Beautiful, and Cold, Budapest

We should have known, I guess, that it would be cold in Budapest at the end of February, but that's when our "Spring" break was, so that's when we went.  We stayed in Buda, in the Burg Hotel which is (not surprisingly) in the castle, since that's what "burg" means in German.  The hotel stands right across the square from St. Matthew's Church.  Paula saw a view of the church on line with scaffolding and shrouds, but no such screen existed when we arrived.  Workmen had taken everything down two weeks before.  Three bells sat on the ground, but a crane lifted them up into the belfry tower on Monday.  We could have stayed around to watch the process, but too many places called to us.  We went for a walk and saw St. Mary Magdalene church, or what's left of it.  The Hungarians worshiped there when the higher caste "Germans" (Austrians) used St. Matthew's.  Heavily damaged by wars, the only pieces left of St. Mary

St. Mary Magdalene

Magdalene are the tower and one reconstructed arched window to show where the altar stood.

St. Matthew's

Sunday morning we attended high mass at St. Matthew's.  Apparently a high mass is sung at 10AM each Sunday.  This was Mozart's Mass in C Minor, with a fine orchestra and choir. In the afternoon we took the tour of the Parliament building.   We tried to walk around and look at architecture, but looking at buildings is more difficult when you shiver.



We went to the market on Monday morning, bright and early. Shopkeepers, bundled up against the cold, opened food stands on the ground floor, but many of the tourist shops opened more slowly.  The eateries opened by 10AM and we did have coffee. 

Having coffee in the market

After lunch we 

Parliament, in Pest, as seen from Buda.

went to the Grand Synagogue and took the tour there.  Parliament, of course, had heat, but even though the synagogue (as with most if not all places of worship in Central Europe) had no heat, being inside and out of the wind warmed us up.   


Tuesday we bathed.  Budapest is known for its thermal baths.  The Hungarians built two, one in Buda and one in Pest, in the late Nineteenth Century.  We went to Szechnanyi, in Pest.  It has two outside pools, one at body temperature and one about twenty degrees cooler.  Once we got in we were fine, but being in a "hot tub" with snowflakes falling on your head is a little strange.  Tuesday afternoon we found the "shoes"

Shoes

on the bank of the Danube.  We heard about the shoes during the synagogue tour, but could not find them later Monday.  The exhibit, sixty sets of period-appropriate shoes, commemorates Jews who hid from the Nazis during World War II but were taken from hiding by a group of Hungarian sympathizers in early 1945, marched to the Danube, and shot into the water.  A sculptor placed the bronze shoes in the early 1990s.

We also enjoyed the National Gallery and the "Labyrinth."  Wednesday we went back to the market briefly and then caught a train for home.  It had been cold in Bratislava when we were gone, and our friends who went to Ljubljana, Slovenia, and Kiev reported very cold temperatures, too.