Buda and Pest

My earliest thoughts of Budapest came through the Gabor sisters.

These beautiful actresses draped in glamorous gowns and diamonds, speaking with alluring, exotic accents, seemed like the epitome of wealth and class to a middle class American boy.

I assumed Hungary and its capital Budapest must be equally gorgeous and wealthy.

The first sister known to me was Zsa Zsa Gabor, who in retrospect was sort of the Paris Hilton of her day, more famous for being rich and famous than for her acting.

She just seemed to regularly pop up with Bob Hope or on a variety show my parents happened to be watching.

She had worn a crown in Europe, but not like Empress Maria Theresa.  Zsa Zsa was Miss Hungary of 1936.

She managed to immigrate to America in 1941, just a step ahead of the Nazis.

Her wealth, I would learn later, came primarily from marriages to a series of American millionaires, including Conrad Hilton, the great-grandfather of Paris Hilton.

“A girl must marry for love, and keep on marrying until she finds it,” Zsa Zsa expounded, but she and her sisters were also quite intelligent and talented.

Actually, Zsa Zsa's younger sister Eva immigrated to America first. At the young age of 20, Eva married a Swiss doctor in 1939 and moved to the USA shortly thereafter, a wise move, especially for a Jewish girl.

Eva was the Gabor sister I liked best, primarily because she starred in the absurd TV comedy, "Green Acres," which was one of my favorites as a child.  Eva later provided the voice for Miss Bianca in the Disney classic cartoons about "The Rescuers," a favorite of my children.

There was a third Gabor sister, Magda, who was also a social lite and actress, but not unlike a lesser known Kardashian, she never entered my consciousness.

When we arrived in Budapest, I found it to definitely be a beautiful city, but for centuries it had been ravaged by wars and neglected by conquerors who destroyed many of the original buildings and statues.

As we found at the City Park of Budapest, however, much of what was beautiful has been rebuilt or refurbished.

Like the Gabors, Hungarians in general seem to have an inherent sense of style and beauty.

Budapest is actually the merger of two cities, Buda and Pest, on opposite sides of the river that eventually grew together.

Buda was the historical capital of Hungary.

After Ottomans captured Buda and the rest of Central Hungary, Bratislava became the capital of the remaining Kingdom of Hungary, while Budapest deteriorated.

The Turks turned Buda Castle into barracks, stables and gunpowder storage, which may have been utilitarian but certainly disparaged the proud city.

When Christians finally retook Buda Castle in 1686, the gunpowder stored by the Ottomans exploded, destroying much of the castle.

Maria Theresa authorized large sums to rebuild the castle during her 18th Century reign.

The beautiful Fisherman's Bastion we toured, however, was built between 1895 and 1902, around the same time as Heroes' Square and Vajdahunad Castle during what turned out to be the closing days of the Habsburg era.

Fisherman's Bastion received its name because that section of the castle wall was defended by the fisherman's guild.

The seven towers represent the seven founding Magyar tribes, and a large stature of King Stephen I on horseback holds a prominent position in the courtyard.

Fisherman's Bastion is just one part of the castle.

We strolled through another part of the castle district, eating an ice cream cone that hit the spot on the sunny day of our visit, but there were many parts of the castle didn't explore.  We had arrived by tour bus, but there's also a funicular that will take you to the castle hill from the river.

In "Prague," an ironically titled novel about some young Americans in Budapest set in the early 1990's when Hungary was emerging from seventy years of totalitarian rule, one of the primary characters spends his last day in Budapest riding the funicular up and down, feeling he has finally found that perfect moment where the present becomes instantaneously nostalgic.

Through most of that novel, the young Americans have discussions in bars, not unlike the cafe society of a prior era glamorized in Ernest Hemingway novels. Having read "Prague" in preparation for the trip, I naturally wanted to visit some place the protagonists might have gone.

I decided we must visit Budapest's ruin pubs, which I had read about somewhere.

While the characters in "Prague" had successively abandoned their latest watering holes once tourists had discovered them, we sought out the original ruin bar, Szimpla Kert on the Pest side of the river, which remains quite popular.


The entrepreneurs who started Szimpla,  subsequently kicking off the ruin pub phenomenon, represent the difference between a planned Communist economy and free market capitalism.

Many buildings had been allowed to deteriorate into ruin under bureaucratic central government planning.

With entrepreneurial vision to be a "post-modern cultural center," however, Szimpla became a hot spot by simply but instinctively bringing in eclectic junk to furnish the ruins rather than doing an extensive rehab under an elaborate five year plan, and it found a free market audience ready for that.

We weren't partying with the hip-crowd to the wee hours --- though with an overnight stay in port, we could have ---but we enjoyed our afternoon drink before enjoying a beautiful afternoon city stroll back to AmaCerto.