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.