Travel Back to the United States (Monday and Tuesday, June 1-2, 2009)
All the Hirsch family and Doris Moss made it safely back to the United States. For Jackie and me it was a 34 hour trip, via London and New York, to San Francisco, California. We were 4 hours in London’s Heathrow airport and overnight for 5 hours in New York at JFK airport. Customs went smoothly and for the most part the flights went smoothly. The New York to California leg seemed very long, since it was the last leg of the flight and we were anxious to get home. Our son, David, and Grandson, Brady, picked us up at the airport. We found everything in order when we got home, but there was unpacking to do, bills to be paid, shopping to be done that will keep us busy for the next few days. We thank everyone who contributed to our trip and made is successful.
This will be the last entry in the blog for this trip. We are reminiscing the wonderful time we had both in Israel and in Hungary.
Today is out last full day in Hungary. Steven and Linda left today for Munich, Germany to continue their vacation in Munich. We had breakfast at the Helia hotel and said goodbye to them. The group is smaller now without Martin, Corrine, Steven and Linda, but we still had a good group of Hirsch family members and Doris Moss. We also met Tibor and Mary’s granddaughter Silvia, who drove them over to the hotel. Peter Herczfeld, my brother-in-law, remembered her from previous trips. She is a first grade teacher in Budapest.
The cool rain continued most of the day. Our thoughtful guide, Mary, had brought extra sweaters and umbrellas for us for the next part of the trip.
We traveled using our blue bus and our student driver, Victor, with our guides Mary and Tibor Bercelli to Esztergom, Hungary. Eszrergom is located on a major bend of the DanubeRiver, forced to change its course due to the nearby mountain range.
Eszergom was the royal residence for three centuries starting in 350BC, the capital of Hungary, Eszergom was the seat of Hungarian Catholics for 1,000 years and home to the archbishop of Hungary. The castle was the home to several Hungarian Kings and was also a fortress that protected them.
The Celts had a community here as did the Roman previous to the castle, so this bend in the river has a long history of human endeavors.
Eszrergom is also located at the Slovakian border of Hungary. A bridge connecting to Slovak was destroyed in 1944 by the Germans and was finally rebuilt in October 2001. We went to the bridge over the Danube Ricer to view the Church and Castle from a short distance.
The church is a very large Catholic church was built in the 1869 after 50 years of building this church. The current large church is at the same location as a much smaller royal church was built under the reign of Hungarian, King Stephen 1, and destroyed by the Turks.
Since people lived in this location for centuries it has many coins, pottery and tools used by man going back many thousands of years ago and on display in the castle and a nearby museum.
We went into the church and a mass was being said by a Bishop with several hundred people in attendance.
In the basement of the church is what appears as an Egyptian arch and a picture of many famous Hungarian Catholic clergy including the archbishop.
The castle was rediscovered in the 1930s and the Queen’s Room a small hidden room the Queen withdrew to, was only recently opened to the public.
The tour then proceeded to the town of Szntendre, Hungary. This town was settled in the 1690s by Turks and consists of many picturesque row houses, alleys and shops. The tourist shops on the main street are selling many items. We stopped only for a short visit and walked along the main street and the nearby DanubeRiver.
On the way back to Budapest we stopped to have lunch in a small restaurant and made our way back through the rural countryside in our blue bus.
We needed to get back to our hotel to rest and change clothes to go to the Opera. We took the blue bus to the Opera, since we did not want to get our fancy clothes wet and it allowed for more time to change clothes. The beautiful Hungarian Opera house was completed in 1884.The Opera was written by Verdi was an Italian opera about a women and two suitors, one from Sicily and one from France. It is also a play about the battles between the Sicilian and French people. The ominous signs are there in the opening when the main character, Elena, enters in a black dress as she was mourning the death of her executed brother and sings a song about the perils of seamen.
The three hour, 5 acts, opera, “Sicilian Vespers” was sung in Italian and above the stage was an electronic sign with the translation in Hungarian. Our guide, Mary Bercelli, had brought for us a guide in English, but it was hard to follow in advance of the performance. The music and singing were very good and those among us that liked Opera liked it very much. We all had a good time and Peter Herczfeld was still humming the songs as we returned by subway to the hotel.
We had completed another busy day thanks to our guides and host, Tibor and Mary Bercelli. We had a fun and busy vacation trip to Hungary. Since most of us would be leaving tomorrow, we said goodbye to our hosts Professor Tibor Bercelli and his wife Mary and also goodbye to each other since we would be all going on different flights to different cities back to the Untied States.
Budapest, Hungary Day 6 (Saturday May 30, 2009) In the morning Peter Herczfeld took us to the indoor Budapest market by bus and trolley. The Budapest market is an indoor shopping center with many small vendors. On the first floor was mainly food vendors, selling items such as sausages, meat, vegetables, fruit, paprika and strudel. We noted that peaches are called “barack” in Hungarian. I and some other family members bought and ate some fresh warm sour cherry or apple strudel. Jackie and a few others bought some famous Hungarian paprika for friends back home. On the second floor of the Budapest market were vendors selling many embroidered table covers, children’s dresses, toys, dolls and trinkets.
We walked to a restaurant on the Danube River to have lunch. It was cool and dripping outside, so we ate inside the restaurant. Since I had eaten all the strudel, I had a Cesar salad. We noted that most of the Hungarian food was not spicy as we had expected, but was mild.
After a rest in the hotel, we had planned to go to the Opera, but Mary Bercelli discovered, after we were dressed in our fancy outfits, that the date on the Opera tickets was for Sunday evening. We waited in the hotel lobby for the Bercellis to arrive with Peter Herczfeld to decide what we would do for the evening. “We were all dressed up and no place to go”. We decided after some discussion to make the best of the situation and go to the fancy NY Café for a light dinner and dessert. Budapest had its first major rainstorm during our trip this evening and we waited a few minutes to get the bus when the rain let up.
We took a tour of the NY Café along with the adjacent fancy Hotel. We checked the room rates at the hotel which were $500-$1,500/night. We decided the Hotel Helia was a better price performer. The NY Café had a cigar and pipe room, a formal dining area, as well as the more informal but very fancy area where we ate. Some of the Hirsch group posed for photos in this fancy area and we enjoyed our evening. The food was outstanding, including tortellini, chocolate drinks with orange syrup, fancy cakes, chocolate scuffle with pistachio ice cream and many other treats. On the bus trip back to the hotel we missed our exit and had to walk balk six blocks, but we were happy to walk back to the hotel and work off some of the food.
Back to Budapest, Hungary Day 5 (Friday May 29, 2009)
We left Lillafured for Budapest about 9:15 a.m. after having breakfast at the hotel. We had some rain on the trip back that made us change some of our plans. We went to Eger, Hungary which is about half way back to Budapest to see a few things and to have a break in our travel by bus.
In Edger, we went to the Liceum which was a former teachers’ training school and early on a former church college.It contains a famous and impressive archbishop library that opened its doors in 1783. It has 130,000 old volumes including medieval manuscripts that are hand written and we saw some that were written by hand in the 1400s or earlier. The book shelves of the library are made of beautiful Regency oak and go up 20 feet to a second story set of book shelves and an elliptical track around the room. Each column section of the library is labeled by one of the letters of the alphabet, so the main floor has books A-R and the top floor has books S-Z. The ceiling of the library is a masterpiece of Hungarian fresco art by Johann Kracker and represents the 16 century Council of Trent, which changed the nature of the church.
We also went to see the astronomy museum on the sixth floor. It had old telescopes that were used for astronomy in the 1800s. We had to walk up the six flight of stairs, but everyone made it. One could walk on an observation deck on the 6th floor to see the city of Eger below.
On the 9th floor was the Camera obscura, a dark room that uses a fixed and rotating mirror to view the city of Eger reflected on a disk laying a table in front of us.
We walked through the city streets to Sorozo Restaurant. It is a small restaurant in Eger, but had excellent food. I had cold peach soup, a Greek salad and chicken with rice. Others had fish soup and other dishes, but everyone liked the food.
Finally we walked to a Marzipan museum and shop. The Hirsches love marzipan candy, so we observed all the beautiful decorative cakes and candies in the museum, including a whole room, that were made of real sugar and starch. Later we bought a few candies in the shop to eat. Needless to say they were delicious.
On the road from Eger to Budapest we saw a rainbow near sunset time which we took as our good luck charm.
We arrived at Budapest about 6:30 p.m. back at the Helia hotel. We gave our driver, Victor, applause for getting us back safely through winding mountain roads, highways and narrow streets in the towns with a blue bus.
This is our last day in Lillafured, Hungary. The weather the last two days has been overcast. Yesterday it sprinkled a little bit, but did not bother us. Today it did not rain.
Today we took a train near the Palota Hotel in Lillafured, Hungary to the top of a nearby mountain. There were lots of children at the train station and with the encouragement of their teacher sang a simple song of “Hello”. The Hirsch choir responded with the song “It’s a Small World Isn’t it”. The kids responded with a simple song of “Goodbye”.
The train stopped at the top of the mountain. Near the train stop was a children’s play area. Since we are all kids at heart some of the Hirsch family members regressed to their childhood and played on the equipment.
We then walked a short distance to a Trout Farm to have some lunch. We had fresh trout, with french fries. We ordered a salad with it, but got a plate of pickles.
We then walked over to a nearby iron works museum. As you may recall, the nearby city of Miskolc, that we visited yesterday, had iron ore and Lillafured, where we are now residing, had a forgery works to make metal objects from the iron ore. The museum is at the location of the old forgery. It required a large charcoal oven to make enough heat to melt the iron ore. This site also had a work house which used a water wheel attached to a large wooden pole for power to blow the large bellows into a fire and to hammer the metal into objects, such as plows, ovens and a variety of metal objects.
Brother-in-law, Peter Herczfeld, and cousin, Gordon Hirsch, walked the 2 KM down the mountain. The rest of us took the next train down the mountain. After a brief rest, we took a short walk near the hotel.
We ended the day with a dinner at the hotel. The group looked at the stately conference rooms in the hotel, took one more group photo and called, using Skype, Hildegard Hirsch, Lillian Herczfeld and Peter Hirsch’s mother and relative for all the other of the group. We complete the last day in Lillafured. Tomorrow we go back to Budapest.
Lillafured, Hungary Day 2 (Wednesday May 27, 2009)
Today our adventure took us by blue bus to AggtelekNational Park to see natural caves and nearby Josvafo, Hungary to see an old cemetery in the hills above Josvafo and have lunch.
It was about 1.5 hours to AggtelekNational Park again through wooded hillsides and farm land. We saw many wild flowers on the fields such as poppies and edelweiss and rolling hills. The Hirsch family choir thinking of near by Austria and the movie “Sound of Music” burst out with song on the bus, such as “Edelweiss” and “Do-Ro-Me”.
We had a tour of one of the natural caves in the park. The slightly acid surface water filters through the cracks dissolving the soluble part of the limestone, leaving decorative deposits underground in the form of stalactites and stalagmites. Some of these underground deposits form large objects that go from the top to the bottom of the cave and took over 10,000 years to form. There are over 500 species of animals in the caves, such as blind bats and blind crabs, but we did not see any of these animals. The temperature in the cave was about 50 degrees, so we had to wear sweaters and jackets in the cave. One large open area of the cave has excellent concert hall acoustics in which our guide played a song from a Hungarian Opera along with a light show, illuminating parts of the walls of the cave. They had also placed several hundred seats on the floor, so one could hold concerts here. The Bradla-Domica caves are located in the northern most part, near the Eastern tip, of Hungary, which are on the border with Slovakia. Slovakia is one of 8 countries on the border of Hungary. Can you name the other 7 countries? A few of the caves connect to Slovakia, but the openings to the large caves on the Slovakian side are very small and difficult to navigate.
After visiting the caves we went to nearby Josvafo, Hungary. We were given a tour of the cemetery. To get to the top of the cemetery and get a high level view of Josvafo was a steep climb. Some of the family decided not to try the climb which was wise.
Professor Bercelli went with us but at the top of the cemetery area, nearly fainted, and had significant heart rhythm problems. Most of us were concerned about his welfare, but his wife and our guide, Mary Bercelli, was familiar with this problem and jumped into action. He had to rest at the top of the cemetery and his wife carefully massaged his feet with a light circular pattern on the bottom of his feet and Lillian (Dr. Stern) took his pulse, while others provided sweaters and other clothing to make him comfortable as he lay on the ground. Fortunately he recovered after a 15-20 minutes, felt well enough to walk slowly down the hill with the aid of the young bus driver, Victor, and rested in a room in a house near the bottom of the cemetery, while the rest of us completed the tour.
The cemetery had very old burial plots only marked by a post with an engraved metal plate on top. Most of the burial plots were since the late 1800s and had head markers made of stone with engravings.
We saw an old Jewish cemetery that, we were told, had been kept up after WWII by the citizens, but now was covered with weeds and not in good shape. There have not been any Jewish death since WWII since most of the Jewish Josvafo townspeople left town and most were killed or taken away during WWII.
Next to the cemetery was a restored house with things people used in the 1700s, including spinning wheels, looms, old kitchen stove, no running water and no electricity. Life was primitive by today’s standards.
After seeing the restored house we had typical Hungary outdoor lunch, prepared by a young woman from Josvafo, which included fresh potato soup, fresh “crepes” made with potatoes, flour and milk filled with Plum Jam. They eat lots of potatoes in various forms in this area of Hungary. The food was very good and we were all Hungary.
We took a slightly longer journey back to the hotel, got lost, saw again many small towns, wagons with hay on them being pulled by horses and stork nests high above the light poles on small metal platforms built by the town for stork nests. I also saw one stork sitting on one of the nests as we drove.
We had a short rest at the hotel and then had a nice dinner at 7:00 p.m.. Some of the people sat in the hotel lounge and talked after dinner, before retiring for the day.
5 hours in New York at JFK airport. Customs went smoothly and for the most part 
the flights went smoothly. The New York to California leg seemed very long, since it was the last leg of the flight and we were anxious to get home. Our son, David, and Grandson, Brady, picked us up at the airport. 
We found everything in order when we got home, but there was unpacking to do, bills to be paid, shopping to be done that will keep us busy for the next few days.
