(Being part the fifth of my adventures in Budapest. With photo links! These open new browser windows.)
As it turns out, my chief memories of visiting Budapest—aside from the wedding itself, of course, and the food—were of buildings of holy sanctuary. The same day I visited the synagogue (see previous entry), I also found myself wandering around St. Stephen’s Basilica shortly before closing time. I sort of ended up there—as you’ll see, it’s the kind of place where it’s easy to end up—while looking for something else.
We went to lunch following our visit to Dohány Street, and met up with my parents while we were about it. I had to order by pointing at things, with Tamás standing by as patient translator for the confused Americans. I have to say, that while I was previously sympathetic to people who come to the U.S. with little or any English and then struggle to get by, my sympathy is now of a more personal nature. To this day (September 23rd, several months after my visit), I can recognize the few words of Hungarian that I learned if I see or hear them, but attempting to read it is still so much mishmash. I would like to learn more languages beyond the two that I speak. French, by the way, does little good in Hungary. Fortunately, most of the people I met were very tolerant of my halting attempts to communicate.
One of these attempts took place at the post office, where between us my cousin and I managed to buy enough stamps for me to mail postcards back to the U.S. The post office was near a train station that was designed by Eiffel, and inside the same building lurked what has to be the most gorgeous McDonald’s on the planet. It calls itself McCafé and is all wood and glass and tiled floors. Rather disturbing, actually. We didn’t find out whether the food was any better, though I would imagine that the meat was of higher quality. For some reason, this and a Burger King advertisement featuring what I found to be a very stereotypical Mexican (wearing a sombrero and, for some reason, a lei; I think most actual Mexicans upon seeing this would have been offended) are associated in my mind as examples of somebody somewhere not quite getting it. Then again, since “it” in this case is American fast food, they might prefer not to.
After that I went off on my own to wander for a bit. Language barriers aside, a person with a map, a transit pass, and a guidebook can get around Budapest quite easily. There are probably areas of the city that tourists should stay out of (and I’m told that 15-20 years ago the situation was much different from what it is today), but I didn’t find them. I was looking for something called the Writer’s Bookshop, but I didn’t find that either, although I did come upon another bookstore that had nothing in English but did have some books that were lovely to look at. I’m fond of old bindings, wooden and leather covers, and high-quality paper, what can I say.
It was while I was looking for the bookshop that I came upon the basilica. Really, if you’re anywhere near it, it’s impossible to miss. This is the sort of building for which such phrases as “impressive edifice” were coined. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the inscription says "I am the way, the truth and the life.") It was enormous, occupying a large square, and my attempts to photograph it with my rinky-dinky point-and-shoot camera were less than successful (and also interrupted by a crazy German tourist who thought I was English).
Inside, it was beautiful, and very quiet, with many statues of saints. It didn’t have the natural feel of St. Matthias, and admitted rather less natural light (though I’m told, by a cousin of my father’s who attended services there a few days later, that the skylight is perfectly positioned to catch the morning sun during Mass). It was very dark, in fact, cool and cavernous and majestic, with a great deal of gold decoration and a huge central dome prominently featuring God and the angels. Very different from the synagogue where, as one might expect, there were no images of any kind, only abstract patterns.
I was especially struck by a statue of St. Theresa, which held a cross in one hand and spilled a cascade of roses from the other. The whole place had a quiet, deliberate solemnity and even though people were taking flash photos, I didn’t, which is why these interior photos are so blurry. You can argue, probably correctly, that my religious studies and practice have made me especially sensitive to symbolic and environmental cues, particularly when they’re as overwhelming as they were here, but I just didn’t feel comfortable doing it.
The basilica houses a relic, of course; the hand of St. Stephen. Evidently you can drop a coin into a slot in the case, and then the case lights up like a funhouse display, or one of those automated gypsy puppets that drops you a fortune in a paper tube. I looked for it, but didn’t find it.
Although by the end of the week I was using the transit system to get everywhere, at that point I was too tired to work out how to get back from the basilica by train, so I walked. The whole way, I was walking over, under, around, and through history. I was struck, that day and thereafter, by the apparently random scattering around the city of sculpture, mosaic, and other decoration. A bas-relief Pièta in one wall, a mosaic of St. George on another. These things probably weren’t random when they were made, but nothing ever seems to get torn down, at least not in the parts of the city I saw; just repurposed. Single-family mansions occupying entire city blocks become apartments, often accessed via tunnel-like hallways to inner courtyards. I suppose the people who live there are used to it. New York has a bit of the same feel, though it doesn’t seem like D.C. does; D.C. was planned to be an enormous monument, essentially, and then later people decided to live there. Which explains a lot of D.C.’s problems. Or maybe I feel that way about it because I used to live there.
My cousin and I moved to a different apartment to make room for arriving family and friends, not far from the synagogue as it turned out. The apartment was in what had been the Jewish ghetto during the Nazi occupation, and both bedroom doorways had mezuzah cases affixed to them. Other than that it looked rather like a hotel, but I could look out the window at the building on the opposite side of the street—itself no wider than Post Alley in Seattle—and there were still bullet holes in the walls.