GALLERY — BUDAPEST, HUNGARY, JULY 2008
July 10, 2008 — After my visit to Latvia, I visited Budapest, Hungary. A few hours after my arrival, we attended an outdoor concert: 100-Member Gypsy Orchestra. It was a very exciting performance combining classical music and Hungarian folk tunes. Everybody was clapping through most of the songs and I was ready to start dancing...
Budapest was established as the Hungarian capital in 1873 by uniting separate cities: PEST, BUDA and ÓBUDA. Today all locations in Budapest are described between the two major sections of the city: "the Buda side" or the "Pest side", depending on which side of the Danube River you are standing. Here are few pictures from the weekend:
Budapest Parliament and its Surroundings
Szentendre — St Andrew Village
Budapest Parliament and its Surroundings
July 11 — I visited the Budapest Parliament, located in the Pest side of the Danube river (East Side). This Neo-Gothic masterpiece is also the third largest parliament in the world. It was first opened in 1902 and it is considered by many connoseiurs as the most beautiful Parliament building in Europe. Other interesting sights near the Parliament were the Szabadság Park Square (Szabadság téri) and the Museum of Ethnography (Néprajzi Múzeum).
Budapesti Metró
Budapest's underground Metro (Budapesti Metró), built between 1893 and 1896, is the second oldest in the world. In 1987, the city of Budapest was added to Unesco's World Heritage List, which included the Banks of the Danube, the Buda Castle Quarter and Andrássy Avenue (with the oldest line of the Metro System).
See UNESCO'S official award: World Heritage List — Budapest
The Metro stations have very nice murals. I took the Metro from Moscow Square (Moszkva tér), located in the Buda side of town, to the Parliament Station (Kossuth Lajos tér). My next stop was St. Stephen's Basilica.
St. Stephens Basilica
St. Stephen's Basilica (Szent Istvan Bazilika) is the largest church in Budapest. However, the Catholic Church has not made it officially made a basilica yet. Regardless of this fact, people in Budapest call it "the Basilica" due to its large size.
Budapest Opera House
Next stop: the Budapest Opera House. In 1884, when this Neo-Renaissance masterpiece was conpleted it was considered one of Europe's most magnificent Opera houses. The building is decorated with statues of Giuseppe Verdi, Franz Liszt, W. A. Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven and Ferenc Erkel (the first director of the Opera House), as well as two imposing sphinxes by each side.
Szentendre — St Andrew Village
July 12 — Today was a real treat for me. Ieva took me around on a grand tour outside Budapest. We started at St. Andrew Village (Szentendre), which in recent years has become a popular destination. This charming village is located about 12 miles (20 km) north of Budapest along the Danube River. For centuries, Szentendre has been the home to many Serbian immigrants and for a period the seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church in exile, all of which has left a unique mark in terms of culture, traditions, religion and architecture.
Today, Szentendre is full of galleries, small museums, folk art shops and cafés, which in the summer, have live music outdoors. There were also many boat full of tourists going along the Danube River from Budapest to Szentendre.
Visegrád Castle
The next stop was my favorite Visegrád, a small castle town located in Pest County. There were several attractions at the Castle complex: exhibitions of medieval weapons, a wax museum, joustsing games, displays by artisans, live Medieval and early Rennaisance music; and an spectacular view of the Danube River and its surroundings.
The oldest section of Visegrád Castle was built around 1247. From 1325 to 1405, it was the royal seat of Hungary. It is best known for the alliance formed in 1325 between Poland and Hungary against Habsburg Austria; and for the peace treaty that was signed between Charles I King of Hungary; John of Luxembourg, King of Bohemian, and Casimir III, King of Poland.
In 1991, the Visegrád Group was formed for cooperation towards E.U. integration between the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. The first summit took place at Visegrád Castle as intentional reference to the year 1325. All the nations in the Visegrád Group became members of the European Union on May 1, 2004.
Esztergom Basilica
The final stop of our tour was to the small town of Esztergom, approximately 50 km north-west of Budapest. This is the location of the Esztergom Basilica , which is the seat of the Roman Catholic Church in Hungary, the biggest Church in Hungary and the third largest in Europe.
The Basilica looks even more impressive and massive in the middle of such a small town. And the view along the Danube River marked the border between Hungary and Slovakia, connected only by a small bridge.
July 13 — The next morning, I took an very early flight to Vienna and then back to New York City. This was the end of my second trip to Europe this year.
