Budapest, Hungary Day 7 (Sunday May 31, 2009)

Budapest, Hungary Day 7 (Sunday May 31, 2009)

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 Danube River, 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 Danube River.

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)

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.

Budapest Day 2 (Saturday, May 23, 2009)

Budapest Day 2 (Saturday, May 23, 2009)

We had breakfast in the morning, met Gordon and Lou and Steven and Linda as we were leaving the breakfast area of the hotel. We again had a large selection of food for our breakfast, but not quite as many things as we had in Tel Aviv, but adequate for a very full meal to start the day.

Jackie and I had decided to go visit the Budapest Synagogue and Jewish museum, but as we left we realized it was the Sabbath day and read that it was closed. We quickly changed our plans and decided to see the Margit Island on the Danube River. We took a bus to near the lower end of the Island and walked over the Margit Bridge to the Margit Island. The views from the bridge of Budapest were very nice. One could see many tour boats docked on the river looking to the North and many interesting buildings looking south. We walked part way up the island, saw an interesting statue and very nice wooded areas and then continued further by bus when we got tired. We got off the bus near the north end of the island and explored the beautiful Grand Hotel and other places on the island.

We returned by bus to the Danubius Helia Hotel by early afternoon and I took a short nap. Jackie went to work out at the spa in the hotel. It seems that my body clock still thinks it is in California.

Later in the afternoon we found out that my sister Lillian and Peter Herczfeld had arrived and we went to meet them at the spa and hot pool. While at the spa we also met my aunt Doris Moss from Bethesda, Maryland and my cousins Martin and Corrine Hirsch from Boston. We are only missing Susanne Baker, who came in later but was too tired to join us for dinner.

As the sun set the Danube River took on a shimmering glow.

We were all picked up at the hotel in three cars by Tibor and Mary Bercelli and their daughter. They drove us from our hotel on the Pest side of the Danube River to their home on the Buda side of the river. Budapest is a merger of two cities Buda and Pest after they built several bridges over the river to connect the two cities. Mary and Tibor claim the Buda side is nicer and has more trees. Tibor is a physics professor in Budapest who specializes in microwave engineering. Tibor is semi-retired, but still does research, gives talks at conferences and still does some teaching. This is the same field as my brother-in-law, Peter Herczfeld, who is a Professor in physics at Drexel University. Since they were both Hungarian at met at conferences they have become close friends. They will also be our guide and Mary made most of the arrangements for the next week in Hungary for all the Hirsch cousins and my aunt Doris.

Mary Bercelli made a Hungarian dinner for all 11 of us and 4 of her family in her home. It was an amazing meal with 4 courses. The first course had small samples of Hungarian specialties, the second course had ground beef wrapped in cabbage, the third course was a layered casserole and a salad and sour cherries in a cream sauce and the fourth course was a layer cake like a kuggel cake with noodles, cream, raisins and severed with whipped cream and fresh strawberries. I was full after the first two courses, but we enjoyed all four. Mary had to have prepared several days in advance for this big meal for 15 people. In addition there were lots of dishes to clean up afterward. Everyone was talking with many conversations going on. Afterward the Tibors drove us back to our hotel in three cars. Those that had flown in that day were very tired and those that had been here for a few days were tired. It had been a beautiful day with 75 degree sunny Hungarian weather.

Budapest Hungary (Friday, May 22, 2009)

Budapest Hungary (Friday, May 22, 2009)

We arrived safely in Budapest after getting up at 3:30 a.m., get a 4:30 a.m. taxi to the Tel Aviv airport. We arrived at 5:00 a.m. at the airport and had to go through several security checks. We were concerned about making our 7:05 a.m. El Al flight, but we made it with much time to spare.

Four hours later and 1 hour earlier time zone we arrived at the Budapest airport, went through customs and took a shared mini-cab to hotel, Helia. Budapest is a city with lots of character, but is significantly older than Tel Aviv and Haifa in appearance and seemingly in need of more repairs. The roads that the taxi took were very narrow and we nearly hit some parked cars and had to come to a complete stop when a car or truck ahead stopped on the single lane roads. We can look out of our Helia hotel room at the beautiful Danu River with the boats traveling up and down the river.

The currency is called the Hungarian Forint (HUF) and one gets around 176 HUF for each US dollar. So $10.00 is 1,760 HUFs and $50.00 is 8,827 HUFs. I feel like I am using play money when I look at prices in the thousand of HUFs for a taxi ride. I have 5,000 HUF bill in my wallet. Jackie and I took the Budapest subway to a tourist shopping area called Vici street and went to the famous Gerbeaud Pastry Shop for some pastries. We walked down Vici Street after having some pastries and then took the subway back to the hotel. It allowed us to get some confidence in getting around Budapest with the strange street names (Dozsa Gyogy Ut., Deak Fereno Ut.), a subway system that was new to us and to find our way after getting off the subway. We also purchased a Budapest card at the airport that gives us discounts on some things for three days including free rides on the subway.

We looked around the hotel spa area and ran into my cousin Gordon Hirsch who came in a day before us. He asked to use my laptop computer to write an e-mail. He and his wife, Lou, came by to use the computer and we plan on going to dinner together tonight.

After dinner we checked to see if Gordon’s older brother, Steven Hirsch, had arrived. They had not arrived, but then we saw Steven and Linda Hirsch coming into the hotel and just arriving from Washington DC. Linda was checking in and is not on the photo.

We are expecting other Hirsch in, my sister and my aunt, Doris Moss, to be arriving in the next 24 hours.