Budapest

The origin of the city dates back to Roman times, however the city as it is now came into being on 17th November 1873 when the cities of Buda and Pest were unified to become the new capital of Hungary. Unlike Vienna, the cities of Buda and Pest were conquered by Ottomans, being under their rule from 1526 for 150 years. Following the defeat of the Ottomans at Vienna, the cities were liberated and entered a period of new prosperity, eventually being co-capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire. There has been “competition” between Vienna and Budapest, both with a similar population. An example is that after the building of the Vienna Opera House, Budapest sought to have one of its own, but the story goes that they were not allowed to build a bigger one than Vienna, but nobody told them they could not build a more beautiful one.

Buda is on hilly land on the west bank of the Danube, with Pest on the flat east bank. The best vantage point is Buda Castle, which for the first two days of our visit was closed for the more impoartant visit of President Xi.

Hungary lost much of its power and lands following WWI and WWII was an even greater disaster. Budapest suffered major damage and loss of life from the Soviet Army which eventually took control of the city and country. Prior to that Nazi Germans, with the support of the local Arrow Cross Party imprisioned, deported or murdered 564,000 Jews, 434,000 between 15 May and 9 June 1944. The only Jews to survive were those in the Budapest Ghetto, purely because time run out as Soviet troops beseiged the city.

The city was under Soviet control until the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, despite a revolution in 1956 which resulted in the execution of President Nagy. Since then the city has been revitalised; river cruise boats visit, film studios use it as a location and there has been considereable rennovation and new buildings, however the city still has the scars of its history including brutalist communist appartments.

We discovered that we knew more Hungarian than we thought as a number of Turkish words came into the Hungarian language due to the Ottoman occupation. As the Ottomans were keen to develop agriculture, many of these words are connected to farming such as fruit and vegetables.

Budapest was our final stop from where we flew to Turkey.