We boarded the Delta Star (Steaua Deltei) for our seven day cruise on the Danube, a river that drains a region three times the size of the British Isles; among the rivers of Europe, only the Volga is longer.
We started our watery journey eastward toward Hungary. The first castle on video was this one
on the right bank east of Vienna. As we continued on toward Budapest I took more shots of the river banks and the side of our ship the Delta Star. On the sun deck Professor Raddatz was diligently taking notes. Since we were in Hungary, the front of the ship carried the red, white and green flag of Hungary.
Budapest was just ahead beyond the first bridge; Margaret’s Island was off to our left.
Margaret Island, neither Buda nor Pest, is situated in the middle of the Danube. When it was controlled by the Turks they called it the Island of Rabbits and turned it into a harem. It has been a public park since the mid-19t century. In the middle of the island are the ruins of a 13th century Franciscan Church and Monastery. The Habsburg archduke Joseph built a summer residence here when he inherited the island in 1867.
Budapest, the “Queen of the Danube,” spans the banks of the Danube River for eight miles and is connected with seven bridges. The ancient city of Buda is on the right bank, and her more modern city of Pest is on the left bank. Buda and Pest were no more than villages until the 12th century when foreign merchants and tradespeople settled. In the 13th century King Bela IV built a fortress here.
In 1944-45, all seven bridges linking the two sides of the river were blown up by the retreating Germans and a large part of the city was in ruins. Chain Bridge shown here.
Once past the Chain Bridge our ship turned around and docked facing the current, between the Elizabeth Bridge (named after the wife of Emperor Francis Joseph I) and the Liberty Bridge. Crew hands from the Delta Star secured the ship to shore. After disembarking we were treated to an overall view of the Delta Star.
Passport control took a little while before we started walking around town on our own, concentrating primarily on Rakoci utca, also called Kossuth Lajos Street. We had a nice view of Parizsi Udar (on right) and the Klottild (twin) Palaces.
Fortunately, it was Sunday and we could take a peek inside St. Stephen’s Cathedral where a mass was being conducted. The Basilica of St. Stephen is a Neoclassical structure built over the course of half a century and completed in 1906. This is the city’s largest and most important church. To the left of the main altar in a small chapel rests the Holy Right, the mummified right hand of St. Stephen (King Stephen I) almost 1000 years old. Fallon,
Hungary, p. 122. The interior is a rich collection of late 19th century Hungarian fine art. Outside the church I videoed a statue at the entrance of the cathedral.
From here we turned right at what appeared to be a mall and continued on to a building being restored. The stone on the wall was pock-marked from the 1956 Hungarian uprising against Communist rule. Walking toward the Vaci utca we came across beautiful turn of the century buildings with ornate architectural features so typical of Budapest.
After a full (and delicious) lunch on the Delta Star we began our bus tour of Budapest, starting on the Pest side of the river.
We were treated to more turn of the century buildings, especially of note were two ornate hotels. We drove past the East Railway Station or Keleti Train Station, built in 1884 and renovated a century later. It is still an important railway hub in Europe. Fallon,
Hungary, p. 132.
At Heroes’ Square, with the Millennial Monument. Here we got out of the bus and had time to explore. On one side of the square was the Art Gallery with a beautiful facade. In the center of the square is a marble memorial stone of Hungarian heroes guarded by Hungarian soldiers. Wreaths are laid here on national holidays. Our capable multilingual guide pointed out a bronze figure of Archangel Gabriel on top of a high column. He is holding an Apostolic Cross in one hand and the crown of St. Stephen in the other.
At the base of the pedestal stand the figures of seven Magyar conquering chieftains who came here 1000 years ago in 896 AD. (hence the term Millennial Monument). Between the columns of the semi-circle are the statues of the Hungarian kings and other outstanding historical personalities. Of the fourteen figures, I narrowed in on the statues of the first two, King Stephen and Bela IV, and on the last figure, that of Kossuth.
On the other side of the square is the Museum of Fine Arts (1906) housing the city’s outstanding collection of foreign works. To the right of the square, and a little back, is the Vajdahunyad Castle, built for the Millennial festivities. It is a fantastic mixture of different styles of architecture. The mock castle now houses the Agricultural Museum. Just before we left the square we had a chance to see the formal changing of the guards at the Heroes’ Monument.
Back on the tour bus, we drove past the Neo-classical State Opera House, designed by Miklos Ybl in 1884, and for some it is the city’s most beautiful building. On top of the building are statues of the famous Hungarians composers and performers.
On Embassy Row we caught only a glimpse of the American Embassy with the American flag displayed. From 1956 to 1971 the ultra-conservative Josef Mindszenty, archbishop of Esztergom, and thus primate of Hungary, took refuge in the US embassy here in Budapest. The prelate of Kalocsa was forced to play a juggling game with the government to ensure the church’s existence in a nominally atheistic Communistic state.
Budapest’s most photographed building is the Parliament Building. This colossal structure (693 rooms, 18 courtyards, 267 meters long, 180 meters high, containing 88 statues) is a blend of many architectural styles. The building’s rooms and halls has all Neo-Gothic and Baroque murals, gold tracery and marble. Completed in 1904, under Emperor Franz Josef I of Austria-Hungary, the domed and spired structure houses murals, paintings, and statues. 440 pounds of gold gild in its stairs and halls.
We crossed over Margaret’s Bridge to the Buda side of Budapest to view the walled Castle District. This region consists of two parts: The Old Town, where commoners lived in the Middle Ages, and the Royal Palace, the original site of the castle built by Bela IV in the 13th century. We started out in Old Town by a statue of King Stephen.
Nearby was this Military Museum, a building damaged during WW II . The walls of the building were pitted by Russian artillery as they drove the Nazis out in 1945. On both sides of the museum gate you can still see cannonballs fired in 1848 at what was then a military barracks. Still within Old Town is this monument erected for Szabad Hazaert who died in 1849.
Young musician played instruments nearby.
The impressive Matthias Church down the street received its name from the 15th century Renaissance king who was married here. The church is also known as the Coronation Church and the Church of Our Lady of Buda. The carvings above the southern entrance date back 500 years, but basically the church is a Neo-Gothic creation carried out by the architect Frigyes in the late 19th century. The outside has a colorful tile roof (in the style of Stephensdom in Vienna) and a lovely tower; the interior is remarkable for its stained-glass windows and fresco. Fallon, Hungary, p. 108. The atmosphere was enhanced by young ladies in Hungarian folk costumes walking around the church.
Just outside the church was a statue of St. Stephen.
Behind the statue is the Fishermen’s Bastion is a Neo-Gothic viewing platform built in 1905 ...
... which offers a good view of Budapest.
The Hungarian Parliament building across the Danube presented a magnificent sight.
After our walking tour of Old Town on Castle Hill, we took a bus tour of Gellert Hill, a rocky hill southeast of the Castle District. The Hungarians are well known for their handicraft and needlework, so here on Gellert Hill Annette purchased a little embroidered dress. Our stop on Gellert Hill offered a good view of Castle Hill and the Royal Palace. The Royal Palace has been burned, bombed, rebuilt, and redesigned at least half a dozen times over the past seven centuries. Ironically the palace was never used by the Habsburgs.
To the right we could see the famous Elizabeth Bridge and our river boat Delta Star docked close by.
Back aboard the Delta Star we had an excellent dinner topped off with a Delta Swan, a cream puff stuffed with whipped cream.
We could take an evening venture into Budapest on our own so we chose a local place that boasted of Gypsy musicians. Here costumed Gypsies played music, sang, and danced as we sipped tap beer.
We boarded the Delta Star shortly before the ship was scheduled to leave Budapest. Even though it was quite dark out, I videotaped the boat, the Elizabeth Bridge and the Chain Bridge (lit up in the background).
Monday, July 8:
We sailed during the night hours and right after breakfast we left the boat for a guided tour of KALOCSA, HUNGARY Kalocsa, population 20,000, an artists’ village in the Hungarian lowlands, known both for its intricate embroidery (right) and as a producer of paprika. With Esztergom, Kalocsa was one of the archbishoprics founded by King Stephen in 1009 from the country’s 10 dioceses. Kalocsa was burned to the ground during the Turkish occupation and was not rebuilt until the 18th century.
Kalocsa was in the news in 1956. For 15 years, while the ultra-conservative Josef Mindszenty, archbishop of Esztergom and thus primate of Hungary, took refuge in the US embassy in Budapest, the prelate of Kalocsa was forced to play a juggling game with the government to ensure the church’s existence in a nominally atheistic Communistic state.
The city was 6 miles from where we docked, so we had a pleasant bus drive along a narrow, tree-lined, cobblestone road. The main city street of Kalocsa had beautiful and colorful old buildings. Our first stop was at a House of Folk Art. The Hungarian born guide, who taught German at the college here, spoke fairly good English.
We were taken through an old Hungarian home furnished with traditional household items. The first room we entered was a guest room that was used only for company and special occasions or holidays, Note the colorful wall paper, fancy lamp, original family painting, and the religious pictures. The gift shop here offered for sale beautiful hand made dresses, doilies, and tablecloths.
Our next stop was at a Paprika Museum that showed the evolution of the paprika industry from the early use of plants from the New World to the process in the factory located here. Paprika is very important to Hungarian cuisine. The museum simulates the inside of a barn used for drying the pods in long garlands. Some of the early equipment used for processing paprika are on display.
Next to the Paprika Museum was the Kalocsa Cathedral, the fourth to stand on the site. It was completed in 1770 by Andras Mayerhoffer and is a Baroque masterpiece. Fallon,
Hungary, p. 340. Adjacent to the church is the Bishop’s House.
We entered the Cathedral to hear an organ recital and see the dazzling pink and gold interior full of stucco and reliefs. The video includes close-ups of the pulpit, the altar, ceiling decorations, side chapels, and the huge pipe organ. The large organ is the city’s pride and joy. During the recital I included Professor Schenk in the video. Visiting tourists love the impressive sounds rushing through 4668 pipes. No wonder that even Franz Liszt liked to play on it during his visits to Kalocsa
Outside the Cathedral, another exterior shot of the bell tower. Between the Bishop’s House and the Cathedral was a monument to the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt.
Our Kalocsa tour included a visit to Solt, a horse breeding center, about 35 kilometers north of Kalocsa. The drive took us through the Hungarian countryside where we could observe sunflower plants in bloom, corn fields, and hay rolled up in bundles. At Solt we were transferred into horse drawn wagons that took us out to the ranch. Our wagon driver was dressed in traditional Hungarian garb. At the ranch we were served a Hungarian welcome of schnapps (or apple cider for the meek) and chunks of salted bread.
Hungarian horsemen in traditional dress, performed as standing riders, drivers with wagons, and horsemen demonstrating whip skills (with cracking whips), and conducting horse roundups. After watching the spirited display, we retired to a wine cellar to drink wine and eat bread covered with paprika.
We ate lunch on the Delta Star and then took leave to visit a craft shop on shore where we watched Hungarians demonstrate their craft skills, which included painting, decorating eggshells, sewing patterns, and weaving baskets. Background music was provided by Gypsy musicians. The rural setting was home to horses (colts) and Grey cattle that resembled Texas longhorns.
When the MS Delta Star started her journey back upriver toward Budapest, I taped the local people swimming in the not-so-blue Danube. Back on board we had music performed by the ship’s orchestra in the comfortable bar lounge. The map I videoed shows where we were (my finger points to Kalocsa) and where we are heading upriver.
Our evening entertainment on board ship included learning Romanian vocabulary (the ship is registered in Romania and the cruise director and captain speak Romanian). After our lesson, a competition was held to see who knew his Romanian best. Professor Raddatz, well versed in languages, led our team to win the competition. The award was a fancy bottle of champagne —that was served cold to our table that evening. An excellent day was topped off in the lounge with an operetta singer telling a tale about Budapest.
Tuesday, July 9: The Delta Star docked at Budapest so that we could embark upon our guided excursion on the Danube Bend, which included visits to Szentendre, Visegrad, and Esztergom. As our bus took us along the Danube bank on the Buda side, we saw the familiar sites over on the Pest side.
Here we also saw Roman ruins, visible only from the bus. The Romans had an important settlement here called Aquincum until the 5th century when the Great Migration began. Today there is part of a Roman aqueduct and a city with paved streets and the Aquincum Museum to put it all in perspective. Before reaching Szentendre we came across the ubiquitous large Soviet apartment buildings of the Communistic 1970s.
Szentendre (right central aide of map above), population 19,300, is the southern gateway to the Danube Bend. Like so many towns along the Danube it was home first to the Celts and then the Romans, who then built an important border fortress here called Wolf’s Castle. The Serbian Orthodox Christians came here from the south in advance of the Turks. Today Szentendre has some of the most important relics of Serbian culture in the nation. Fallon,
Hungary, p. 165.
As we began our guided walking tour, the eastern influence immediately came to mind as we viewed the church steeples. The quaint narrow streets were lined with shops selling paprika, porcelain, crystal, icons, etc. Our first stop was Foter, the colorful center of the city. Here conspicuously stands the Plague Cross (1763), an iron cross on a marble base decorated with icons.
Also on the Foter is the Blagovestenska Church built in 1754. that looks Baroque on the outside, but is very Eastern Orthodox on the inside. By the entrance is a large icon.
We then walked up Castle Hill to what was the site of a Roman fortification (Ulcisia Castra) and a good view of the tiled roofs below. All that is left of the fortification is the walled Parish Church of St. John (only Catholic church here, the rest are Serbian and Yugoslavian Eastern Orthodox ). Our guide told us that the rocks we were walking on and stones in the church foundation are from Roman times. The bells of the Parish Church chimed for us before we left down the narrow passageways to a little statue of a boy and then to the Margit Kovacs Museum.
The museum, in an 18th century salt house, has a ceramic-like marker by the entrance. Kovacs (1902-1977) was a ceramicist who combined Hungarian folk, religious, and modern themes to create elongated, Gothic-like figures. In her artwork for the 1938-1942 period she fought Nazis with Christian artwork.
I videoed ”Young Mary” and ”Apprentice” from that period. Two of her later pieces were ”Mother Fixing Her Daughter’s Hair for Wedding” and “The Large Family.”
We travelled on in our Bend journey toward Visegrad. The winding climb took us up to the castle. The Bend was visible below. On the other side of the Danube was Slovakia, but it had been Hungarian until the end of WW I (1918) when it was given to the newly created Czechoslovakia.
VISEGRAD, HUNGARY. The Slavic name means high castle. This is the most beautiful section and the very symbol of the Bend. The citadel surrounded by moats hewn from solid rock is high up on Castle Hill. Together with the palace at the base, it was once the royal center of Hungary. King Bela IV began work on a lower castle by the river and then on the hilltop citadel. Less than a century later, King Charles Robert of Anjou, moved the royal household to Visegrad and had the lower castle converted to a palace.
For almost 200 years, Visegrad was Hungary’s other (often summer) capital and an important diplomatic center. The palace and the citadel fell into ruins after the Turks occupied it in 1543 and the village was deserted. The 13th century Solomon Tower is a stocky, hexagonal keep with walls up to eight meters thick. Today it houses a museum.
The first part of the castle we entered was Solomon’s Tower, once used as a river watch, now houses the museum. The King Matthias Museum contains many of the precious objects unearthed at the royal palace. Among the pictures was a prominent one of Bela IV who began work on the castle in the 13th century. Nearby was an encasement containing a jeweled crown (or a replica).
The next part of the castle was the Visegrad Citadel. Here was a pictorial display in Hungarian and exhibits on traditional castle life —with dinning table and displays about occupations.
Our drive to Esztergom took us further along the banks of the Danube. Population 32,500. Here we visited one of the oldest towns on the Danube and it is considered one of Hungary’s most historical and sacred cities. Here is situated Hungary’s largest cathedral, where the first Christian king was crowned in 1000. The archbishop of Esztergom is the primate of Hungary. The first king, St. Stephen, was born here in 975. Esztergom lost its political significance when King Bela IV moved the capital to Buda after the Mongol invasion.
The first stop was Esztergom Cathedral, the center of Hungarian Catholicism. The Neo-classical church was begun in 1822 on the site of the 12th century one destroyed by the Turks. The grey church is monstrous. To the left (exit for visitors leaving the grounds) is a statue of St. Stephens.
Inside the Cathedral we saw the huge decorated dome.
Organ pipes The organ has five manuals and had 85 stops working out of the planned 146. The organ contains the largest organ pipes in Hungary, about 35 feet long. The smallest pipe is ¼ inch (without pipe foot). When complete, it will be the third largest organ in Europe, surpassing all organs in Hungary in both volume and variety of stops.
After our tour we (Schenks, Raddatzes, and Wulffs) were treated to wine and bread biscuits in the huge wine cellar next to the cathedral. From here we walked to the river front to re-join the waiting Delta Star. Then we were on our way to Slovakia....
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