Posts Tagged ‘Hungary’

House of Terror

Each country that we’ve visited in continental Europe has had its own story to tell about the events surrounding and following WWII.  Hungary, being a territory on the front of the war, was successively occupied by the Nazis (in Hungary the party was known as the Arrow Cross) and then by the Russians.  Both of these groups were well known for the activities of their secret police organizations, and for the real horrors subjected on the population both during and after the war.

In Budapest, there is a museum called the House of Terror which chronicles the acts perpetrated on the Hungarian people by these two groups over the years.  The name is particularly appropriate, because the building that the museum is housed in was actually the headquarters of the secret police for BOTH of the occupying forces!  Inside is a really powerful museum, featuring tons of multimedia – especially videos – that really brings the stories to life.  We spent about 3 hours in the museum and only really watched about half the videos on display.  The most compelling and disturbing part of the museum was the basement which housed many interrogation rooms and still retains the character of what it must have been like while in use.  This museum is highly recommended if you visit Budapest.

We opted for another free walking tour in order to get our bearings in Budapest, and I have to say, I thought it was one of the best.  Our guide was really good and we saw a lot of the sights.  The city is beautiful and we decided to give ourselves a little of a photo challenge – trading cameras for the day!  My camera has really awesome zoom capabilities, but Justin’s takes much better wide shots and has virtually no zoom.  We bought them because we knew they would complement each other, but it was a quite different experience to trade off!

Here are some of my favorites that Justin took:

Decoration on a building

Fountain

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Sometimes, you just never know what you’re going to get.  We arrived in Budapest by train as usual, and got out Hazel’s handy-dandy notebook where we’d written the directions to our hostel.  It was reasonably convenient to get there, just a metro ride followed by a short block, but we discovered to our dismay that nobody answered the doorbell when we got there!

Of course we weren’t about to let that stop us, oh no, so we followed another person through the outer gates of the building and entered a 4 story courtyard with anonymous doors – and no sign of a hostel!  So we split up.  I went upstairs and Hazel searched the downstairs doors.  After a good while I reached a door on the top floor that had a sign: “XYZ Hostel – Guests, please call this number when you arrive”.  This is still super suspicious because nobody was there to unlock the outer door — how could we be expected to get to this inner door?

Moreover this door was unlocked.  So we go in and find a more-or-less hostel place but completely abandoned.  At this point we are really stressed out – what happened to our hostel?  Why is nobody there?  We went out in a near-panic.  We had no hostel and no phone to contact the hostel with!  We went to the nearest hotel and phoned this mysterious number.  Here’s how it went:

Do you have a reservation? Yes?  Well sorry we don’t have any space for you.  Yes I know you paid to confirm the reservation, but I can’t help you.

So at this point we were really unhappy!  And to boot it’s getting dark and we don’t have anywhere to stay.  Eventually we find a place with wifi – the Pink Cadillac Pizzeria – and start looking for another place to stay while we eat our dinner.  We did find a place, called “Home to Home Hostel”, which was a really perfect spot for us.  It was even more central than our first pick, had really nice and helpful owners and a great vibe.  We loved it!  So all ended well after a stressful day entering Budapest.