language learning with Mango's Italian lessons—courtesy of our local Bibliotech—and skipped Hungarian altogether.)

So passing by signs like the ones here made me feel like I was on another planet! (In the interests of this blog's being safe for work, I hope these places aren't advertising anything obscene; I wouldn't know! Although I suspect the one on the left is a falafel shop.)

At any rate, in advance I want to apologize to any readers fluent in Hungarian (there might be one or two!) if I've mis-spelled or mis-identified any of the landmarks in this and subsequent Budapest posts. Between Googlemaps, Wikipedia, and Frommer's Budapest Day by Day, I've done my best.

Typing Hungarian diacritics posed another problem. I have this handy link of keyboard shortcuts for more common European diacritical markings up on my bookmark bar. (Discovered after needing to type "Nürnberg" in Blogger's title bar.) But I was distressed to learn that it didn't include some of Hungarian's odd ones.

The internet to the rescue, though, and a quick search turned up this jewel, which made it a snap to generate the code needed for proper Hungarian to display. I might still have little idea how to pronounce these words (Frommer's has a pronunciation guide which helps a little) but I hope I have at least spelled them correctly!