Alison Garwood Jones

Far and away

October 28, 2012

[M]y last big trip was two years ago. I did Holland, Germany, Austria and Hungry with my 82-year-old dad. We stayed in a hotel in Amsterdam, just down the street from Anne Frank’s hideout. I listened to the same church bell Anne used to mark time. I even recorded the tolling on my iPhone. In Budapest, I ran my hands over Nazi gunfire splattered across concrete walls. It felt like it had been put there last week. Budapest was an eye opener. Here it is again. — Alison

Korona1

 

“It’s forints, not florins. That’s our currency.”

“Oh.” And here I thought we were entering the municipality of The Princess Bride. No matter. I still say there’s a fairy tale quality to Budapest. My imagination revs and roars ahead, gathering up the details, some charmed, most grim.

We’ve had three days to check out Hungary’s jewel-encrusted crowns, gilded shields and her vast collections of knights’ quivers and ogres’ torture racks. We’ve taken in several of her storybook castles perched atop hills so steep even the most modern buses huff and puff on the way up. The views go on for miles. And between breaks for milky coffee and marzipan balls (dipped in chocolate, of course), I’ve breezed past acres of gold-leafed tomes lining the walls of libraries and salons and read about the antics of kings with twirled moustaches and overstuffed bellies (Sigismund), and their consorts whose names bring to mind chiffon trains (Giselle) and royal conniption fits (Sissi). Many of the most beautiful coffee houses are named after these ladies. Like Paris and Istanbul, Budapest has a coffee culture reaching back several centuries.

Back in the sunshine — and, boy, is it intense in these parts — belle époque bronze maidens perched on top of neo-classical cupolas meet the wind gusts crossing central Europe with outstretched arms and heads held skyward. They’re the epitome fluttering elegance. Meanwhile, back on the ground toothless old women (the Romas, or Gypsies), bent at right angles from osteoporosis, limp along cobblestoned streets in search of their next meal. No, they’re not pushing poison apples, but neon whirly gigs (that kids would like if they didn’t run away crying from the gnarled hand holding them) and Woody Allen joke glasses (the dark-framed kind with the big plastic noses). At the end of the day, I imagine these decrepit vendors disappearing down back alleys to count their loose change and toss root vegetables into boiling vats for dinner. Potatoes are a staple, along with cabbage seasoned with vigorous shakes of paprika.

I wouldn’t be the first visitor to Budapest to sigh over the feeling of her faded glory, but pointing this out sounds peevish, like a cruel dismissal of everything she’s been through. I can’t keep track of the number of times the Hungarian capital has been destroyed, captured, ransacked and retaken (high school history must been brutal). Mementos of her roller coaster ride through history are in plain view, from the bullet-chipped edifices (the result of rounds of German machine gun fire from the end of WWII) and the God awful “Sovietsky” style cinder block housing units and desolate paved squares that are a reminder of synchronized marches, and eerie to cross on your own.

The Commies have been gone since 1990, but their willful ignorance of design and gloomy take on life persists in Hungary. It’s an ideology that stands in high contrast to the bursts of art nouveau grandeur that still exists in pockets that somehow escaped Allied bombing, and, later, Soviet thuggery. Secessionist Peacock gate of Gresham Palace Four Seasons Luxury Hotel Budapest HungaryThe turn of the century coffee houses in the art nouveau style and the Haussmann-esque wide boulevards explain why Budapest’s been called the “Paris of the East.” Gustave Eiffel (of Tower fame) even designed parts of Budapest’s zoo, the oldest in Europe. Here, one hippo is born every year, they say, because the beasts bathe in the thermal waters that bubble up from under the city.

But back to the dark days of the war. Hungarians aren’t proud of the fact that they sided with the Nazis. Looking at the bullet marks around the city, my imagination doesn’t have to stretch that far to picture soldiers scampering back and forth across the streets and hiding behind walls to dodge the machine gun fire. The younger generation tisks and shakes their head at their ancestors’ pact with the Austrians and Germans. “Yes, they sided with them, although many switched and joined the Allies in the end,” they add. Of course, that didn’t protect the Jews. In 1944, Hungarian fascists from the Arrow Cross party herded up all the Jews they could find living in Budapest and lined them up along the edge of the Danube River. They shot them in a hail of gunfire and the bodies were carried away by the river’s strong current. Today, a bronze mishmash of men’s, women’s and children’s shoes and boots — many toppled over like they were quickly kicked off — are scattered along the quay as a memorial. It’s one of the most touching holocaust memorials I’ve ever seen.

Shoes 1

 

 

Mailbag

January 7, 2011

I got a flurry of e-mails (I define flurry as “more than five,” and I got six), asking about a photo I posted last fall showing a lineup of shoes and overturned boots along a river promenade. “What is it?” they asked.

Holocaust Memorial

It’s the Holocaust Memorial in Budapest, Hungary. I got down on my belly to take this shot. The memorial is 40 metres long on the Pest side of the Danube — in the shadow of the Hungarian Parliament Buildings — and shows 60 pairs of 1940s-style cast-iron shoes belonging to men, women and children.

Through the summer and winter of 1944 and 1945, when the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg was in Budapest, he worked around the clock to save the Jewish population from Hungary’s fascist Arrow Cross officers. Many had already been deported to extermination camps around Europe. Wallenberg arranged for hundreds of Jews to be housed in buildings he rented around the city, including the Swedish Embassy, and defined these buildings as “off-limits” to the fascists.

It worked until it didn’t. On the night of January 8th, 1945   (66 years ago tomorrow), the Jews Wallenberg had been hiding in an apartment on Üllöi Street were rounded up by leather trench coat-wearing officers and lined up along the promenade, their backs to the river. As the Arrow Cross execution brigade waved their machine guns back and forth, releasing a barrage of bullets, their victims fell into the river.

My dad and I observed this memorial together. Years ago, he was the one who introduced me to Elie Wiesel’s Night. He pored over it with the same quiet intensity as Anne Frank’s Diary, which we both re-read in one sitting back in our hotel room in Amsterdam, two weeks after Budapest.

 

Euro bits

August 29, 2010

Tiny Latte

Your morning eggs in Budapest are served up in the frying pan they were cooked in.

Tiny Latte

There are no mosquitoes along the Danube (or Canada geese), but there are Biblical swarms of moths. They fly around your head, up your pant legs and, if you’re not careful, down your windpipe. Their one saving grace is their beauty.  They have long bodies, curved antennae with beads on the end (like a Victorian brooch) and white translucent wings like the fairies in Edwardian illustrations.

Tiny Latte

Freud was a big coffee drinker.

Tiny Latte

Everywhere you go in Europe  there are reminders of battle. For me, the bullet holes speak more loudly than the fortification walls or lookout towers. In Budapest, there’s German machine gun fire on the stone facades. Deep in Germany’s Bavarian Forest, near the town of Passau, wooden houses dating back to the Middle Ages still bear the bullet holes from the muskets of Napoleon’s army.

Tiny Latte

In the past, most Europeans were born and died in the same bed. Little square holes cut out above the doors of German peasant dwellings gave the soul a place to slip away after someone died.

Tiny Latte

Front doors with tiny hinged doors in the centre are a sign that someone with the plague lived and probably died there. They picked up their meals on a long paddle through this opening. It’s where we get the saying, “I wouldn’t touch him with a ten foot pole.”

Tiny Latte

One secondary school just off Andrassy St. in Budapest has produced 8 Nobel Prize winners to date. (Sorry, I forgot to ask the guide the name of the school).

Tiny Latte

Johann Strauss conducted his waltzes by waving around his violin bow. Strauss was the Paul McCartney of the 19th century. Women screamed when he walked on stage and sought him out backstage. His personal and professional lives were constantly overbooked.

Tiny Latte

German and Austrian churches have a Holy Ghost hole in the dome or barrel vaults high above the congregation. At just the right moment in the sermon when the priest was praising the Holy Ghost, a church worker, hiding in the attic, opened the trap door and released a dove. It swooped over the congregation, they gasped and watched it land on the altar where the priest slipped it a morsel of bread for a job well done. People couldn’t believe their eyes. It’s one of the ways the Catholic Church stayed in power for so long. When the Church’s numbers were slipping, the bishops met to discuss ways to draw the public back into the fold. Doves, more gold leaf, and larger organs seemed to do the trick.

Tiny Latte

People who live in huts with thatched roofs and no windows were blown away by the detailing in the church. How could you not believe in God surrounded by so much beauty?

Tiny Latte

Chocolate/jam, chocolate/ jam, chocolate/ jam, chocolate/ jam: The filling in a typical Austrian teacake.

Tiny LatteMost outdoor cafés in central Europe place soft shawls or cozy blankets on the backs of the chairs so patrons don’t get cold while they sip on their fluffed coffees.

Tiny LatteHungarian women look beaten down by life. The Viennese look pampered. That’s what happens when you get five weeks paid vacation.

Tiny Latte

Hungarians love smoked pork knuckles, truffles, wild mushrooms, goose liver, juniper and gooseberries.

Tiny Latte

Horse meat sausages are a delicacy in Germany. During WWII, they were the poor man’s food. Today, beer is considered a food group. Liquid bread. That’s why there’s no alcohol tax on it, unlike wine.

Tiny Latte

Women pay to use the WC in Europe, but men don’t. Maybe it’s because the mechanics for us are more involved. Maybe we’re paying for our modesty. Anyway, paying to do your business goes back to medieval times when women walked around the village balancing a yoke supporting two buckets of sloshing shit. You stopped her when you had to go. She placed the bucket on the street. You sat on the bucket and she wrapped a blanket around you so that all anyone saw was your head (and your expressions!) When you were done, she slipped her hand in her apron and pulled out a wad of grass (toilet paper). You dropped it in the street when you were done and paid her for her services.

Tiny Latte

Austrian gelato aspires to Baroque grandeur and it succeeds. Its sundaes are architectural masterpieces! Hungarian gelato is just as ambitious, but misses the mark. Ice cream cones in Budapest look like great mounds of undulating lactose on overworked cones. The ice cream also looks like it was dipped in green or red liquid rubber.

Tiny Latte

Peasant women in the Middle Ages who lacked a dowry — even a few modest pieces of lace, linen or a set of dishes  — survived this life by becoming nuns or prostitutes. The choices were that stark.

Tiny Latte

A one hundred mile stretch of the Danube disappears underground into a network of deep caves. Scientists have slipped on wet suits and tried to follow it, but so far they haven’t been able to do it.

Tiny Latte

The British artist J.M.Turner, famous for his misty pictures of the Thames, painted the Danube river valley several times. Unfortunately, the national collections in Britain, where these pictures are housed, keep the works in permanent storage. I think the British government should present them as gifts to the people of Austria and Germany where they would be proudly displayed, not deep-sixed.

Tiny Latte

Saints don’t rest in peace, they rest in pieces! Bah Hah!

Tiny Latte

Germans didn’t sweeten their tea and coffee until Napoleon introduced them to sugar beets. Not even with honey. They had to turn it over to the pharmacist in the village, on account of its medicinal qualities.

Tiny Latte

Empress Elisabeth (Sisi) of the Austro-Hungarian Empire had a tattoo of an anchor on her left shoulder. She got it in her fifties. It was an odd thing for a royal to do in the mid-19th century.

 

Boo-duh-pesht

August 25, 2010

Korona1“It’s forints, not florins. That’s our currency.”

“Oh,” [tee hee]. And here I thought I was entering the municipality of The Princess Bride. No matter. I still say there’s a fairy tale quality to Budapest. My imagination revs and roars ahead, gathering up the details, some charmed, most grim.

I’ve had three days to check out Hungary’s jewel-encrusted crowns, gilded shields and her vast collections of knights’ quivers and ogres’ torture racks. I’ve taken in several of her storybook castles perched atop hills so steep even the most modern buses huff and puff on the way up. The views go on for miles. And between breaks for milky coffee and marzipan balls (dipped in chocolate, of course), I’ve breezed past acres of gold-leafed tomes lining the walls of libraries and salons and read about the antics of kings with twirled moustaches and overstuffed bellies (Sigismund), and their consorts whose names bring to mind chiffon trains (Giselle) and royal conniption fits (Sissi). Many of the most beautiful coffee houses are named after these ladies. Like Paris and Istanbul, Budapest has a coffee culture reaching back several centuries.

Back in the sunshine — and, boy, is it intense in these parts — belle époque bronze maidens perched on top of neo-classical cupolas meet the wind gusts crossing central Europe with outstretched arms and heads held skyward. They’re the epitome fluttering elegance. Meanwhile, back on the ground toothless old women (the Romas, or Gypsies), bent at right angles from osteoporosis, limp along cobblestoned streets in search of their next meal. No, they’re not pushing poison apples, but neon whirly gigs (that kids would like if they didn’t run away crying from the gnarled hand holding them) and joke glasses (the dark-framed kind with the big plastic noses). At the end of the day, I imagine these the decrepit vendors disappearing down back alleys to count their loose change and toss root vegetables into boiling vats for dinner. Potatoes are a staple, along with cabbage seasoned with vigorous shakes of paprika.

I wouldn’t be the first visitor to Budapest to sigh over the feeling of her faded glory, but pointing this out sounds peevish, like a cruel dismissal of everything she’s been through. I can’t keep track of the number of times the Hungarian capital has been destroyed, captured, ransacked and retaken (high school history must be a toughie). Mementos of her roller coaster ride through history are in plain view, from the bullet-chipped edifices (the result of rounds of German machine gun fire from the end of WWII) and the God awful “Sovietsky” style cinder block housing units and desolate paved squares that are a reminder of synchronized marches, but eerie to cross on your own.

The commies have been gone since 1990, but their willful ignorance of design and gloomy take on life persists in Hungary. It’s an ideology that stands in high contrast to the bursts of art nouveau grandeur that still exists in pockets that somehow escaped Allied bombing, and, later, Soviet practicality. Secessionist Peacock gate of Gresham Palace Four Seasons Luxury Hotel Budapest HungaryThe turn of the century coffee houses in the art nouveau style and the Haussmann-esque wide boulevards explain why Budapest’s been called the “Paris of the East.” (Gustave Eiffel — of Tower fame — even designed parts of Budapest’s zoo, the oldest in Europe. Here, one hippo is born every year, they say, because the beasts bathe in the thermal waters that bubble up from under the city.

But back to the dark days of the war. Hungarians aren’t proud of the fact that they sided with the Nazis. Looking at the bullet marks around the city, my imagination doesn’t have to stretch that far to picture soldiers scampering back and forth across the streets and hiding behind walls to dodge the machine gun fire. The younger generation tisks and shakes their head at their ancestors’ pact with the Austrians and Germans. “Yes, they sided with them, although many switched and joined the Allies in the end,” they add. Of course, that didn’t protect the Jews. In 1944, Hungarian fascists from the Arrow Cross party herded up all the Jews they could find living in Budapest and lined them up along the edge of the Danube River. They shot them in a hail of gunfire and the bodies were carried away by the river’s strong current. Today, a bronze mishmash of men’s, women’s and children’s shoes and boots — many toppled over like they were quickly kicked off — are scattered along the quay as a memorial. It’s one of the most touching holocaust memorials I’ve ever seen.

Shoes 1

 
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