Eastern Europe to the Black Sea - BUDAPEST

Budapest - Castle Hill and the Chain Bridge at night

The Chain Bridge at night in Budapest

Last June Bob and I added another cruise tour to our East Germany cruise on the Elbe.  When we finished the previous tour in Berlin, we caught a train to Prague to begin our next adventure - Eastern Europe to the Black Sea.  After 4 days in Prague, in the rain, we traveled to Bratislava, Slovakia, where we had a tour and lunch - very neat little town, although Rick Steves didn't think too much of it!

Matthias Church and Fishermen's Bastion

We drove on to Budapest and arrived in the late afternoon.  We got settled in on the ship (the River Concerto), had a delicious welcome dinner, and enjoyed the sights of Budapest at night.
We had 3 Program Directors on this cruise.  Ours was Sorin, Crupa, the most adorable PD I've ever had.  He was just a baby, still in his 20's, handling a group of 40 old farts.  And he did it brilliantly.  I even tipped him more than I usually do! All 3 program directors were Romanian. Only Christian was old enough to tell us about life under the Communists.  His grandfather had a fairly prosperous farm and the Communists just came in and took it.   In Bucharest, Romania, we met  a man who had participated in the Revolution in 1989.  He was only 14 at the time, but filled with a deep desire to drive the Russians out of Romania.  They didn't seem to have a problem with communism, so much as with the Russians.  The Russians were hated and despised, all over the Eastern bloc.

That was a recurring theme all over Eastern Europe.  Over here we thought it was the fall of Communism; it was really just the fall of the USSR as they got booted out of the countries they had enslaved for 44 years.   Romania is the breadbasket of eastern Europe, but the Romanians starved because the Russians sent everything back to Russia.  We heard the same thing from the Poles on our first cruise.  In Germany we were shocked to find out some East Germans miss the old days, when life was "simple and easy."  In Budapest, our local guide told us "under communism we had a nice life, even though we could not speak freely.  Now we can speak freely but we have no life."  I wish we could have had a much longer conversation with the locals we met.  They have a totally different perspective than we do. 

Budapest is a gorgeous city and I thoroughly enjoyed our rain-free days there.  We had a city tour by bus, where we drove down Andrassy Ut. to Heroes Square, and on to the thermal baths.  I wish we had been able to return to the baths - they are supposed to be phenomenal!

The Széchenyi Thermal Baths

Instead, we went on an optional of the House of Terror, a place that under the commies, if you went in you didn't come out.
I didn't care for the museum but it did include more sights in the city, primarily Liberty Square.
Each room in the museum had a handout, in English, to explain the circumstances of what we saw.  Unfortunately, we had no time to read anything before we were off to the next room.  I brought all the papers home and still have not finished them.
Hungary has an interesting history.  They allied with Germany in WWI, and when they lost the war they lost 2/3 of Hungarian territory.  Then in WWII Hungary was caught between the aggressive Nazis and the hated communists, so they again sided with the Germans and paid the price for it when the US handed Eastern Europe over to the Soviets after the war.

The Berlin Wall falling was actually partly the result of the Hungarians allowing immigration to the  West.  It was a chink in the armor of Soviet power which gave hope to the people.  The Germans sent the Hungarians a part of the Berlin Wall in gratitude.