Budapest, Hungary Day 6 (Saturday May 30, 2009)

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)

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 6^th floor to see the city of Eger below.

On the 9^th 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.

Lillafured, Hungary Day 3 (Thursday May 28, 2009)

Lillafured, Hungary Day 3 (Thursday May 28, 2009)

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)

Lillafured, Hungary Day 2 (Wednesday May 27, 2009)

Today our adventure took us by blue bus to Aggtelek National 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 Aggtelek National 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.

Lillafured Day 1 (Tuesday May 26, 2009)

Lillafured Day 1 (Tuesday May 26, 2009)

We are now in a small town of Lillafured, Hungary about a 4 hour drive North-West from Budapest. We are in an old hotel that is a spa in the foothills of some mountains. It took us almost 7 hours to get here since we made few stops to see things on the way to Lillafured. Martin and Corrine Hirsch did not make the rest of the trip with us, but went on to Austria to have a vacation by themselves. We said goodbye to them in the lobby of the hotel in Budapest. Our guides, Professor Tibor and Mary, made the trip with us. The driver of the bus was a student in the college. The primary stop we made, on the way to Lillafured, was in Miskolc Hungary, Hungary. Budapest is a city of about 2 million people and Miskolc is the second largest city and has 200,000 people. Most of the rest of Hungary is rural and made up of small towns and villages. Most of the drive that we took to Lillafured was through rolling hills of farm land. Hungary was never been allowed to have heavy industry by the many occupiers of Hungary, so cities never formed other than the capital city, Budapest, and Miskolc, which had iron ore.

We stopped at a communication tower that overlooks Miskolc and could see all of Miskolc from the tower.

Later we drove into Miskolc and saw an old 1841 synagogue that amazingly still stands after Nazi and Communist occupation. It was the central synagogue of Miskolc. Miskolc had, previous to WWII, several smaller synagogues but they were all destroyed. The Miskolc synagogue is much smaller than the large one we saw in Budapest, but was designed by the same architect and has a similar design. The congregation draws from a wide area near Miskolc and has 500 families. Unfortunately the Synagogue was in poor shape inside, since they do not have sufficient funds to maintain it. They did paint the outside of the synagogue. On the outside of the synagogue was a monument to WWI synagogue members who were killed and we saw many German Jewish last names we recognized such Klein, Gruen, Weiss, Stern and Hirsch. In the hallway inside was also a plaque of people who has died from 1840-1940 and had the name Hercfeld (without the letter z). Peter Herczfeld did not think this was a relation, but his father was raised in Miskolc and he planned to try to track his roots there at a later time. We had pizza for lunch in an outdoor restaurant across the street from the Synagogue.

The head of the synagogue gave us an historical update of the Synagogue and had lunch with us. He told us that they have occasional weddings there and his daughter would soon be married in the synagogue. He also told us that the oldest Torah the temple had was over 2,000 years old and the newest one was 16 years old. They had a minion every day for services, but met in a smaller room and not the main sanctuary. They did fill the main sanctuary for high holidays. The upstairs balcony area was not used since the structure was too week. For Orthodox services the women sat in the wings of the sanctuary. For Newlog (Reform) services this was not required. We left a small donation to the Synagogue.

From Miskolc we drove nearby to a large spa and swim area. We spent some time swimming and relaxing in the hot pool areas. There was also an indoor cave that connected pool areas and many of the group explored the cave. There were many others swimming and having fun in this large complex of indoor and outdoor pools. It had a interesting coed place to change clothes. There were small changing rooms and then one large set of common coed lockers. The lock on the lockers was designed so that you put a coin in, you could remove the key and when you returned the key the coin was returned.

We ended up in Lillafured and our hotel. The hotel is a good size hotel that is used as a spa, but the pool area is under reconstruction. The hotel has some nice stain glass windows and paintings depicting the kings of Hungary. The dinner that comes with the room was cafeteria style with meats, fish and chicken along with fruits and vegetables. The outside lawn area was very nice with shrubs and flowers. Fortunately there is Internet service, so I could update this blog. We plan on being here for 3 nights and then go back to Budapest.